Refurbished computers are a common consumer's best buy. The easy availability of used, 'branded' parts at a considerably low price has led to a spike in popular purchase of these computers. Incidentally, these computers have a very short life. Besides, dealing in dead machines inevitably entails some serious environmental and health risks because a computer system contains over 2 kilograms of lead, a poisonous metal found in typical CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) monitors, mercury in printed circuit boards and cadmium in semiconductors.

"Lead, mercury, hardened inks from printers and other elements are dumped in suburbs without any check from authorities," says Waqar Azeem, an IT expert working at Hafeez Centre, Lahore's mecca of computer dealers, talking to TNS.

Waqar says the improper disposing off of refurbished computers generates volatile organic chemical compounds (VOCs) -- gases or vapours emitted by various solids or liquids -- many of which have short- and long-term adverse effects on human and animal health.

Traders' viewpoint is that customers look for refurbished computers that incorporate parts of international brands such as Dell, Hewlett Packard and IBM as these (they believe) last longer. Commonly, the dead computers are dismantled in order to separate 'valuable' (or reusable) parts and, during this process, some useless but dangerous elements are dumped in the suburban areas of the city (Lahore).

"We collect the gadgets from Hall Road and Hafeez Centre for disassembling and scrap them at different rates," says Noor Khan who leads a team of six persons to collect dead computers from Hall Road.

The rate of motherboard scrap is Rs 200 per kg while that of monitors and printers ranges between Rs 70 and Rs 90 per kg. The scrap is then sold off to junkyard operators at Farkhabad (near Shahdara), Misri Shah and Shadipura (near Daroghawala) making around 20 percent profit.

"Different metals retrieved from the various computer parts are reused in different sectors but the useless things are dumped in the nearby areas," says Bashir who has installed a locally-made machine worth Rs 70,000, to crush plastic computer parts.

Most plastic parts, Bashir tells TNS, fill the air with poisonous gasses and carcinogenic substances when they are burnt.

Dr Owais Farooqui, a gynecologist and adviser to Punjab government on environment issues, identifies congenital abnormalities among pregnant women as a result of improper disposing off of toxic waste in the environment.

The most vulnerable segment remains the poor workers who disassemble the used computers.

"We have a large number of patients who worked in different junkyards and caught bronchitis and other dangerous diseases of lungs and skin as they were exposed to poisonous elements at their workplaces," says Dr Zahid A Majid of a state-run hospital.

Pakistan lacks a system to regulate the import of refurbished computers whereas some countries including Egypt have set a certain standard of specification before accepting a second-hand computer. This helps ensure that the computers can be reused for a considerable period of time.

Experts opine that rather than banning the refurbished computers at all, the government should evolve a system whereby it can check the suitability of second-hand/refurbished computers.

According to Ghufran Gul, a young computer expert from Hall Road, Lahore, the authorities should accept computers with a minimum Pentium III 450 MHz processor -- or Celeron 566 MHz processor -- and monitors with usage of three to four years.

Contesting this point of view, Mansoor Alam of Hafeez Centre says, "The trade of refurbished computers does not require any mechanism as it is regulated by market forces. No one wants to import junk as this involves thousands of dollars."

He begrudges the fact that at times foreign business partners try to dump junk in Pakistan by sending in useless items which is five percent of every consignment.

It may also be mentioned here that the import of refurbished computers is banned in neighbouring countries like India and Bangladesh, which has led them to promote the local industry by making joint ventures with different PCs manufacturers.

The cost of a refurbished computer depends not only on the supplier but also on the recipient country, but an interesting aspect of the trade in Pakistan is the availability of used computers at very low rates despite 16% GST, 5% Income tax, 1% Port Duty and international price. For instance, a Pentium IV machine (only CPU) is available in the market at Rs 6500 whereas it costs Rs 10,250 internationally.

The business of refurbished computers has thrived in recent years in Pakistan, as a large number of traders have switched from new to refurbished machines. The main imports in Lahore are Wisetech of Sheikh Inam, Perfect International of Mian Kashif, Trade X of Sheikh Babar and ALM Traders of Shakeel and Alam's of Mansoor Alam.

Mansoor maintains that the business promotes technical education. Earlier, computers were imported by any person in the business, but trade in refurbished computers requires a considerable technical know-how of the gadget which might mean hiring a team of technicians.

There are discrepancies involved in import duties, shipping routes and administration costs in the export and import process. Sources familiar with the trade say Karachi, Lahore and Sambrial ports have different duty tariffs for the clearance of consignments. A Pentium IV computer has US$85 at Karachi port, $65 at Lahore dry port and $45 at Sambrial. That is why most importers prefer clearance at the Sambrial port.

