Sustainable Solutions: Addressing E-Waste Pollution and Ensuring Food Security | InformativeBD

Douglas Marowa, from the different institute of the  India. wrote a research article about, Sustainable Solutions: Addressing E-Waste Pollution and Ensuring Food Security. entitled, Need for sustainable solution: Environment, rural agriculture and food security affected by electronic waste pollution of streams and Sakubva River. This research paper published by the  International Journal of Agronomy and Agricultural Research (IJAAR). an open access scholarly research journal on Agronomy, under the affiliation of the International Network For Natural Sciences | INNSpub. an open access multidisciplinary research journal publisher.

Abstract

Electronic waste is currently the largest growing waste stream in the world. It is hazardous, complex and expensive to treat in an environmentally sound manner. Unsustainable electronic waste management of has led to pollution of rivers, which has negatively affected the environment, agriculture activities and food security. The research sought to investigate the waste management of electronic waste, its impact on environment, agriculture and food security in the rural communities. To recommend sustainable waste management strategy for the country and reduce the adverse effects on environment and agriculture to enhance food security. Zimbabwe has become an electronic waste hazard as waste pile up at backyard and in houses. A research survey was conducted in Mutare urban and peri-urban rural communities involving a sample of 1250 participants revealed that 29% of waste was electronic effluent, 29% of waste in backyard, 22% of waste in storerooms. The peri-urban rural communities are heavily affected downstream as the Sakubva River and its streams are polluted, either poisoned or drying up. Methods of disposal were landfilling, burning, backyard and storeroom storage. Food security as a state where the availability, accessibility, utilization and stability of food are ensured and food production is enough to cover the food demand of the people has been heavily affected as water for gardening and field crop irrigation is polluted. It was revealed that in some areas farmers have totally stopped gardening as the source of water has dried up due to both soil and water pollution.

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Introduction

The United Nations (2008) defines food security as a state where the availability, accessibility, utilization and stability of food are ensured and food production is enough to cover the food demand of the people. FAO (2010) reviewed that despite the fact that more than enough food was being produced per capita to adequately feed the global population, about 925 million people remained food insecure in 2010. Abalansa et al. (2021) indicated that electronic waste is a rapidly developing environmental problem particularly for the most developed countries that has negatively affected the sustainable agriculture practices for food security. Electronic waste are various forms of electric and electronic equipment that have ceased to be of value to their users or no longer satisfy their original purpose (Gill, 2021). The electronic waste products have exhausted their utility value through either redundancy, replacement, or breakage and this include both “white goods” such as refrigerators, washing machines, and microwaves and “brown goods” such as televisions, radios, computers, and cell phones (Gill, 2021). Electronic waste is considered the "fastest-growing waste stream in the world” (WEF, 2019) with 44.7 million tonnes generated in 2016- equivalent to 4500 Eiffel towers Balde et al. (2017). In 2018, an estimated 50 million tonnes of electronic waste was reported, thus the name ‘tsunami of electronic waste’ given by the United Nations (WEF, 2019). Its value is at least $62.5 billion annually (WEF, 2019).

The world currently has a variety of environmental problems resulting from manufacturing activities, including plastic pollution and electronic waste. Plastic pollution can be traced back to the beginning of the commercial production of plastics in the 1950s (Barnes et al., 2009), but more recently, electronic waste is considered an emerging environmental problem (Saldana-Duran et al., 2020). The sources of the majority of these can be traced to major developed countries, although there is an increasing contribution from rapidly developing countries like China and India. The Basel Convention was formulated to ensure that environmental problems are not exported across boundaries (Choksi, 2001; Ogunseitan, 2013; Kummer, 1992). Developed countries have state-of-the-art facilities, finances and technology to handle waste (Forti et al., 2020). However, much of the electronic waste is not recycled but exported to developing countries (Illes and Geeraerts, 2016), which are already struggling with economic problems such as poverty. Many factors contribute to this surge in electronic waste. These include the short lifecycle of equipment, low recycling (Rabani and Thakur, 2020), and the continuous upgrading of electronic equipment (Wang et al., 2019) as affluent societies demand the latest technology. Electronic waste has been described as one of most difficult classes of waste to manage due to a constant change in its features and specificities (Borthakur and Singh, 2020). Recently, Zimbabwe has also been become an electronic waste hazard as electronic equipment are piling up very fast in company offices and in houses. Electronic scrap components, such as central processing units, contain potentially harmful materials such as lead, cadmium, beryllium, or brominated flame-retardants. Recycling and disposal of electronic waste may involve significant risk to health of workers and their communities (Sakar, 2016). According to the Basel Convention (1989) on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal of 1989, Art. 2(1), "'Wastes' are substance or objects, which are disposed of or are intended to be disposed of or are required to be disposed of by the provisions of national law" (Basel Convention, 1989). Under the Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC, Art. 3(1), the European Union defines waste as "an object the holder discards, intends to discard or is required to discard."(EPC, 2008).

In 2000, Zimbabwe moved a gear up to introduce use of high electronic technology mainly computers. The country received several donations of digital electronic equipment including computers, printers and digital instruments. However, as the old type writers, calculators and till machines and banking machine were replaced with the new electronic equipment, waste management became a challenge. Electronic waste was created as the old electronic products were discarded along the years, as it was believed that they had attained end of their useful life. The rapid expansion of technology and the consumption driven society results in the creation of a very large amount of electronic waste in the back yard, storerooms and in the spare rooms at homes. There are several pieces of legislation in place pertaining to litter and waste management. Electronic waste management in Zimbabwe is guided by the EMA, Chapter 20:27. Section 70 (1) of the EMA Act which stipulates that ‘No person shall discharge or dispose any waste in a manner that causes environmental pollution or ill health to any person’ (EMA, 2002). Thus, it follows that according to the EMA Act, any person whose activities generate waste is mandated to use measures to minimise the waste through treatment, reclamation and recycling, among others. Mihaela (2014) revealed that there is an interdependence, between sustainable agriculture practice concepts and food security. The downstream communities in the peri urban of Muatre require water for agricultural activities, which has been heavily affected by pollution upstream, hence, food security is also heavily affected downstream. Hamid, (2019) indicated that the main outcome of sustainable agriculture practices is food security.

Nevertheless, about half of the global population is affected by food insecurity and malnutrition, a symptom of the dysfunctions of the current food system (Hamid, 2019) as the land, soil, water and air are polluted by waste. Therefore, since Zimbabwe moved a gear up to introduce use of high electronic technology mainly computers. The improper management and disposal of the electronic waste from the old electronic products along the years as resulted into pollution of the dumping sites, rivers and streams. The pollution has heavily affected the agriculture activities and the communities downstream is now food insecure. The research sought to investigate the waste management of electronic waste, the impact of the electronic pollution on agriculture and food security in the study area. This was done to recommend sustainable waste management strategy for the country and reduce the effects of pollution on environment and agriculture in order to enhance food security.

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