Components traced to find e-waste routes

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta.

The State Ministry of the Environment is tracing the electrical components reused in secondhand goods to find how much electronic waste is being dumped in the country.

A preliminary survey revealed that refurbished electronic devices sold in Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi were supplied by equipment brokers in Jakarta.

"The survey aims to track the distribution links of secondhand and refurbished electronic goods. The data is needed to identify the total electronic waste in the country," ministry official and survey head Herri Hamdani said.

Indonesia is a signatory to the Basel Convention on the environmentally sound management of electronic waste but it has yet to pass any laws regulating its disposal.

This process looks set to take longer, after officials attending a two-day workshop on solid waste management Thursday were unable to agree what constituted electronic waste, also known as "e-waste".

Four large companies were invited to share their experiences dealing with waste but none of the firms' representatives showed up.

An official from the Industry Ministry, Warsito, said the e-waste issue was a "sensitive one", which unless it was properly approached, could hamper IT development in the country.

"We are now struggling to improve the IT sector which is being left behind by other countries. Therefore, we must come to a clear definition about what e-waste is. Many people think used computers are not waste because these are computers they can afford to buy," he said.

Data from the United Nations Environment Program finds more than 500 million computers will have become obsolete in the United States between 1997 and 2007.

About 610 million cellular phones will have been discarded in Japan by 2010, the data says.

Thailand produces around 60,000 tons of e-waste every year from refrigerators, air conditioners, television sets, washing machines and computers.

The convention prohibits rich countries from exporting their electronic waste to developing nations.

The Environment Ministry says large quantities of e-waste are being exported to Indonesia for the purposes of re-use, repair, refurbishment, recycling and the recovery of non-ferrous and precious metals.

E-waste often contains toxic substances such as lead, cadmium, beryllium, mercury, zinc which can harm human health and the environment.

In many European countries, regulations on e-waste have been introduced to prevent it from being dumped in landfills.

However, in Indonesia there are no such controls and recycling is done by hand in scrap yards.

In Batam -- a main destination for e-waste -- the refuse is buried in forested areas.

The electronics industry is the country's second-largest contributor to national exports after the textile sector.

Exports reached US$6.06 billion in 2005 compared to $1.58 million in imports.

Industry ministry officials said they had found some modern shopping centers selling refurbished television sets.

"We have found many television sets -- mainly 14-inch ones with recycled computer picture tubes -- that are being sold in modern retail outlets," official Ahmad Rozy said.