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Article from The Times of India, 6/30/09. Features comments from state environment secretary and chairperson of Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) Valsa R Nair Singh on draft environmental policy. Some quotes related to e-waste (see annotations).

GALVESTON, Texas, Sep 01, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- John S. Shegerian, Chairman and CEO of Electronic Recyclers International (ERI), the nation's leading recycler of electronic waste, spoke of the urgent importance of sustainable business practices and the "green collar workforce" today at the State of Texas Alliance for Recycling's (STAR's) 12th annual Recycling & Sustainability Summit.

The International Electronics Recycling Conference & Expo is the premier net working event and tradeshow for the fast growing and important electronics recycling industry.

Book edited by Ruediger Kuehr and Eric Williams; "Collecting perspectives from manufacturers, recyclers, environmental scientists and policy analysts, the volume presents a set of analyses on issues important for understanding and planning response to the environmental challenges posed by computers."; this page includes table of contents and link to ordering information

Many everyday consumer items now contain electronic parts. Every year an estimated 1 million tonnes of waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE) are discarded by householders and commercial groups in the UK. Dealing with this waste is an important issue as electronic goods are becoming increasingly short lived, and so ever increasing quantities of obsolete and broken equipment are thrown away. Electronic and electrical equipment makes up on average 4% of European municipal waste, and is growing three times faster than any other municipal waste stream.

China, as the largest producer, consumer and exporter of electrical and electronic (EE) products in the world, is facing great challenges in regulating its growing e-waste as the result of domestic generation and illegal imports from overseas.

Hewlett Packard (HP), in collaboration with the Global Digital Solidarity Fund (DSF), and the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (Empa), has launched a groundbreaking initiative to develop sustainable recycling processes to tackle the problem of e-waste in Africa. For the past two years, the initiative has been overseeing a pilot program facility in South Africa and conducting e-waste management assessment studies in both Kenya and Morocco; the goal of the assessments is ultimately to properly determine each country's ability to deal with the e-waste there, whether it arose from electronics that were purchased new within the country and are now reaching their end of life, or from electronics that were shipped illegally from other countries. The project has been examining efforts by both African governments and organizations to safely handle e-waste. The project has been compiling extensive information, such as the policy and legal framework in each country, standard settings for e-waste treatment, organizations and programs already in place to safely process e-waste, and the actual amounts of e-waste present. MediaGlobal article by Shefali Lall, 7/20/09.

7/18/09 article from The Times [of London] on the problem of illegal e-waste trade and unsafe e-waste processing in Ghana. Article contains the following statistics: "Even in the European Union, which has some of the most stringent controls, an estimated 75 per cent of e-waste is unaccounted for. Most of this, an estimated 8.5 million tonnes a year, is believed to be finding its way to unofficial dumps in West Africa."