The Lahore dry port officials, requesting anonymity, tell TNS that the difference in tariff is maintained to attract importers to use port of small town.

Rules to protect environment exist in papers but are seldom put into practice. The Pakistan Environmental Protection Act 1997, Section 13, prohibits the import of hazardous substances and Section 14 disallows handling of hazardous elements.

"It is an irony that not a single case was registered under these sections in four environmental protection tribunals working in the provinces since the promulgation of the rules," says Akhtar H Awan, a lawyer specialising in environment.

He adds that the environment protection authorities should be given more powers so that they can ensure the implementation of laws.

In another part of the world, the multinationals blame the import of refurbished computers as contributing to stifling the growth of the local industry. Intel Pakistan Country Manager Ashar H Zaidi says there is less and less of foreign investment in the country as international firms cannot stay competitive when used computers are being imported.

"A greater penetration of computer usage, in both urban and rural parts, can be achieved through teaching and learning initiatives. This would help to spur the nation's goal of building a community of knowledge and ICT-skilled workforce. We at Intel would like to see more and more people at all levels of society learn how to use and enjoy their PCs and enhance their personal lives by improving education, communication and entertainment.

"Computer literacy is important for us if we mean to compete with the more developed nations in the region. This will only be possible when citizens have access to uncompromised technology. Sometimes refurbished computers do not support latest software and end up widening the digital divide rather than reducing it", he adds.

M Zulqarnain Amir, Secretary, Punjab Information Technology, says the government departments prefer new computers and discourages trade of refurbished computers.

He says Punjab is spending Rs 5 billion for the purchase of 60,000 computers.

Ibrahim Qureshi, Director, Raffles (Pvt) Limited, says the price difference in new and refurbished computers is just an illusion because a used computer costs the same if the buyers weigh extra expenses on maintenance against the amount consumed by the old technology.

The government, says Dr Owais, has invited stakeholders of different sectors to help improve the environment. "The problem can be solved -- to some extent -- if everybody accepts their responsibility of ensuring a safe environment by segregating the garbage, thus reducing the long procedure of segregation and disposing off different substances and cutting dependence on usage of chemicals, plastics and poisonous substances. The masses must be educated about environment issues, especially the hazardous substances."

So far no strategy has been devised to tackle e-waste in Pakistan, even though the machine is commonly used in all sectors of the country. No one has been appointed to regulate e-waste disposal -- so much so that the issue is not even mentioned in the IT Policy and Plan Action 2000.

Pakistan faces the problem mainly on two fronts: on the one hand, it is used as the dumping ground for over 50,000 tonnes of e-waste by developed countries and, on the other, it generates thousands of tons of local e-waste every year.

According to a CAP (Computer Association of Pakistan) survey, more than 500,000 used computers find their way inside the Pakistani computer market every year, while the number of new computers brought in is more than 100,000 per year.

Increasing e-waste is a major cause of concern in the developed countries. It is highly injurious to health as it is composed of over 1,000 different harmful chemical substances, including lead, beryllium, mercury, cadmium and brominated flame retardants. These ingredients are not easy to separate for reuse or recycling. Many of the component parts of e-waste are so hazardous that they pose both occupational and environmental threats.

Recycling and disposal of e-waste has become a serious problem in Pakistan. The e-waste is sold to scrap dealers who extract the useful parts and toss the rest in landfills or burn them in the open.

Experts believe that over time the heavy metals will be absorbed in the ground and pollute the soil and ground water which is bound to cause serious illnesses. Otherwise, when different components of e-waste are burnt in the open, they pollute the air by releasing carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, particles and hazardous smoke. The pollution can result in various skin and respiratory tract disorders.

Abdul Monem Faraz, who deals in computer accessories in Faisalabad, tells TNS that there is no awareness on the issue of e-waste in his city. "There are more than 300 dealers of both old and new computers in Faisalabad. Nobody cares about the waste produced by computers or other electronics. Most of the time, we sell them to scrap dealers as there are no instructions from the government on how to deal with the waste," he says.

The situation in other cities, such as Lahore and Karachi, is no different. Muhammad Ali, who sells computers in Lahore's famous Hafeez Centre, says nobody is aware of the magnitude of the problem. "Computer waste is scattered inside the plaza. We do not care that it's dangerous. Scrap dealers are the only buyers of this waste and I have no idea what they do with it."

According to Ali, old computers consume 60 percent more energy than the new ones. However, he says, he doesn't know what kind of hazardous effects it could have on human health and environment.

"The government IT officials are not interested in this problem," he declares.

