1. Let’s Talk About E-Waste: How Can LIS Pedagogy Engage This Difficult Problem?
A Presentation for the 2015 Symposium on LIS Education
Champaign, IL
April 11, 2015
Karin Hodgin Jones
Jimi Jones

2. What is E-waste?

3. Computer Monitors

4. Motherboards and Circuit Boards

5. Drives, Cables and Disks

6. “Smart” devices and all of the devices in “The Internet of Things”

7. What’s in e-waste? Gold Beryllium Aluminum Cadmium Silver
Palladium
Cobalt
Tin
Plastics
Beryllium
Cadmium
Chromium Hexavalent
Lead
Nickel
Mercury
Copper

8. Why is E-waste Important?
The U.S. EPA and the United Nations have identified e-waste as the fastest growing waste stream of the 21st century.
There are few regulations in wealthy nations governing the stewardship of e- waste and few to none in poorer nations.
EPA and other agencies responsible for monitoring e-waste have no methodology for quantifying or establishing a volumetric assessment of current e- waste awaiting recycling.
In the past 15 years, only 25 U.S. states have passed laws governing e-waste disposal and recycling, yet facilities to manage e-waste domestically are completely inadequate.
It will take time to build adequate capacity to manage the existing waste awaiting disposal and longer to match the trend of new device production.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (November 2012). Statistics on the Management of Used and End-of-Life Electronics. Retrieved from
Schwarzer, S., De Bono, Giuliani, Kluser, S., Peduzzi, P. (January 2005). E-waste, the hidden side of IT equipments manufacturing and use. Retrieved from

9. Where Does E-waste Go?
Maintaining regulatory compliance with environmental and toxic waste handling policies in wealthier nations is quite costly.
E-waste recycling may be prohibitively expensive or infeasible if regulatory restrictions leave companies unable to meet safety and regulatory requirements without financial losses.
Materials are exported to countries that have less strict or no regulatory restrictions or safety protocols for e-waste handling.
The result is unsafe workplace conditions, harmful pollutant release, few protocols for monitoring worker health and frequent use of child labor.
Schwarzer, S., De Bono, Giuliani, Kluser, S., Peduzzi, P. (January 2005). E-waste, the hidden side of IT equipments manufacturing and use. Retrieved from
United States International Trade Commission. (2013). Used Electronic Products: An Examination of U.S. Exports. Retrieved from
Goutier, Nele. (August 2014). E-waste in Ghana: where death is the price of living another day. The Ecologist. Retrieved from

10. Where Does E-waste Go?
According to the US International Trade Commission, $1.45 Billion worth of Used Electronic Products (UEP) were exported to other nations in 2011.
43% of 324,000 tons of UEPs exported were non-functional devices or e-waste.
In programs designed to export computer technologies for use in developing nations, less than 1% of materials exported were designated as non-functional at the point of exportation.
However, between 12% and 30% of devices were determined to be non-functional when they arrived at international reuse and recycling sites.
United States International Trade Commission. (2013). Used Electronic Products: An Examination of U.S. Exports. Retrieved from

11. Where U.S. E-waste Goes
United States International Trade Commission. (2013). Used Electronic Products: An Examination of U.S. Exports. Retrieved from

12. E-waste Dump in India
E-waste Dump in India Source:

13. E-waste Handler Burning Plastic off of Metals
Source:

14. And Let’s Not Forget the Exploitation On the Front End…
It’s worth noting that the artifacts of the digital era - hard drives, monitors and the like - are embedded in networks of exploitation not just in their afterlives but in their births.
Here we see electronics assemblers in Shenzhen, China. Workers in electronics manufacture endure long hours for very little pay.
Electronics Assemblers at Foxconn’s Factory in Shenzhen, China.
Source:

15. Digitization, E-waste and LIS
Digital Objects have a materiality – they must live somewhere
As memory institutions create digital objects, the potential for waste increases
Digital audiovisual materials have large file sizes
“Smart-sized digitization” of analog-sourced moving image and sound materials can minimize waste
Let’s talk about our world, the world of libraries, archives and museums.
As we have moved into the digital era, memory institutions require a great deal of high-tech infrastructure.
One thing to impress upon library/archives students and practitioners is the physicality of digital objects - they have to live somewhere.
Even in the “cloud,” digital objects have a materiality.
As we create digital objects, we have the opportunity to minimize our storage needs by choosing sustainable but efficient - size-wise - formats
Nowhere is this more necessary than in the AV realm where file sizes can be enormous.

