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Unintended Results From U.S. Hardware Dumps In Asia
Izeickl writes: "The BBC has a thought provoking story about old hardware being dumped in parts of Asia. The report 'details a group of villages in south-eastern China where computers from America are picked apart and strewn along rivers and fields.' the article also states 'The report suggested that as much as 80% of the America's electronic waste collected to be recycled is shipped out of the country.'"
"Everybody knows this is going on, but they are just embarrassed and don't really know what to do about it,"
If we stopped shipping this crap out to other countries, and it started piling up here uncontrollably, I think we'd be forced to find a way to deal with it...it really makes me sick that we use other countries as dumping grounds.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
Just an example that we need a global recycling system for hardware components. Few countries have implemented laws that demand hardware producers to take back their products and recycle them as much as possible. Such a thing can't be handled by single nations IMHO - or governments at all.
The hardware industry should come together and create binding recycling standards. It is sad that there is still a large share of computer companies ignoring environmental concerns.
Line 9: Argument of type SIGNATURE expected.
I know around these parts (Eastern MA), I just can't get rid of the stuff. It piles up in closets, clutters up counters, sits in heaps in the corners. Old monitors my eyes can no longer tolerate, strange boards with bus interfaces I can no longer use, old hardrives too small to bother with. Its illegal to put in the trash, and even the "hasardous waste" pickup wont take monitors anymore. As more and more "average" people upgrade old computers, the problem will only get worse. Already I see "dumping" of old eletronics at the goodwill drop sites in the middle of the nights. I don't know what they do with the stuff, since it probably can't easily be sold or scrapped. Electronic waste will be a serious problem in the near future, and not just for our poorer friends in China.
}#q NO CARRIER
Toxic garbage has to be dealt and everybody knows that the cheapest solution always comes first... The transfer of hazardous waste is restricted by a 1989 treaty known as the Basel Convention, but the United States has not ratified it. why am I not suprised??
Migx
How is my problem if people in other countries, far, far away, don't care as much about "preserving their scenic countryside" as they do about eating?
When other people are doing things which we know are harmful to them and their environment we have a responsibility to try and help deter this act. However, so does their government. Their government elected (or not) by their people has the primary responsibility in looking after its own people. Our responsibilities are secondary. We (the US) are not God, we are not the world's baby sitter, we are not ultimately responsible for every other governments ineptitude and disregard for its own people. With that in mind I think a small recycling tax pre-paid for every computer part should be charged. In exchange a convenient and local outlet for recycling should be provided. I don't wanna have to pay $30 to recycle my 286. Thats bullshit. I'll just chunk it in the garbage first if thats the case. I know, I'm a pompus jackass for doing so, but I bet nine times outta ten thats what you do too.. so :P
Anyway, I guess thats the problem in the United States. Everyone is saying recycle, recycle, but no one (except maybe Cali or Oregon) gives you convenient resources to actually do it. If I wanna recycle my plastic I have to drive to some distanct Wal-Mart with a trunk full of trash to do so.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
The title of this article is Misleading. As stated before here, we pay china and other nations to dispose of these Items. Once we write the check, it's out of our control.
Look at it this way, You take your used car to a Junkyard to dispose of it. It's not worth anything so you pay 5 bucks to get rid of it. Now , the junkyard is supposed to pull the battery, drain the fluids, and strip most of the car down before smashing it, and sending it to the smelters to be melted. But instead, they just roll the car into a resevior and all that oil, battery acid, transmission fluid pollutes the water.
Now, you had a good faith arrangement that the Junkman was to dispose of the car properly, but instead, he didn't - Are you liable for his actions?
IANAL, but once you showed the bill of sale, I seriously doubt that the person who got the car to the Junkyard is.
It's the same issue here. However, the title of the article makes it look like the United States is loading up b-52's with this stuff , and dropping it across the country over there.
I get rather annoyed when people take cheap shots at the United States like this. It doesn't do anything to foster anything but bad will.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Seriously, if the material in computers were in short supply, then there would be profit in recycling computers and companies would be out trying to make a buck doing it. Same thing for paper and any other recycling.
