Global Electronic-Waste Recycling: Constructing a new form of resource extraction for an old industry

This dissertation focuses on the convergence of specialty metals production with global South e- waste recycling. My research, described in a series of three chapters in this dissertation, links two themes – the political economy of natural resources and the politics of representation – through the idea of sustainability. Sustainability represents economic goods such as efficiency, conservation of resources, and stability (Miller, 2013). In the case of e-waste, it has also come to represent solutions to e-waste problems that are driven by scientific authority, a new and improved identity for an old industry, and a gloss that masks neocolonial relations of extraction. Each of the three chapters traces aspects of these two themes and presents the different ways sustainability acts as a strategic representation for the political economy of end-of-life electronic goods and new waves of resource extraction./nThe political economy of natural resources is first explored through an examination of the varying forms-of-production and relations between sites and actors conducting work on discarded modern electronics. I trace the global environmental history of mining the underground for mineral wealth and link the transformations in this industry with the global shifts in manufacturing and production through the opening up of foreign direct investment and the loosening of international trade restrictions that took place toward the end of the twentieth century. Next, I examine the environmental history of Umicore from 1960 through 2000, and its transformation from the colonial economic powerhouse in the Belgian Congo to global sustainability leader for green production of rare and specialty metals, providing a postcolonial analysis of our current conditions. Though this story of industrial transformation traces a number of technological and logistical changes for an extractive giant, I argue that Umicore retains its long-standing relationship with the global South, now cloaked in a green neo-colonial garb through its involvement in international e-waste development projects. Lastly, I unpack the creation of The Best of Two Worlds, the model co-produced by Umicore and other elites, inIndia and China and trace how the calculated efficiencies and profitability of the so-called “developing country” recycling economies are taken up in international policy reports and conferences seeking to address environmental damages. The analysis reveals the false science and flawed assumptions built into the model. I argue that Northern corporate interests comprise the true problems the model is trying to solve. The model failed in the company’s initial pilots. I explore some of the reasons for this failure, finding causality in cultural conflicts and intractable economics between large, capital-rich Northern firms and small recyclers in the South./nThrough the process of exploring why, at first glance, strange actors were involved with strange science, I found a thriving global economy that was far more about competition and access to valuable resources than it was about either dumping or cleaning up wastes. Further and more surprisingly, I found that e-waste struggles proved to be the continuation of colonial traumas and re-enacted historical practices/patterns: Colonial and neocolonial forms of rule, revolutionary African independence, and massive expropriation of infrastructure. E-waste imagery and knowledge production still deploy tropes of helpless “informal” recyclers demanding the e-waste problem be solved using the Best Available Technology./nMy research highlights how discourses of green recycling and circular economies hide the extractive and capitalist underpinnings of this industrial change, producing inequalities amongst actors not equipped to engage in high-stakes knowledge-making or policy. This dissertations supports further inquiries into addressing environmental harms such as toxic releases from e- wastes that consider the need to retain higher-value materials, production, and economic opportunity in the global South. These lines of inquiry may produce conclusions counter to the interests of global North elites or private entities engaged in development partnerships, but I argue the goal of this work is not to ensure a steady stream of profit for a few elite firms, but to address wicked socio-environmental problems with the least harm to local communities.

Advisor: Morello-Frosch, Rachel