INTRODUCTION Shor T CirCuiT: The Lifecycle of our Electronic Gadgets and the True Cost to Earth i SHORT CIRCUIT: The Lifecycle of our Electronic Gadgets and the True Cost to Earth SHORT CIRCUIT: The Lifecycle of our Electronic Gadgets and the True Cost to Earth (2013) Author: Philippe Sibaud, co-authored by The Gaia Foundation, edited by Amy Woodrow Arai. Commissioned by: The Gaia Foundation 6 Heathgate Place Agincourt Road London NW3 2NU United Kingdom Tel. +44 (0)207 428 0055 Fax. +44 (0)207 428 0056 www.gaiafoundation.org Registered Charity no: 327412 This publication is for educational purposes and not for commercial purposes. Reproduction of this publication, in whole or part, for educational purposes is permitted provided the source is fully acknowledged. This material may not be reproduced for sale or other commercial purposes. This publication has been produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The contents are the sole responsibility of The Gaia Foundation and the project “Strengthening African CSO networks to respond to rapid growth of extractive industries” and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union. Printed by: Mobius Green Print Front Cover illustration by Roanna Rahman, design by Fiona Wilton. CONTENTS Dedication 3 Acknowledgements 5 ShorT Abbreviations / Acronyms 6 Technical Glossary / Definitions 7 Cir CuiT: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Lifecycle of our 9 Electronic Gadgets Can We Change our Human Legacy? 13 and the True Cost to Earth INTRODUCTION 17 1. A PAINFUL BIRTH: mining & manufacture 21 WHAT’S IN IT? 22 Metals AND Minerals 24 Gold 25 Conflict Minerals in the DRC: the three Ts (tantalum, tin, tungsten) 29 Rare Earths and Technology Minerals: the new battleground 34 Lithium: the white gold 37 Cobalt : the king of critical metals 38 Copper: the essential metal 39 Metals and Minerals depletion and financial speculation 41 Manufacturing: blood, sweat AND TEARS - EXTERNALISING THE TRUE costs 43 Working and Living Conditions 43 Ecological Contamination and Damage 45 2. LIFE EVER SHORTER: product life-span 47 The Expansion of Virtual Connection 48 Virtual (dis)Connection 51 A Life Cut Short: a business model designed to fail? 51 Planned obsolescence 52 3. DEATH BY THE ROADSIDE: the end-of-life stage 55 E-Waste: a tidal wave of junk 56 Stemming the e-waste Tide 57 Recycling - or lack thereof 59 4. INTO THE BARDO: a critical juncture between two worlds 65 Producer Responsibility & Design 66 Extended Producer Responsibility 67 Designing for the Next Life 67 Zero Waste 68 Closing the Loop: Cradle to Cradle design & the Circular Economy 68 Disconnecting from Consumerism 72 Full circle: People & Planet, a Renewed Relationship 73 Stories OF creativity, innovation, reconnection & hope 75 CONCLUSION 89 What Next? 90 TAbLES / ENDNOTES 92 1 SHORT CIRCUIT: The Lifecycle of our Electronic Gadgets and the True Cost to Earth Flysch in the basque Country, Zumala / Shutterstock 2 INTRODUCTION DEDiCATED To ThE ELEmEnTS of our EArTh For us modern people, you are merely the ‘chemical elements’. We consider you inanimate, dead, not worthy of a point of view. We’ve never given you thanks. Who cares about lifeless rock and air? But an ancient awareness stirs and grows in the face of the global crisis - that you are people; animate proto-beings, tiny atomic persons. The stuff of life. And so we do, after all, owe you thanks. Your quantum entanglements, your ultra sub-microscopic machinations your repulsions, and your love affairs, the sum of all your doings, create the vastness of the Universe and the shining, turning, deep blue-marble Earth in which we live, breathe and have our being. Praise, then, be to carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulphur - the very elements of our physical bodies. We are made of you. Our every mood, our every conversation, our thoughts, our longings prefigure in your yearning for completion as you swap and share tingling electrons - those even tinier sub-atomic persons. Our consciousness and yours are consanguineous – we share the same cosmic quantum blood. You are our ancestors, our foundation. And so too of the air, the oceans, the bacteria, algae, plants, fungi and animals. You flare forth in the consciousness of singing whales, the eerie intelligence of octopus, in elephant dreams, in our dreams. Praise be to those amongst you whom we mine with such abandon and with such destruction: you are the stuff of mountains, of deserts, of planets. You: tantulum, chromium, arsenic, aluminium, antimony, gallium, manganese, molybdenum, magnesium, tin and iron. You and your brothers and sisters, we praise you all. And yet we denigrate you, we rip you out of your earthly homes in mineral veins. We crush you out of rock with scathing acids and searing heat. Do you rage, nitrogen, when we suck you from the swirling air into our fertilizers to be dumped on our fields, causing mayhem in the rivers and oceans? Elements, do you rage when we enslave you, when we disrespect your elemental rights, your needs? When we process you like dead stuff, when we mould and