International Policy Practicum puts students to work

August 20, 2009 | Observer Staff | Comments 0

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Around the world in a 1000 words

By Nikolas Foster

Ahh, the International Policy Practicum. More fodder for the first day of school verbal sparring along the lines of: “What did you do over break? Oh, I went to the moon.” Excellent material for hyperbolic talk in the annual contest to out-travel our fellow students.

So where did we go? This year we went to Tanzania, South Africa, Zanzibar, Mexico, Senegal, China, and Arkansas—ask Jason about his exciting endeavors there. We did not go to Argentina—ask the World Bank about that one. But was it all about the travel?

Actually, the projects were just as fascinating as the locales: Researching bio-fuels, upgrading electricity production and grids, reducing timber overuse, and consulting environmental SMEs.

My team worked for the WWF (not the wrestlers, the World Wildlife Fund for Nature) to examine China’s position as “factory of the world” and to come up with policy recommendations that would reduce China’s demand for resources in “priority areas,” such as the Congo Basin. We came up with a topic after talking to the head of sustainable development of a Chinese computer company. This company is one of WWF’s partners and was interested in using more recycled materials in the production of their computers. We smelled a win-win situation coming along. Could we possibly come up with recommendations good for both business and the environment? Recommendations that increased computer recycling, reduced China’s demand for resources from “priority areas” and lowered production costs for computer companies?

The theory sounded great. But in practice, this proved to be a quite formidable task. We soon discovered that the country already had a highly efficient albeit unofficial recycling infrastructure in place. Given China’s huge supply of cheap labor and relatively low wages, scrap metal scavengers and computer buyers (the first tier of the unofficial recycling system) can make a decent living of about $150 a month and thus prevent the official system from working efficiently.

How so, you might wonder? If, for example, your computer dies on you, you can either take it to an official recycling center and collect 200 RMB (about $30) or cash in up to 1000 RMB (about $150) by selling it to one of the many private collection stores. If you chose the latter (and who wouldn’t) the computer will then be brought to a site like Ba Jia Cun in Beijing, where the functioning parts will be extracted and resold. What doesn’t work will then be transported to one of the disassembly sites in southern China. Places like Guiyu have become infamous for their entire population making a living by manually taking apart the computers, melting away plastics and bathing motherboards in acid baths to extract the precious metals from the computers (for some shocking pictures punch in “Guiyu” at Google images).

Officially, this should not be happening. This procedure is harming the environment and also the health of its workers while the official recycling facilities are running idle. But both the local and the central government know that millions of people make a living from sorting through trash, picking out the valuables, bringing those to collecting points, and then taking the items apart by hand. What alternative form of livelihood could the central or provincial government offer? How could they prohibit this form of recycling without causing civil unrest, one of the biggest fears of the Chinese government?

To complicate things even more, there is a huge foreign component to the problem. Every year, an estimated 20-50 million tons of e-waste are shipped to the developing world. We realized that it could not just be up to China to enforce its laws and ban e-waste from being imported or recycled that way. While China is hesitant to enforce laws that could potentially force millions of people (the scavengers, sorters and acid bathers) out of their jobs, we in the “West” haven’t paid too much attention to what actually happens to that old computer we tossed or gave to the Good Will store last time we moved.

So much for the environmental side. On the economic side, things did not look much better. While our team was still trying to establish the relationship between higher amounts of recycling and lower production costs for manufacturers, the current drop in commodity prices dampened the prospects for companies seriously interested in recycling. And in the long run, China’s efficient unofficial recycling system will fall apart once the scavengers and sorters need more than $150 a month to pay the bills. Would we then just ship our e-waste to Vietnam? Or Somalia?

Our time in China gave me a lot to think about for the plane ride home. After eight hours at 35,000 feet, when even the usually tantalizing distractions of finally watching all those “B” movies with Jennifer Aniston seemed utterly dreary, I began thinking about end life cycles and carbon footprints. I began thinking about the fact that my school (courtesy of the Luce foundation) had just spend a small fortune on me and my teammates in the hopes that we would come up with the suggestions this planet needs.

I realized that this trip, our project, would have to in an abstract way contribute not only to ameliorating my current carbon footprint, but also to addressing resource overuse and coming up with a more sustainable way of living. But how can we address this without changing consumer behavior? Can we go on shipping our stuff to China under the pretext of their comparative advantage in taking computers apart? Should we buy that ultra thin Laptop while our old one still works and we do not know how the new one is produced or the old one discarded?

Looking back at our fantastic time in China and ahead at the task of turning all our data into a presentable research paper, I guess the best thing I got out of the International Policy Practicum is that it unearthed many more questions than I had going in to it. But while the answers are out there, we might not want to hear them.

Nikolas Foster is a second year M.A. Candidate in International Policy.

Filed Under: February 2009 • News