What is E-Waste?
Discarded electronics like phones, laptops, TVs, and chargers fall under this category of waste.
What is e-waste?
These four tech giants are specifically named as companies that design and sell billions of devices that eventually become e-waste.
What are Apple, Dell, HP, and Samsung?
Dell's take-back program, under this name, had recycled electronics traced to unsafe destinations overseas.
What is Dell Reconnect?
BAN stands for this full organization name.
What is the Basel Action Network?
E-waste dumping is considered unethical in international business because rich countries outsource their toxic waste to countries with these.
What are weaker environmental laws (less regulated countries)?
This business strategy intentionally shortens a product's lifespan to encourage consumers to buy a new one sooner.
What is planned obsolescence?
Countries in West Africa, South Asia, and parts of Southeast Asia receive most of the world's dumped or informally recycled e-waste from these wealthier regions.
What are North America and Western Europe?
In 2016, the Basel Action Network found that some of Dell's recycling partners were secretly doing this.
What is exporting e-waste to countries with weak regulations?
BAN awards this certification to recyclers who follow strict ethical and environmental standards making it easy to identify responsible companies.
What is e-Stewards certification?
LCD monitors are especially hazardous because breaking the screen can release this toxic heavy metal into the air.
What is mercury?
E-waste is currently the world's fastest-growing type of this.
What is waste (waste stream)?
In Nigeria alone, roughly this many people work in the informal e-waste economy.
What is 100,000 people?
HP responded to pressure from this organization's e-Trash Transparency Project by announcing more recycling transparency in 2020.
What is the Basel Action Network (BAN)?
To track where e-waste really goes, BAN investigators hide these devices inside old printers and monitors before handing them over to recyclers.
What are GPS trackers?
Even though the U.S. doesn't ban e-waste exports outright, recyclers can face criminal charges for this if they lie to customers about where waste goes.
What is fraud?
In 2022, the world generated 62 million tonnes of e-waste, but only this percentage was recycled safely.
What is 22%?
These workers at informal recycling sites dismantle electronics by hand, often with no protective equipment and exposure to toxic fumes.
Who are informal recyclers (or e-waste workers)?
Apple has been urged to join stricter recycling certification programs and publish more details about this where its old devices actually end up.
What is its recycling and export practices?
This 1989 international treaty regulates the export of hazardous waste but the United States has never ratified it.
What is the Basel Convention?
The handout says ethical business means designing longer-lasting products, being transparent about recycling, and doing this rather than sending problems abroad.
What is supporting safer local recycling systems?
Beyond just being trash, e-waste is described in the handout as being this type of problem, involving businesses operating across borders.
What is an international business ethics problem?
This continent is home to three countries that receive significant amounts of dumped e-waste.
What is Africa?
This Seattle-based company was caught exporting e-waste to Hong Kong while marketing itself as an ethical recycler, and its founders were sentenced to prison.
What is Total Reclaim?
This United Nations health agency warns that chemicals from burning e-waste can damage lung function and brain development, especially in children.
What is the World Health Organization (WHO)?
This is why ethical businesses should care about e-waste: workers and communities in receiving countries never benefited from the original profits of selling those devices.
What is an unfair distribution of harm and profit (environmental injustice)?