squeeze you into unnatural circuit board associations, like distant tribes forced to live together far from their natural homelands? Press-ganged into our service in shiny electronic devices, do you suffer the greed and madness of our culture? Are you the final recipients of our darkest shadow selves? So how shall we treat you, oh elements? A melding of science and indigenous wisdom urges us thus: to implore the sacred Earth with ritual and ceremony for permission to extract you from her living flesh, as we must do to survive. To deploy our best science to calculate how many of your atoms and molecules we can safely take without upsetting the self-regulating dance of our living planet. To design recycling processes that keep you safely out of the biosphere in perfect closed loop cycles. But above all, oh flesh of our flesh, let us revere you truly as persons and beings of Earth. Let us recognise the fundamental, elemental right for as many of you as possible to stay in the ground and out of our clutches, the subterranean guardians of our world. By Dr. Stephan Harding 3 SHORT CIRCUIT: The Lifecycle of our Electronic Gadgets and the True Cost to Earth Electronic waste / Shutterstock 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ACknowLEDGEmEnTS We are especially grateful to Philippe Sibaud who is the author of this report, Short Circuit, the follow-on from the Pandora’s Box Report (2012). After working for more than a year to show the impact that the extractive industries are having on Earth and communities (Opening Pandora’s Box), Philippe felt that it was necessary to take a closer look at one of the drivers of the expansion in mining - the production of consumer electronic products. We hugely appreciate his deep concern, commitment and generosity in giving his time and energy to write about a complex issue in such an accessible and creative way. Thank you to Stephan Harding (Head of Holistic Science and Resident Ecologist at Schumacher College, Dartington) for reminding us of the bigger picture with his Dedication to the Elements of our Earth. We are indebted to generous advisers and allies who have shared their experience and advice as the report has evolved, especially: Richard Solly (London Mining Network), Andrew Whitmore and Roger Moody (Mines and Communities), Geoff Nettleton (PIPLinks), Nnimmo bassey (Oilwatch International), Julian Kirby (Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland), Jamie Kneen (MiningWatch Canada), Patrick Kane (War on Want) and Martin Stanley (Holly Hill Trust). A special thanks to those who shared their stories which contributed to the case studies of this report, and for illuminating creative and innovative ways forward: Ugo Vallauri (The Restart Project), Mark Shayler (Tickety boo Eco Design), Charles Eisenstein (author: Sacred Economics), Nic Marks (The Happiness and Well-being Centre), Andrew Simms and Ruth Potts (the new economics foundation), Priti Mahesh (Toxics Link, India), Julian Kirby (Friends of the Earth England, Wales and N. Ireland), Polly Higgins (barrister and author: Eradicating Ecocide), Tracy L. barnett (The Esperanza Project), Frank Poulsen (Director: blood in the Mobile) and The Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Many others have provided willing advice and support in various ways for which we are extremely grateful: Jules Cashford (author and Gaia Foundation Trustee), Felicity McMahon (of 5Rb Media and Entertainment Law, for pro-bono legal advice), Asa Norman (Swedish Ministry of Environment), Jacqueline McGlade (Executive Director of the European Environment Agency), Kate Raworth (Oxfam), Michael Shaw (biomatrix Water), Mariette Liefferink (CEO: Federation for a Sustainable Environment) and The Stockholm Resilience Centre. We are especially thankful to The Swift Foundation, The Roddick Foundation, The European Commission, NORAD (The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation), Swedbio (The Swedish International biodiversity Programme) and the AW.60 Charitable Trust for supporting us in this work. Appreciations also to the team who worked on the final publication, for their commitment, time and energy, especially: Fiona Wilton for graphic design, Stig for illustrations, Roanna Rahman for the front cover design, Pieter Hugo for the photographs of e-waste in Ghana, and the team who put it together - Amy Woodrow Arai for editing and fine tuning this report, David Sabogal Habedank and Hannibal Rhoades for their support and contributions, and Teresa Anderson, Helen Strong, Carine Nadal, Rowan Phillimore, Filomena Dionisi, and Liz Hosken for their support throughout the process. Special thanks to those who endorsed the Report: Michael Mansfield, Nnimmo bassey, Richard Solly, Julian Kirby, Vandana Shiva, Gathuru Mburu, Jamie Kneen, Nic Marks, Charles Eisenstein, Jim Puckett, and Vivienne Westwood. And finally our deep gratitude to our partners and allies who are working at every level to resist and challenge the abuses of the extractive industries, and for their commitment to showing that there is a way to live within Earth’s cycles and limits.