It’s estimated more than 1 million tons of e-waste is produced each year in China with little or no regulation on how to dispose of the toxic materials. One small southeastern Chinese town, Guiyu, is reported to be the center of e-waste disposal. There, according to an Associated Press story, migrant workers sit outside squalid homes, smashing picture tubes by hand to get glass and electronic parts, a practice that releases as much as 6.5 pounds of lead dust. Others cook computer motherboards over gas burners to release gold and burn insulation from copper wires.
While China makes it’s own contribution, Greenpeace China in Beijing says most of the e-waste comes from outside China, although the country is catching up with its own waste, and little or nothing is being done to clean up the process. Greenpeace toxic campaigner Jamie Choi is quoted as saying some 10 million mobile phones, 5 million washing machines, 5 million television sets, and the same number in personal computers and refrigerators all end up on the toxic dump.
Of course, it’s the poor person who pays the price for reclaiming gold, copper and other valuable metals. They eke out a limited income and face incredible health risks in an economy that offers little or no health benefits.
How does tons of toxic waste find its way to China’s dumps? Easy – it’s cheaper to ship it to that country, as well as other third world countries than to deal with it within our own heavily regulated shores. Now we’re talking about 20 to 50 million tons of globally produced electronic waste, with about 70 percent being shipped to poor nations around the world. American manufacturers are allowed to send the waste abroad because Congress has yet to ratify the Basel Convention, an international treaty designed to reduce the movement of hazardous waste between nations. The United States, Haiti and Afghanistan have signed the Convention but have not yet ratified it. No surprise here, considering this administration’s absolute lack of attention to environmental issues, focusing instead on an illegal war.
Back to China’s poor peasants who are risking their lives by releasing and reclaiming chemicals such as mercury, cobalt, barium, fluorine and, of course, the various metals. The report says the towns ground water supply is badly polluted, so much so that drinking water has to be trucked into the community. The entire area is, according to the article, one cesspool of electronic waste.
Guiyu isn’t the only community caught up in the recycling business, but they can’t compete with the growing tons of waste entering the country every day. What isn’t reclaimed is dumped into holes in the ground, with little or no regulation.
Mother earth and the poor will always pay the price for man’s greed, but I keep in mind the old saying, “what goes around comes around”. The poor may not be able to discipline us, but nature will, and quite probably has already begun the process.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
Max Lindberg
My home state is Illinois, and my hometown a little railroad/farming community named Galesburg.We lived on a small farm during my high school years and I became very aware of nature and it's wonders. I loved the out of doors, working with animals, plowing fields and harvesting crops. Those were very good years.After a stint in the Army during the Korean war my broadcasting career took off at the local radio station, a 250 watt "teapot" as it was called in those days. My first job was as an engineer, then the ham came out and I became an announcer/newsman, graduating after several years to a larger market and a stint as a TV journalist/photographer. Cold, wet weather led me to the southwest where I've lived for most of the last 40 years, with a couple of years out to have fun working as a private investigator in San Francisco, and a few years working in Las Vegas hotels and casinos. In all, its been a real ride.After retiring a few years back I became fascinated with the efforts being made to find alternative energy sources. I've watched our environment deteriorate during my lifetime, and now it's my chance to join the chorus of intelligent and caring individuals making a difference one day at a time.
One Response to China’s Toxic E-Waste Problem Growing
Click on a tab to select how you'd like to leave your comment
100 % Eco Friendly recycling
In this world we have become as humans consumers. We consume every thing.
The problem arises when we forget that what we consume, then throw away, not all of our waste gets properly disposed of.
Not seen, not thought of right?
When our electrical items fail we just throw them away not thinking of where they go.
Here is how you can insure that when you discard your items, your items do not land up in a land fill, or over seas just to pollute a more poverty stricken area:
Make sure that your recycler only uses a complete Eco friendly down stream for the materials being recycled.
This means that when you discard a TV or old computer it only goes to processes that will be completely Eco and human friendly.
Recycling should not be at the cost of our environment or the cost of human rights and safety.
We as a company could make hundreds more on these materials we collect for free, if we just turn our heads and say, not seen not thought of.
We feel that if we can prove that recycling can be done in the cleanest safest way possible so that our environment, and the people who live in it, are not injured in the process, we might just show that recycling can be a culture not a cost.
If we as recyclers do not take this philosophy, then we our selves will pose an environmental risk instead of a solution.
Some times a little less profit can still benefit everyone in the process.
Recycle please, but do it completely Eco friendly.
Besides that………….profit will not matter after a while…….we will end up polluting our selves out of a planet in the long run if we do not start practicing this soon.
Thank you
Mike Dolbow
CEO / Green Planet Solutions Inc.
http://www.atotalgps.com