One of the topics that has dominated the news cycle this month is the discovery of the gargantuan amount of illegally imported electronic waste (e-waste) stored at recycling plants across the country. To make that matter more dramatic, and somewhat more attention-grabbing, many of those plants were found to be owned by Chinese businessmen through the service of Thai “nominees”. With China deciding to ban all waste imports, questions were raised about whether Thailand would be one of the inevitable destinations for this waste.
While I personally concur with the government’s decision to enforce a ban on imported e-waste, I regard this issue as just a bit part of the main catastrophe. The elephant in the room is the question of how to efficiently, yet safely and in a sustainable way, manage the tsunamis of domestic e-waste that are to be created in the future.
While on the one hand we are ecstatic that electronic goods such as mobile phones and computers are getting cheaper and cheaper, we must also acknowledge the bitter fact that there will be a colossal upsurge in terms of the waste created tomorrow.
