E-waste
by Robert Knoth
The people of Karachi call the Lyari district ‘the mother of Karachi’ because here lay the ancient origins of Pakistan’s biggest city of 18 million. Today thousands of tons of e-waste - computers and other consumer electronics - are shipped to the Karachi docks, then moved to Lyari where most is stripped and recycled in unsafe circumstances allowing hazardous chemicals, flame retardants, plastics and heavy metals such as cadmium, chromium, lead and mercury to leak into the environment.
The Lyari/Shershah district is heavily polluted because of the e-waste. The people working in this recycling industry, many of them children and teenagers work with little or no protection and are exposed to toxic substances. The amount of discarded electronic products around the world has grown exponentially around the world and according to UNEP, the UN programme on environmental issues; e-waste is the fastest growing part of municipal waste in the developed world. It grows three times as fast as normal waste in Europe. In Asia an estimated amount of 12 million tons of e-waste is being produced every year.
The decreasing cost of replacing computers, mobile phone and other electronic gadgets, and the speed with which technology becomes outdated, has resulted in more and more e-waste being disposed of. The average lifespan of computers in developed countries has now dropped from six years in 1997 to two years in 2005; mobile phones also get replaced every two years. The number of personal computers worldwide will increase to 1.3 billion by 2010, up from 575 million today, said Forrester Research, an independent technology research company.
In Karachi, a lot of the e-waste, including vast amounts of pvc-coated cables and wires are burned near the Lyari River that runs along the Shershah district. Dioxin and other toxins can thus pollute the soil and aquifers. Heavy metals and other substances also contaminate the river, its delta and the ecosystem of the Arabian Sea.
Everyday throughout the day and every night throughout the night, e-waste and other waste are burned in the Lyari riverbed and big fires are started right in the middle of residential areas, often raging out of control.
Pakistan’s Environmental Protection Agency is powerless to act. The import of electronics is allowed because they are cleared as second hand goods, but only a small percentage is used again in the same capacity. Most of the ever-growing mountain of e-waste is stripped and burned. The tens of thousands who work in this dirty recycling business have no other source of income.
Photographs portray the Lyari district and the e-waste workers, often very young, who are risking their health trying to make a living in what is literally the gutter of Pakistan.
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