Monitour: Tracking global routes of electronic waste

•Unreported exports of CRT monitors can be remotely tracked with location sensors.•6 of 17 monitors were tracked being smuggled from California to China.•69 of 205 WEEE items were tracked from the US to 11 different countries.•Smartphones modified to last 3+ months may work as cheap location trackers.•Tracking solves some knowledge gaps in global WEEE flows/routes, but with risks. Many nations seek to control or prevent the inflow of waste electronic and electrical equipment, but such flows are difficult to track due to undocumented, often illegal global trade in e-waste. We apply wireless GPS location trackers to this problem, detecting potential cases of non-compliant recycling operations in the United States as well as the global trajectories of exported e-waste. By planting hidden trackers inside discarded computer monitors and printers, we tracked dozens of devices being sent overseas to various ports in Asia, flows likely unreported in official trade data. We discuss how location tracking enables new ways to monitor, regulate, and enforce rules on the international movement of hazardous electronic waste materials, and the limitations of such methods.