Spring 1999
Planning to meet the challenges before the new milleniuim
by Ted Smith
I recently returned from an inspiring conference in Holland on Sustainable Production and Consumption, sponsored by The Northern Alliance for Sustainability (ANPED). I was a panelist at a workshop on Clean Production in the Computer Industry. Another panelist was Beverly Thorpe, who works with Clean Production Action (CPA) and is based in Montreal. We are so enthusiastic about CPA’s work that we have printed an edited version of a paper presented by Bev (and her colleague Iza Kruszewska) on page 3. full text of the article is posted on our website. We are working with a wide array of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on a new Clean Computer Campaign, which we hope you will agree is an exciting new effort to clean up the entire computer life cycle, from materials extraction to reuse and recycling.
One of our first campaigns is to defend the new regulations being developed in Europe by the European Commission that will require producers of electronic equipment to take back their products at the end of their useful life. US based manufacturers and the US government are currently working to weaken these regulations. We believe that it is important to alert US activists about this important initiative. If we can help to establish progressive regulations in Europe, these could become the basis for a new global standard for sustainable production. Please take a few moments and send a letter to the Commission to defend and promote Extended Producer Responsibility.
This new campaign grows out of our many years of activism and advocacy related to the unsustainable practices of the computer industry. As we have learned, the environmental legacy of the electronics industry belies its clean image. The dark side of high technology reveals polluted drinking water and birth defects, waste discharges that harm fish and wildlife, and high rates of miscarriages and cancer clusters among workers. The high tech electronics industry uses vast amounts of dangerous chemicals and significantly depletes natural resources to fuel its global expansion and rapidly changing product lines. While it is well known that the high-tech revolution has radically transformed late 20th century civilization, it is less well known that high tech development also harms the environment that sustains all life.
A united campaign by environmentalists, communities and workers has begun to shift the high tech industry toward clean production and sustainable development. Starting in Silicon Valley, California -- the birthplace of the computer revolution -- this grassroots movement has grown internationally. Almost twenty years of activism has expanded awareness of high tech’s toxic legacy and forced industry to abandon use of some dangerous chemicals. But the rapid changes and global growth of high tech pose new challenges.
SVTC’s Board has undergone a comprehensive strategic planning process and is now implementing a three-year strategic action plan to advance clean production and environmental justice within Silicon Valley, and to significantly expand national and international organizing around high tech hazards. Our objectives include:
- Water Resources - to reduce high tech pollution and water usage in Silicon Valley
- Environmental Health - to protect community health & safety in Silicon Valley
- Clean Production - to clean up the life cycle of computer manufacturing
- International Network - to share best practices and lessons learned around the world
- Capacity Building - to improve mass communications and grow our base of support
Why Focus on the High Tech Electronics Industry?
The electronics and computer industry, the largest manufacturing employer in the United States, accounts for more 10% of the US Gross Domestic Product and more than 500,000 jobs. This highly competitive and innovative industry produces semiconductors, disk drives, printed circuit boards, communication devices, and consumer electronics. Its explosive worldwide growth has resulted in an annual global market for semiconductor chips of more than $150 billion.
TOXICS: High Tech Uses Hazardous Chemicals That Threaten Health & Safety
The industry acknowledges its heavy reliance on hazardous substances. More than 1,000 chemical materials are used to make a computer workstation. Due to the widespread use of these dangerous materials, the industrial illness rate among semiconductor workers-called systemic poisoning-is higher than in other manufacturing sectors.
“Clean rooms” — where workers in white “bunny suits” make computer chips — are actually designed to keep microprocessors safe more than the employees and communities. Three separate worker health studies found significantly increased miscarriage rates among women working in chip plants. A California Health Department study found a 3-fold increase of birth defects in a neighborhood where leaking high tech chemicals contaminated the drinking water supply. Cancer clusters have been discovered among IBM workers in San Jose, CA and Fishkill, NY. Similar health problems are emerging at electronics plants in Scotland, Taiwan and other global high tech centers.
JUSTICE: Disproportionate Impacts Fall on Women & People of Color
The people at highest risk from health and safety hazards in the electronics industry are predominantly lower wage workers of color in the United States, especially Asian/Pacific Islander women, Latinas, as well as women workers in Southeast Asia. Many of the worst polluting plants are located in lower income neighborhoods of color.