16. Digitization is Very Tech-Intensive
Digitization is very technologically-intensive.
Here we see some gear, both modern and vintage, needed for digitizing videotape.
Photo by Jimi Jones

17. HD Video File Formats
Video is the most storage-space-intensive medium to digitize.
At the moment there is no universally-agreed-upon target format for video digitization.
The good news is this makes it so we have some lattitude about what we choose.
Thanks to Karen Cariani at WGBH for this slide

18. A Digital Object LessonVS
Common wisdom in the audiovisual preservation realm is to digitize at the highest level of quality possible.
This has obvious merit: the historical record deserves the highest possible quality for the objects we preserve and make accessible.
However, high quality moving image digitization eats up storage space very quickly
If we are concerned about our contribution to electronic waste, we should consider alternatives to the “best possible.”
For non-broadcast, VHS-sourced video
From the Digital Rebellion Video Space Calculator:

19. Video Formats and “Smart-sized Digitization” at WGBH
This is the video digitization target format list for WGBH in Boston.
This serves as a case in point:
The folks at WGBH do not see a need to digitize everything to the “Cadillac” level of quality.
For example, they are digitizing their low-quality consumer formats like VHS to lower - but still adequate - levels of quality.
In this case they’re using the DV codec, which is commensurate in quality to the source analog VHS format
This kind of “smart-sized digitization” saves server space and has the added benefit of being immediately accessible with minimal - or no - transcoding
Thanks to Karen Cariani at WGBH for this slide

20. Challenges to Smart-sized Digitization
Common wisdom is to go for the gold in digitization
Engineers will balk
Formats/Encodings sustainability
Balancing long-term sustainability against near-term (and long- term) exploitation and environmental damage
Broadcast video has more information than just sound and picture
So this kind of smart-sizing makes sense, right?
Unfortunately not all would agree
A lot of audiovisual engineers will undoubtedly balk when they see this, as they are trained to always go for the highest fidelity
Unfortunately, the highest fidelity (in the case of VHS, uncompressed video) means you write empty data that doesn’t buy you anything, quality-wise
There is also the issue of formats sustainability. With something like uncompressed this isn’t a worry but with DV or some other compressed codec, there could be issues of playback in the long-term
Nonetheless we have to ask the question: do we go for long-term data sustainability at the risk of contributing to this waste problem?
The last bullet is very important - broadcast analog video signals contain more information than just picture and sound - using a codec like DV can discard that information.
Therefore we have to acknowledge that this isn’t a “one size fits all” approach

21. E-Waste Conversations at GSLIS
Waste policy survey
LIS 502 (Libraries, Information and Society) component
LIS 590UMI (Understanding Multimedia Information) component
2015 AMIA Proposal
2015 ASIS&T Proposal
Here at GSLIS, we’re approaching the issue of e-waste in our pedagogy and research.
Two of our doctoral students are working on a survey that will help them determine how common it is for memory institutions to have documented waste-related policies
Two upcoming classes will have e-waste related discussions:
one of them is our LIS 502 survey course, Libraries and Society, that all masters students have to take
The second, Understanding Multimedia Information, is a hands-on audiovisual digitization and transcoding course that I will be teaching next spring. I plan to talk about “smart-sized digitization” in that class
And Karin and I are both collaborating with other scholars and practitioners to propose expanded versions of our discussion today to the 2015 Association of Moving Image Archivists conference and the Association for Information Science and Technology conference.

22. Thank You! Questions? Comments? Suggestions?
Karin Hodgin Jones
Jimi Jones

23. References
United States International Trade Commission. (2013). Used Electronic Products: An Examination of U.S. Exports. Retrieved from
Goutier, Nele. (August 2014). E-waste in Ghana: where death is the price of living another day. The Ecologist. Retrieved fromhttp://
Prakash, Siddarth., Manhart, Andreas, et. al. (2010). Informal e-waste recycling sector in Ghana: An indepth socio-economic study. Retrieved from
Oteng-Ababio, Martin. (2012). When Necessity Begets Ingenuity: E-Waste Scavenging as a Livelihood Strategy in Accra, Ghana. African Studies Quarterly, 13 (1-2). Retrieved from
Rode, Sanjay. (2012). E-WASTE MANAGEMENT IN MUMBAI METROPOLITAN REGION: CONSTRAINTS AND OPPORTUNITIES. Theoretical and Empirical Researches in Urban Management, 7 (2). Retrieved from
Sakipour, Sara. (2011). Evaluation of Opportunities in E-waste Processing Facilities in Pune, India. Master’s Thesis.Lahti University of Applied Sciences. Retrieved from
Basu, Soma. (2013). Wasted e-waste. Science and Environnment Online Down to Earth. Retrieved from waste
Trading Economics. (2015). India Unemployment Rate 1983 – Retrieved from

24. Images
E-waste Dump in India Source: content/uploads/sites/8/2010/05/ewaste-dump.jpg
E-waste Handler Burning Plastic off of Metals source: Source:
Electronics Assemblers in Foxconn Factory in Shenzhen, China: conditions/