The chapter is based on case studies in Taiwan, India, Malaysia, and Thailand, as well as a field investigation in Costa Rica and a policy analysis of high tech regulation in the U.S. and California.

Excerpts: "Every study revealed significant environmental health and safety problems, including insufficient monitoring of worker health and workplace safety, inadequate waste management infrastructure, and severe watershed pollution."

"Many companies have made substantial efforts to reduce their environmental impacts. However, it is not clear that any companies have come to terms fully with either the sustainability or human rights challenges stemming from their global operations. Despite its clean and green image, the high tech industry is plagued by problems related to:

• Highly toxic and hazardous materials used in production and assembly and embodied in consumer products
• High intensity of water and energy use in manufacture and assembly of silicon chips and semiconductors
• Inadequate standards for working conditions, protection of worker health and safety, and protection of labor right
• Poor oversight of global supply chains

Why focus on high-tech?

Compared to smokestack industries like petroleum or steel, high tech is “clean,” at least in terms of reported air and water pollutants. Moreover, many industry jobs are highly paid and highly skilled, especially relative to other options in developing countries. Many high tech CEOs are socially progressive and support corporate philanthropy to improve community welfare…

Why, then, focus advocacy and policy attention on high tech? First, despite its clean and green image, the high tech industry struggles with major environmental and social problems. The most serious problem is the use of toxic materials. Embedded in the current production of silicon chips, semiconductors, and computers are highly toxic substances, which, even under the best current standards, can pose threats to worker and/or community health and safety. In the absence of adequate product stewardship and disassembly standards, high tech products end their useful lives leeching toxic wastes into landfills and rivers — even if they are exported to developing countries for recycling.

The high tech industry also has serious social, especially labor, issues to confront. The industry’s widespread reliance on mandatory overtime, subcontractors, and temporary, often immigrant, workers raises ethical questions about fair treatment and family values. A large gap between the highest and lowest paid workers suggests that the industry may be spawning not just a “digital divide” but an occupational and, in some cases, racial divide as well.

A second reason to focus on high tech is to gain more information about performance and risk. Compared to other industries, high tech companies have strong Environmental Health and Safety (HS) policies. Little is known, however, about whether and how companies actually comply with their EHS policies, especially in their overseas operations.

Moreover, despite the use of known carcinogens in chip production — arsenic, benzene, cadmium, lead — companies to date have refused to divulge internal data that would allow greater scientific understanding of risks to occupational and community health. In the past decade, workers have brought high profile suits against high tech companies such as National Semiconductor and IBM, charging that chemical exposure led to miscarriages, birth defects, and cancer. In the face of insufficient scientific evidence, one case was settled out of court. Others are pending…

Many of the social and environmental problems of high tech companies afflict both domestic and overseas operations. In developing countries, however, the problems are exacerbated by three factors:

1. lack of adequate environmental regulation and enforcement
2. insufficient waste management facilities and expertise
3. an absence of protection for civil and political rights that allow workers and communities to advocate for themselves…

In Taiwan, for example, local villagers have complained about severely polluted rivers and groundwater, including major sources of drinking water caused by toxic discharges traceable to the high tech industry. The high tech companies contract with licensed waste handlers to transfer the waste off-site, but these then subcontract with unlicensed haulers, who dump some of the waste into the local rivers.

In the Philippines and Costa Rica as well, the lack of appropriate hazardous waste disposal facilities means that companies must ship their wastes back to the country of origin, creating transport hazards and the risk of careless handling by hauling and disposal firms. In India there are only three licensed hazardous waste dumps in the entire country, and much solid waste containing heavy metals and other hazardous substances is simply landfilled. Despite the tightening of regulations in 2000, the government of India still has not produced guidelines for waste management in the IT sector…

In China, open burning of wires and other parts is common in recovering metals such as steel and copper. Dioxins and furans can be expected due to the presence of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants in the electronic refuse…

Taiwan: Toxic Legacy

This case study focused on the Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park (HSIP), where $60 billion over 17 years has been invested to develop the infrastructure for high tech production facilities. Unfortunately, investment did not include adequate environmental infrastructure such as waste management facilities with sufficient capacity for the amount and types of waste generated…

The lack of adequate environmental protection has created a severe and widespread problem of water and coastal pollution. Lacking adequate waste management infrastructure and regulatory oversight, the toxic and hazardous wastes of the HSIP were apparently — and secretly — dumped in the Kaoping and other rivers.

In July 2000, one of Taiwan’s largest waste handlers, the Shengli Chemical Company, was caught in the practice after a dumping incident that severely polluted the Kaoping and left the people of Hsinchu without water for two days. The incident was widely reported and set off alarm bells throughout Taiwan. For the first time, the public questioned whether the IT industry was in fact clean and what hidden costs they would have to pay for the fabulous wealth accumulated in the last twenty years.

The problem, however, continues. Local NGO environmentalists claim that 60,000 tons of toxic water is generated daily in the HSIP. However, the HSIP confirms that only 20,000 tons of wastewater is treated. Investigations by NGOs suspect that the discrepancy, 40,000 tons, is dumped into the water system and in neighbouring villages…

The issue of hazardous materials is a special case in India due to the large gray market and scavenging that occurs when computer and other equipment is discarded. In the absence of recycling facilities and regulations, people simply discard equipment in garbage dumps. Other people, the enterprising urban poor, scavenge for the equipment and recycle it by selling either parts or reassembled products in local street markets. As they pick apart motherboards and disk drives, the recyclers release into the environment and are themselves exposed to lead, cadmium, and other toxic heavy metals. This is an immediate environmental and human health problem in India and a portent for other developing nations that pursue an IT-led development strategy…

In our case studies, workers in overseas high tech plants remained largely ignorant about the chemicals in the workplace and their potential risks."