[Itenv] Environmentalism for the Net 2.0

[Soenke Zehle]

Just a review, with a specific audience in mind, not a contribution to 
the research literature, but I am trying to figure out how to encourage 
the incorporation of these kinds of concerns into media studies teaching 
etc., as I find that interest among those who continue to celebrate the 
'zero-cost' reproduction made possible by the digital commons etc etc. 
are only so interested in these developments; suggestions welcome,

Soenke Zehle

<http://www.metamute.org/en/Environmentalism-for-Net-2.0>

Environmentalism for the Net 2.0
mute (21 sept 2006)
By Soenke Zehle

Happy to describe media cultures in ecological terms, net users may be 
unaware of the heavy ecological cost of communications networks. But can 
environmental justice and labour movements learn a trick or two from net 
culture? Soenke Zehle reviews two recent books, High Tech Trash: Digital 
Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health and Challenging the Chip: Labor 
Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry

The electronics industry, one of the largest manufacturing sectors of 
the global economy, is increasingly characterised by network-based 
models of industrial organisation. Following the corporate vision of 
systemic outsourcing, the industry has been a key driver in the general 
shift from vertically-integrated, multi-national corporations to 'global 
flagship networks' that integrate dispersed supply, knowledge, and 
customer bases. The complexity of global production networks and their 
shifting supply chains is not unique to the electronics industry. Yet 
compared to the wave of no-sweat activism across the garment industry, 
electronics manufacturing has seen comparatively few campaigns based on 
the principle of holding brand companies accountable for the conduct and 
compliance of their contractors. Two new books, one by an environmental 
journalist and one by a group of activists and researchers, might change 
that. They survey both the impact the electronics industry has already 
had on communities and workers in the old and new centres of electronics 
production, and the campaigns for economic and environmental justice 
that are attempting to transform the way this industry operates.

High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health by 
Elizabeth Grossmann is the most recent attempt to turn the dreadful 
stories of high-tech pollution, not unheard of but perhaps too scattered 
across research reports and academic anthologies to reach a general 
audience, into a captivating narrative. Grossmann includes chapters on 
raw materials, the environmental and human health impacts of electronics 
manufacturing, e-waste exports and recycling, and a conclusion that 
calls for a new land ethic.

Since Grossmann is tyring to expand our sense of what it means to 
consider the economic and environmental impact of this industry, she 
begins with a sobering account of mining to stress how fundamentally new 
and old economies are intertwined. Describing the role each raw material 
plays in electronics manufacturing, she moves from her visit to a 
gigantic open-pit copper mine in the US to a discussion of the 
international trade in Coltan mined in the war-torn Democratic Republic 
of Congo, covering gold, zinc, and a host of other materials along the 
way. The chapter on high-tech manufacturing explains the chemical- and 
water-intensive production of chips etched out of silicon wafers and 
details the controversies that arise between scientists and 
manufacturing associations when it comes to conducting life-cycle 
analyses to measure the ecological impact of these very chips. The 
human-health chapter explores the legacy of pollution in electronics 
manufacturing communities across the US, recounts some of the uphill 
battles fought by workers exposed to chemicals in so-called 'clean 
rooms' of semiconductor fabrication, and discusses the rise of 
grassroots organisations like the Santa Clara Center for Occupational 
Safety and Health (SCCOSH) and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition 
(SVTC), now among the most important international clearinghouses in 
this area of economic and environmental justice. The chapter on flame 
retardants is perhaps the most difficult read, but it also provides a 
sobering reminder of how difficult it is to remove a single chemical 
compound from the manufacturing process or even just limit its use in 
response to new evidence regarding its toxicity.

The second half of the book surveys the implications of a growing 
e-waste stream so toxic that established disposal and recycling systems 
are ill-equipped to handle it, and focuses on the politics of recycling 
and the ongoing illegal export of electronic waste to Africa and Asia. 
Despite international agreements limiting the trade in hazardous wastes, 
a large amount of e-waste still ends up in dumps across the globe, a 
practice documented by environmental organisations like the Basel Action 
Network or Greenpeace International. The chapter on the politics of 
recycling includes a discussion of how the continued use of prison 
labour – electronics recycling being the fastest growing business of the 
US Federal Prison Industries (UNICOR) – effectively prevents the 
consolidation of a competitive local recycling industry in  the US. 
Because Grossmann wants US state and/or federal governments to adopt 
EU-style legislation to regulate the production and disposal of 
electronics, she also discusses in some detail EU directives on Waste 
Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and the Restriction of the 
Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic 
Equipment (RoHS) currently being implemented across Europe. While WEEE 
and RoHS allow for numerous exemptions and have failed to meet the 
expectations of activists, the directives are nevertheless considered 
landmark legislation that has influenced similar efforts in Japan and 
China.[1]