Ameer Khattak, a senior official of Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB), tells TNS that the issue of e-waste has never been discussed in the official meetings of IT-related departments of government. "Right now our concern is to spread computer education to every nook and corner of the country. E-waste is the issue of the developed countries that have achieved a certain level in the field of IT."

The essence of enforcing environmental regulations is in the money. Regulation means interference. Often it means cost, most usually in the form of changing habits. In the world of environmental regulation, polluters are asked to stop polluting and, if not, are fined. The fact that we continue to play to the tune of 'Toxic Colonialism' and pay no more than lip-service to the Basel Convention is proof that we haven't figured this out.

The economic cost of pollution -- fines and penalties -- are not just sanctions. The amount of fine levied is, theoretically, supposed to represent the cost to the State of cleaning up the pollution. This is crucially important. Too often, polluters pay no heed to the downstream effects of their actions. It's left to the State to deal with the dead fish, polluted air and water and sick children. Imposing fines for pollution is the current wisdom that makes pollution an operating cost rather than an 'externality' no one has to think or worry about. If polluters are forced to include the cost of pollution into their budgets, they will think twice about polluting or, at the very least, invest in environment-friendly technologies that reduce their pollution and, hence, the fines they pay.

Starting in the 1970s and till today, as the awareness of the environment grew throughout the world, many producers, faced with exorbitant fees and penalties because of their pollution, seek to reduce their costs by exporting their waste to lesser fortunate states rather than dealing with it themselves. For many Western polluters, it's cheaper to ship waste to third-world countries than pay for its environmentally-friendly disposal.

Pakistan is no exception to this 'Toxic Colonialism'.

In the early 1990s, an enterprising Pakistani entered into an agreement with a foreign country whereby he was to provide landfills in Balochistan for the disposal of that foreign country's nuclear waste. Luckily, Mr. Justice Saleem Akhtar sat in the Supreme Court of Pakistan and took immediate suo motu notice of the matter. The Chief Secretary of the Province was summoned, hard questions asked and, in the end, a shipload of nuclear waste bound for the Baloch countryside was diverted back to the European capital from whence it came (In re: Human Rights Case (Environmental Pollution in Baluchistan) PLD 1994 Supreme Court 102).

The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal is the international treaty designed to tackle and reduce, in specific, the transfer of hazardous wastes from developed to less developed countries. It does not apply to the disposal of nuclear waste -- a deficiency in the eyes of many -- but it is the major legal text that seeks to combat Toxic Colonialism.

The Convention entered into force in 1992. Pakistan acceded to and ratified it in 1994. Our environmental law, the Pakistan Environment Protection Act, 1997, allows for the Federal Government to make rules for the purposes of carrying out and implementing international environmental agreements. And the Basel Convention is on the list of agreements. It has the power to regulate through the exercise of its rule making power. PEPA also specifically stipulates that "No person shall import hazardous waste into Pakistan and its territorial waters, exclusive economic zones and historic waters."

So why am I writing this article?

Because, each year, Pakistan imports up to 500,000 used computers. They are often brought into the country under the guise of providing computer literacy, but only 15 to 40 percent of these are in any condition to be used. The rest are disassembled by women and children in godowns working in the most appalling conditions.

The Unites States, Singapore and some European countries are using Pakistan as a dumping ground for their electronic waste. This is Toxic Colonialism in action.

Not only are used computers inefficient to run (they consume up to 60 percent more energy than newer models), the disassembly of used computers exposes the disposal workers to harmful chemicals such as lead, cadmium, chromium, barium, mercury and various plastics. And because the disassembly process is no more than a euphemism for throwing the scrap into a landfill, these chemicals then leech their way underground and have the potential to harm flora, fauna and the water table.

The import of hazardous electronic waste, and any other waste for that matter, must be stopped. The fact that that such import occurs in the presence of PEPA and our accession to the Basel Convention means that the people responsible for the enforcement of environmental regulations are asleep. They need to be woken and educated about how Pakistan must not be allowed to become a 'Toxic Colony' of more developed countries, that there is no excuse to import hazardous electronic waste under the guise of educating the masses, that it's the businesses and countries that produce this waste who should be made financially responsible for its proper disposal.

The Pakistan link on the Basel Convention's home page on the internet directs you to the competent authority and focal persons with respect to the enforcement of the Convention. They are, respectively, the Joint Secretary and Director General (Environment) of the Ministry of Environment. The listed email is ahameed1951@hotmail.com and phone number 051-920-2574. Please, for our own sakes, contact them and tell them to do their jobs.

Rapid technology change and the decreasing cost of consumer electronics have resulted in decreasing the life span of the electronic goods, particularly computers and mobile phones. Consequently, a large number of electronic items are becoming obsolete and being scrapped. These end-of-life electronic equipment are generally called electronic waste, e-waste or e-scrap.

