WHEN IN use or in storage, PCs pose no real threat — unless they blow up or they somehow fall on your head or other parts of your anatomy, or you trip on the wires. But the toxic materials comprising e-equipment pose a serious global dilemma on the proper disposal of computers and other e-waste, especially when they reach their end-of-life limit. Though the usual practice even among Filipinos is to just allow obsolete, nonworking electronics to gather dust in some household storeroom or pass them on to those who may still have some use for them, there are indications that these devices sometimes end up in landfills and dumpsites where they can leach and cause eventual pollution of the soil and groundwater.

	Second-hand PCs stored for recycling at the HMR warehouse.

Gene Cruz, environmental engineer of HMR Philippines, the local division of the Australian HMR Group of Companies specializing in surplus asset management, admits that his company is able to retrieve discarded printed circuit boards through an agent who does the rounds of Metro Manila waste disposal sites, notably the one in Payatas. What is also disturbing is that some PCBs have already undergone some form of chemical treatment to recover precious metals like gold.

"You can smell the clear sour scent of acid from the boards, indicating they have been dipped in an acid bath. The gold is gone, even the chips are removed because of the fine gold wires," says Cruz, who believes this may be the work of plain gold refiners since they just throw the boards away after recovering the metal.

Gold is not the only recoupable material from computers and their peripherals. The presence of other precious metals like silver, platinum, palladium, as well as lead, steel, aluminum and copper, makes recycling PCs a better option. But the process, particularly given the toxic nature of materials to be recovered, requires the technical expertise of electronics recyclers.

	HMR Envirocycle demanufacturing facility in Sta. Rosa, Laguna

Locally though, no recycler accredited by the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is capable of recovering precious metals and toxics like lead, cadmium and barium from computers. Even the HMR Envirocycle plant in Sta. Rosa, Laguna is only a demanufacturing facility that dismantles obsolete electronic products, breaking them down into component parts, and separating these parts according to their hazardous and nonhazardous nature, all destined for their respective local and foreign buyers.

PCBs, for instance, are sent to a special facility in Singapore for recovery of precious metals. After the computer monitors are dismantled, the cathode ray tubes go through a CRT crusher patterned after HMR's California facility to separate the lead-treated glass plate from the metals bound for recycling in South Korea.

HMR is also looking at local smelter Philippine Recyclers Inc. (PRI), which currently recycles lead acid battery waste, to do the metal recovery for them. On the surface, though, the PRI plant in Marilao, Bulacan doesn't seem like a state-of-the-art operation. Greenpeace activists even say that the pile of lead waste residues from its smelting activities inside its premises already shows an element of dumping.

Cruz says HMR Envirocycle processes e-waste sourced domestically from companies, particularly semiconductor and multinational firms doing business in the country. But its facility gets more than half of discarded electronics from the foreign waste stream, which enters the country technically as second-hand goods via importations of HMR Philippines' subsidiaries like HMR Namrac Industries in Sucat. At present, Namrac imports between 1,000 to 2,000 used computers a month.

"We're trying to increase the percentage of computers that we get locally. But we can't keep up with the demand by just local purchase," explains Jay Savage, Namrac business development officer. "So we do import. But we don't import any nonworking electronics. We're not allowed to do that under the Basel Convention."

The 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes began to be enforced in 1992. It bans the export for final disposal of such wastes from OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries to non-OECD countries. Parties to the convention, including the Philippines, also committed to stop all shipments from OECD states for recycling in developing countries by 1998. Pending ratification of the so-called Basel Ban by the Philippine government, the country has therefore continued to allow importation of recyclable materials containing hazardous substances, an activity that finds legal basis under Republic Act 6969 (the Toxic Substances and Hazardous and Nuclear Waste Control Act of 1990).

Under the guidelines set out by DENR Administrative Order 28 in 1994, importation of e-wastes is allowed so long as there are recycling facilities that can handle them here. But residual toxic wastes that cannot be disposed according to acceptable environmental methods have to be shipped back to their source.

The problem with such imports, says Von Hernandez, Greenpeace toxics campaigner for Asia, is that they also come with waste computers. "They will say it's a legal operation because they are issued a permit," he notes. "Sure, but that is also why we say the government is an accomplice because it allows this."

Hernandez also says that despite the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act mandating source separation and recycling, he sees no system in place as yet similar to car battery manufacturer Ramcar's balik-baterya collection program for recovering outmoded electronics and hazardous materials.