Trying to bring all of this together is not easy, so Grossmann concludes 
by calling for a new 'land ethic for the digital age' to convince her 
readers to rethink their collective commitment to seeking out 
convenience, speed, and the next new thing. With its emphasis on US 
debates and initiatives (the appendix includes a short how-to-recycle 
guide) and its self-positioning in the canon of key US environmentalist 
texts (Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and Aldo Leopold's A Sand County 
Almanac), the book may be less relevant to readers outside the US. Which 
is why, even though Grossmann seems skeptical about the possible impact 
of quasi-academic anthologies, there is one that I would like to promote 
here as a companion volume. It's called Challenging the Chip: Labor 
Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry and 
is edited by veteran e-activist Ted Smith (of the Silicon Valley Toxics 
Coalition), David Sonnenfeld and David Naguib Pellow, both seasoned 
analysts of environmental justice issues.[2]

Grossman wrote her book because she couldn't find a non-academic title 
dealing with the environmental implications of globalised electronics 
manufacturing and disposal.[3] But there is a brand of activist research 
texts that are neither general audience nor conventionally academic, and 
this is one of them. Challenging the Chip introduces the transformation 
processes already taking place across this industry, not only in greater 
detail than Grossmann, but also from the perspectives of the activists 
and researchers involved, with a corresponding emphasis on a sharing of 
experiences and strategies. In 25 chapters organised into sections on 
the state of the global electronics industry, on labour rights and 
environmental justice, and on e-waste and extended producer 
responsibility, the authors want to 'provide a vision of what a 
sustainable electronics industry can look like', linking environmental 
justice, the precautionary principle, and extended producer 
responsibility in a 'triad of sustainability'. And improvements 
notwithstanding, it becomes apparent that the electronics industry has 
yet to live up to the 'electronics sustainability commitment', a pledge 
demanding that '[e]ach new generation of technical improvements in 
electronic products should include parallel and proportional 
improvements in environmental, health and safety, as well as social 
justice attributes' - as our electronic gadgets become faster, their 
eco-social footprints should also become smaller.

The section on the global electronics industry opens with a discussion 
of 'networks of mass production in the new economy' by Boy Luethje, a 
sociologist and analyst of contract manufacturing as well as social 
movement unionism. Luethje concludes his detailed survey of how the 
contemporary structure of the electronics industry is becoming both more 
centralised and more fragmented at the same time by suggesting that the 
backbone for greater ecological and social control of the industry can 
only be provided by viable workers' movements in the centres of 
electronics production. Joseph LaDou, Director of the International 
Center for Occupational Medicine, summarises recent medical research on 
environmental and occupational health across the electronics industry, 
noting that, largely as a result of industry resistance, the definitive 
study on cancer and reproductive hazards in the semiconductor industry 
has yet to be conducted. This is all the more important as many of the 
workers in electronics assembly are young women. Anibel Ferus-Comelo has 
contributed research on their experiences and of the violation of their 
basic worker's rights. Other chapters in the first section offer 
national studies of the electronics industries in China (Apo Leong and 
Sanjiv Pandita), Thailand (Tira Foran and David A. Sonnenfeld), India 
(Sanjiv Pandita), and Central and Eastern Europe (Andrew Watterson).

The section on environmental justice and labour rights affirms the need 
to address the much lamented separation of these fields of struggle, and 
introduces the network approaches of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition 
(Leslie Byster and Ted Smith) and the Santa Clara Center for 
Occupational Health and Safety (Amanda Hawes and David N. Pellow) that 
have had some success in bringing community, environmental, and worker 
organisations together. In an attempt to broaden the historical horizons 
of contemporary organising campaigns, David N. Pellow and Amelia Simpson 
give an account of the 'foremothers' of contemporary electronics 
activists – the immigrant cannery workers in the Bay Area. A series of 
case studies introduce similar efforts from across the globe, including 
Scotland (James McCourt), Mexico (Connie García and Amelia Simpson, 
Raquel E. Partida Rocha), and Taiwan (Shenglin Chan, Hua-Mei Chiu, and 
Wen-Ling Tu, Yu-Ling Ku). The section concludes with 'Unionizing 
Electronics: The Need for New Strategies' by Robert Steiert, Director of 
the Electronics Sector at the International Metalworkers' Federation 
(IMF). Steiert urges unions to intensify cooperation with NGOs and 
international agencies sympathetic to their agenda, and explores the use 
of International Framework Agreements (IFAs) to establish core labour 
standards that create an environment in which workers may organise 
without fear of reprisal.