E-waste includes a broad range of devices. These include televisions, VCRs, stereo equipment, mobile phones, other handheld devices and computer components. E-waste is emerging as a transnational problem. The technological innovations and the tidal wave of new consumer goods are bound to increase the pace of e-waste generation.

In the US alone, 1.5 billion pounds e-waste was generated during 2006. The total annual global volume of e-waste is about 40 million metric tonnes. The rate of growth of e-waste is three times that of other municipal waste.

The waste from electronic appliances is composed of a host of materials. Many metals that appear in small quantities (mostly in the printed circuit boards) are quite expensive. These include gold, silver, platinum and palladium as well as rare metals like indium and gallium. This makes recycling of e-waste an attractive business opportunity.

A thriving international trade has emerged in used electronics, largely from industrialised to developing countries. The recycling can recover 94.75 percent of useful materials (by weight) from the main machines (CPU, IC boards, DVD/ CD drive, hard disk, etc.) and 45.99 percent (by weight) from scrapped monitors.

Conversely, many materials present in the e-waste are highly injurious to health and pose serious risks to environment and health of recycling workers involved at various stages of waste processing. Electronic waste may have up to 38 different chemical elements. Some of these metals are highly toxic: these include lead, mercury, cadmium and arsenic. Many of the plastics used in electronic equipment contain flame retardants and other additives that are carcinogenic in nature. Uncontrolled processing, open-air burning, and unsafe disposal can trigger serious health problems especially among those directly exposed.

The primitive practices of e-waste management include landfills, open-air-burning and incineration. In landfills these toxins contaminate ground water resources. The vapourisation of volatile compounds is yet another environmental concern. It was on account of these concerns that some European countries have banned the disposal of electronic waste in landfills. Many of the materials found in e-waste generate hazardous toxic substances on burning that are dispersed in the atmosphere. This is particularly true for open-air burning, which releases several toxins including various carcinogens and neurotoxins, e.g. dioxins and furans into the air. The release of resultant pollutants can trigger a host of illnesses in humans.

Recent surveys, conducted on behalf of the United Nations Environment Programme, found that used electronics imported from the United States are dismantled in many developing countries under unsafe conditions. Other investigations have corroborated disassembly practices in some Asian countries involving the open-air burning of wire to recover copper and open acid baths for separating metals, exposing people to lead and other hazardous materials.

The disposal and recycling of e-waste is often governed by strict regulations in developed countries. This provides an incentive to export unscreened electronic waste to Afro-Asian countries. Around 80 percent of the e-waste in the US is exported to Asia and Africa. Many consignments from European Union, Japan and South Korea as well as the US that sought to sneak through customs and illegally dumped e-waste have been intercepted. Guiyo in China, and Delhi and Bangalore in India, are the main e-waste processing centres. Other dumping grounds include Pakistan, Philippines, Nigeria and Ghana. In Pakistan, Lahore and Karachi are the main activity centres in terms of e-waste dumping.

There have been attempts to restrict the flow of hazardous e-waste to developing countries. Basel Convention on the Control of Trans-boundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal is an international treaty designed to reduce the movements of hazardous waste between nations and specifically to prevent the transfer of hazardous waste from developed to less developed countries. In spite of these efforts illegal e-waste dumping in developing countries continues. Lack of legislation, inadequate strategies and poor implementation of law in developing countries are some of the many reasons for the unlawful flow of hazardous e-waste.

In Pakistan, the computers and other obsolete electronic goods are imported under the pretext of 'second-hand equipment'. Barely a small percentage of the items imported are usable. In practice, after removing the working machines and usable parts the bulk of the consignment is sent to the recycling industry. The unregulated and unsafe waste management practices let hazardous materials in the waste to disseminate into the environmental resources. The bulk of solid waste is dumped in the landfill and the effluents arising from the recycling processes are dumped into municipal sewerage without proper treatment.

Here, the e-waste issue so far has received little attention from the government and the non-government environmental bodies. Fortunately, Pakistan is still not a major e-waste dumping ground. However, the situation is likely to change in the near future. It is feared that with the ever-escalating generation of e-waste and strict legislation making recycling financially less attractive in the developing countries and a ban on e-waste exports to China, the e-waste brokers will try to find new markets. Consequently, e-waste flow to Pakistan can swell exponentially.

To date, no scientific study has been made to assess the impact of e-waste processing to our environment. There is no reliable data available on the volume of used electronic components imported and the fraction of it recycled or dumped as solid waste. There is a dire need to determine the detrimental impact of e-waste processing on public health. This necessitates expeditious measures and a rational strategy to avoid transforming Karachi and Lahore to yet another Guiyu.