WATER: High Tech Consumes and Despoils Precious Water Resources
Enormous quantities of clean water are consumed during the production of electronic components. New semiconductor plants use millions of gallons of water a day! In Silicon Valley, excess water consumption by high tech plants adds to the ecological stress on fish and wildlife in the San Francisco Bay-Delta. Waste water discharges, especially from printed circuit board and disk drive makers, have polluted the Bay with harmful levels of copper, nickel and other metals. Silicon Valley has more Superfund toxic waste sites (29) than any other area in the country and more than 150 groundwater contamination sites.
WASTE: Obsolete Electronic Junk Plagues Consumers and Landfills
The industry’s planned obsolescence approach creates enormous amounts of out-dated electronic junk requiring disposal. Sixty million new computers enter the market each year. According to a Carnegie Mellon University study, there may be as many as 150 million computers in landfills by 2005. Computer monitors now account for 40% of all the poisonous lead being dumped in landfills. Barely 1% of computer components are currently recycled. When burned, computer plastics release deadly dioxin compounds.
SPEED: The Short Product Life Cycle Harms Health and the Environment
The rapid rate of change in technology results in the use of hundreds of new chemicals that toxicologists and environmental health and safety experts cannot adequately evaluate. The industry has launched an assault on environmental regulations, claiming that the current regulatory structure is incompatible with their short production cycles.
GROWTH: High Tech’s Rapid Global Expansion Magnifies Adverse Impacts
The electronics industry is the world’s largest and fastest growing manufacturing industry. Before the recent cyclical downturn, up to 140 new semiconductor plants were projected to be built world-wide before the end of the century at a cost of $1.5 to $4 billion each. Without major changes, this development will consume 80 billion gallons of water and generate more than 250 million pounds of hazardous waste each year. The semiconductor industry has now expanded throughout Europe, Asia and is moving into Mexico, Central and South America. The rapid growth in high tech electronics has led to an explosive growth in industries that manufacture the chemicals and materials that supply electronics assembly plants.
POLITICS: High Tech Industry Leads Effort for Subsidies, Deregulation
Because the computer and electronics industry is the largest manufacturing employer in the US, it has significant leverage with communities when negotiating for building a new manufacturing facility. Communities are pitted against one another in bidding wars as the industry relentlessly seeks to reduce taxes and weaken state and local controls for economic development. The competitiveness issue is used to “whipsaw” states, communities and even nations to make tax concessions, provide substantial taxpayer supported infrastructure and training, and even to win wage and benefit concessions from workers.
ACTIVISM: The Critical Catalyst to Environmental and Social Change
The twin pressures of the industry’s expansion plans and their assault on regulations create an urgent need for community-based strategies that go beyond the traditional environmental legislative fix from Washington, DC. We are working to increase our capacity to support industry intervention campaigns. Just as the problems associated with highm tech manufacturing were first discovered in the Silicon Valley, SVTC is working to ensure that the solutions are developed here and then shared with communities where they are needed.
POLICY: Clean Production, Sustainable Development Possible for High Tech
Efforts to establish sustainability and to develop new paradigms for 21st Century environmental protection must incorporate the principles of environmental justice--which hold that people most affected by toxic exposure have a right to effectively participate in those decisions that affect their lives; and the precautionary principle adopted at the UN environmental conference in Rio in 1992 which states that “where there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost effective measures to prevent degradation.”
Community and environmental organizations working with academics have been promoting Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and Cleaner Production. EPR is an environmental protection principle to achieve decreased environmental impact from a product by making the manufacturer of the product responsible for the entire life-cycle, especially for take-back, re-use, recycling and final disposal. EPR puts the responsibility back on the producer — including responsibility for its sub-contractors — to create cleaner and better product designs.
WHAT WE NEED TO DO:
The strategy behind SVTC’s Campaign for Responsible Technology relies on the unique conditions of Silicon Valley and the strength of international networking. We share our successes in Silicon Valley with other regions of the world suffering the environmental consequences of high tech development. Locally, we enjoy proximity to advanced industry expertise and corporate decision makers. Since many of the largest electronics firms are headquartered in Silicon Valley, the issues we raise directly here capture the attention of high tech executives. Whatever we accomplish in the Valley drives the cutting edge of environmental practices across the whole industry worldwide.
Linking up with people around the world who are confronting high tech health and environmental impacts, we established an international information exchange and mutual support network regarding problems and solutions, and leaders and laggards in the electronics industry. By constantly nurturing and expanding this network — the International Campaign for Responsible Technology (I-CRT) — we are working to ensure that the globalization of industry becomes accountable to its host communities and uses the best practices to improve health and safety and reduce environmental impacts.
Ted Smith is SVTC Executive Director
Return to Newsletter Archive