The section on e-waste and extended producer responsibility begins with 
an overview of the electronics production life cycle (Leslie Byster and 
Ted Smith), followed by a survey of high-tech pollution in Japan 
(Fumikazu Yoshida), an account of the export of international e-waste 
(Jim Puckett), and of informal e-waste processing in Delhi (Ravi Agarwal 
and Kishore Wankhade). Several chapters directly address the emerging 
framework of extended producer responsivility (EPR), including overviews 
of EPR-activism in the US (Chad Raphael and Ted Smith) and of the 
international impact of new EU regulation (Ken Geiser and Joel Tickner), 
and a case study that assesses the extent to which EPR legislation has 
already transformed the industry in Sweden and Japan (Naoko Tojo). The 
final chapter discusses the Computer TakeBack Campaign, which 
successfully held Dell responsible for the conduct of its recyclers 
(David Wood and Robin Schneider).

What is perhaps important to readers already familiar with some of the 
most visible non-governmental players in this area, is the introduction 
of a large number of Asian organisations active in this field, including 
the Asia Monitor Resource Centre,, China Labour Watch, Toxics Link, and 
the Taiwanese Environmental Action Network, as well as smaller 
environmental justice groups in the US like the South-West Organizing 
Project, the South-West Network for Environmental and Economic Justice, 
and the People Organized in Defense of Earth and Her Resources.

Environmental justice groups have often been criticised for their 
so-called 'NIMBY' (not in my back yard) attitude, a localism seemingly 
unconcerned with what happens when polluters leave their community to 
set up shop elsewhere. Yet these organisations are well networked, and 
often both more flexible and more effective in reaching out across 
borders than established environmental groups or labour unions only 
slowly coming to terms with network models of organisation. These 
activists have also intervened in EU policy fora on behalf of new 
directives so adamantly opposed by US industry associations, and their 
network models include the International Campaign for Responsible 
Technology initiated by the SVTC and the European Work Hazards Network, 
a key area of organisation as occupational health and safety has been 
one of the areas in which the labour/environmentalism conflict, often 
assumed to discourage cross-sectoral mobilisation, has played much less 
of a role.

These two titles are not simply about the electronics industries, but 
about the widening scope of economic and environmental justice and 
creative grassroots responses to the global spread of the Silicon Valley 
experience. Supported by visions of technological transcendence, the 
electronics industry has effectively distracted public attention from 
the environmental and health implications of its products. Yet driven by 
grassroots organisations like SCCOSH the SVTC, it was Silicon Valley 
where the mythology of electronics manufacturing as a clean industry was 
first unmade. Sharing these histories, and they way they have resonated 
in centers of electronics manufacturing across the globe, can contribute 
to the a transformation of the way the electronics industry operates.

While different in their approach, these books are also attempts to 
frame and integrate a host of seemingly separate issues, including the 
impact of free trade agreements on disclosure and right-to-know 
legislation, questions of how to support the organisation of migrant 
workers, the need to pursue scientific research which could facilitate 
workers' claims against their employers and drive better regulation, the 
role certification schemes can play in facilitating local action, the 
need to exchanda data, experiences, and strategies across movement 
networks, the impact of international trade agreements in limiting these 
instruments (e.g. when environmental purchasing agreements turn from 
community empowerment into violation of free trade) etc. And whether 
it's Grossmann's travelogue or the effort of Ted Smith and his 
colleagues to move beyond a news-from-the-grassroots narrative to 
consider alternative frameworks like ecological economics,  both 
illustrate that simply sharing stories about what is going on in a 
globalised electronics industry will not result in broadening the 
dynamic of economic and environmental justice efforts beyond the modest 
number of activists that are directly involved in these campaigns. While 
the amount of technical detail makes these books less of a page turner 
than their authors may have hoped, it also illustrates that the kind of 
narrative best suited to map this dynamic and galvanise corresponding 
activist efforts is far from obvious.

Almost a decade ago, James Boyle called for a 'politics of the public 
domain' and suggested reinventing 'the commons' as a shared point of 
reference to bring about a convergence of info-political initiatives 
comparable to the way the novel notion of 'the environment' had 
succeeded in consolidating ecopolitical efforts in the 1960s.[4] Since 
then, the politics around the digital commons have arguably become the 
most vibrant and visible dynamic of net.cultural mobilisation. Perhaps 
the time has come to revisit the metaphor of an 'environmentalism for 
the net' to talk not only about multiple forms of resistance to an ever 
expanding intellectual property regime, but quite literally of the 
ecopolitical implications of the very infrastructures that facilitate 
and sustain the net.cultural dynamic of collaborative creation. Such an 
environmentalism, articulated conceptually and organisationally in the 
challenging context of electronics manufacturing's 'global flagship 
networks', could significantly broaden existing efforts by labour unions 
and NGOs to develop a broader agenda of economic and environmental 
justice. If nothing else, it could expand the number of narratives 
available to explore these concerns, stress their interdependence, and 
link them to existing info-political initiatives.

Such an approach would also call for an engagement with some of the ways 
in which the conceptual idioms of network culture may limit such 
encounters, to re-examine their reach as perspectives on social 
transformation, and encourage linkages with other, complementary idioms. 
It is surprising, for example, that references to the 'open media 
ecologies' sustained by new forms of commons based peer-production have 
remained largely separate from a new politics of economic and 
environmental justice responding to the global spread of the Silicon 
Valley experience. There are good reasons for that, perhaps, among them 
the attempt by commons theorists to reappropriate an idiom tainted by 
its association with the 'tragedy of the commons' that was long 
considered inevitable, until researchers reasserted the viability of the 
commons as an effective system of resource management.[5] The 
affirmation of the 'immateriality' of the digital, anti-rival commons 
may come at the price, however, of also separating it from the toxic 
materiality of the resource dynamic that makes it possible in the first 
place. By extension, maybe we should not only question Cisco's politics 
whenever they work with repressive regimes to control internet traffic, 
but also when their contract manufacturers refuse to respect basic 
worker's rights or simply pull out of a community without taking 
responsibility for cleaning up after themselves. Or take F/OSS, which 
can do much to delay the impact of the rising wave of e-waste by 
promoting reuse and slowing down the substitution of one generation of 
computers with the next. But in the end, a PC produced in what is no 
more than a high-tech sweatshop is not changed fundamentally by 
installing a non-proprietary operating system. One could probably write 
a whole manifesto that spelled out possible encounters, alas, the times 
of manifestoes are over – networks don't operate like that.
One simple way to develop alternative narratives is to return to a 
canonical text like Boyle's, suggesting that this time we take its 
injunction to develop an 'environmentalism for the net' literally. The 
embrace of an 'environmentalism', or more broadly, political ecology as 
a possible integrative perspective, does not mean that this reduces the 
array of issues at stake to a mere politics of nature, neither is it an 
attempt to elicit cheers for the corporatist rituals of environmental or 
worker organisation as-we-know-it. Quite the contrary, many of the 
organisations already active in this area would welcome an infusion of 
tech-savvy net.cultural types, both in terms of support and novel ideas 
on how to sustain networked forms of organisation and a democratisation 
of the production of scientific authority. Getting involved in debates 
over whether or not the 1000+ substances used in electronics 
manufacturing, many of them suspected to be toxic but protected by trade 
secrets, should be regulated differently, for example, is not just a 
matter of occupational health and safety, or NGO-driven policy making, 
but implies a promotion of grassroots science. We celebrated such a 
democratisation when HIV/AIDS activist engaged in, and it lies at the 
root of some of the most radical strands of contemporary environmental 
justice. Why not do it again? Most importantly, the two books discussed 
here should be read not only from the individualist perspective of a 
radicalized consumerism, but also from within the horizon of these 
emergent networks that are struggling to find organisational forms most 
appropriate to the agenda and structure of such an environmentalism for 
the net. Such an approach would do more than just enlarge their audience 
- it would build a movement. So whichever way, let's figure out what 
such a new environmentalism of the net could look like. We need it.

PS: The Dutch organisation somo.nl is currently building a European 
network in this area, German efforts are coordinated by WEED and its 
pcglobal.org project. Drop a note if you want to get involved.

[1]  More on WEEE and RoHS at 
<http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/weee_index.htm [1]>. Also see the 
Eco-Design Directive (under development) at 
<http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/eco_design/index_en.htm [2]>, as well as 
REACH <http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/reach/reach_intro.htm

[2]  David Naguib Pellow, The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental 
Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech Global Economy, New York 
University Press 2003.

[3]  Sarah Rich, „High Tech Trash: An Interview with Elizabeth 
Grossman,“ World Changing (28 June 2006),
<http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004610.html> [4]

[4]  James Boyle, „A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism 
For the Net?“, (1997), <http://www.law.duke.edu/boylesite/intprop.htm>

[5]  Digital Library of the Commons (DLC) <http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/

Elizabeth Grossmann, High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, 
and Human Health, Washington et al: Island Press, 2006. 334 PP.

Ted Smith, David A. Sonnenfeld, and David Naguib Pellow, eds., 
Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in the 
Global Electronics Industry, Temple University Press 2006. 357 PP.

Source URL:
http://www.metamute.org/en/Environmentalism-for-Net-2.0

Links:
[1] http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/weee_index.htm
[2] http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/eco_design/index_en.htm
[3] http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/reach/reach_intro.htm
[4] http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004610.html
[5] http://www.law.duke.edu/boylesite/intprop.htm
[6] http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/