Because this recycling business is driven by fear of a shortage instead of a real shortage, there is not money to be made in it so stuff like this happens.
Most of China is still very poor, and schools there (if any) have unimaginable budgets. In some remote areas, a kid would be fortunate to have a textbook. I wonder why can't US just give China all its old hardwares in *usable* form instead of smashing them. It really doesn't matter how old the machines are, some people will be glad to have it. It would be mutually beneficial in the end.
dead Simple : to get rid of the ship. They use ships that are way over their consumption date and are floating death coffins. There's no hance the ship would pass quality testing, so they're better of anonymizing it and dumping it somewhere. Kinda hard to sprew a whole ship into a chinese river, so bunk it into an african shore.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
1. We are not forcing this old hardware on anyone. If it's ending up in China or India it's because the people there think they can make some money off of it.
2. Even if they CAN make some money off of it, it's not our fault they throw the exploited "recycled" hardware in rivers. Come on. Crap in your refrigerator and it's going to have some negative affects on your food. Don't complain to someone else because you decided to crap there.
3. If the Chinese government sees this as a problem they should not let the stuff be imported. If it's being imported illegally the Chinese government should have no problem prosecuting (i.e., executing) the offending party.
Do I want my old computer ending up in a river? No. But don't blame me if it does, *I* didn't throw it in a river or asked anyone to burn plastic off its wires...
There are too many other responsible parties here that are DIRECTLY responsible to come after me with some tax or $30 increase on PC sales to try to resolve the problem. You want to solve the problem? Have China ban the practice. If China doesn't see it as a problem then why the hell should we?
Come on, I'm sick of this environmental psycho-babble.
If the US can export hazardous waste to these countries, how is that any different from Colombia sending drugs to the US?
It may sound like twisted logic at first, but think about it.
Country A produces a product that it ships to country B. This product is used by the poor in country B to make some money, but in the process they end up hurting their own communities. Not only that, this product spreads, causing harm in more affluent communities living further away.
Replace "A" with Colombia and "product" with drugs and you have the current drug war.
Or, replace "A" with US, "product" with toxic waste, and you have the current toxic waste dumping scenario.
Think about it.
Instead of charging someone X number of dollars for the cost of recycling, they should charge X*2 number of dollars and then PAY each person who brings in a computer X number of dollars.
That way people would have an incentive to do the right thing instead of just dumping it someplace and the program would pay for itself due to inflation and the fact that not EVERYONE is going to recycle, even if it pays.
As for the inflation angle, it works like this. If someone pays you X number of dollars and Y number of years later you pay them back the same exact ammount of money, well then you're actually paying them X/(inflation_rate^Y) in real dollars. This is why you almost NEVER see interest free loans, the lenders lose money on them. In the case of computers, the lifespan is short enough that the devaluation of the money from inflation would not be so great as to reduce it to nothing.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
The old 360 was crated up, and sent to Altanta GA, from there it was to put aboard a ship (Savannah?) and sent to Hong Kong, where I was told families bid on parts of the system. The families would take home their share and, like a cottage industry, strip it down to it the various recycleable parts. (I was told the 360 had a significant amount of gold in it.) From there the valuable amount would be sold, no mention of what became of the remainder. This would appear to be where it went, tossed into a river, rather than the families paying someone else to cart away what they couldn't sell.
So rather than blaming the US, in general, you might want to start by considering the people who buy these things and toss the remnants, or the middlemen who make a living carting it there to auction off to them. Taiwan, as I've heard, has a serious problem with metals in their water, from industrial production and probably lack of a well organised, legal and ethical means of disposal. Even dumping old capacitors in the sea could return PVP's and other compounds in fish and shellfish, which many of these communities depend upon heavily.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This gets modded up? This is a tired, stupid argument.
If it wasn't for the Europeans (aided by the middle east and asia), Americans, ugly or otherwise would be hunting buffalo (and I'd be spearing kangaroos), so no internet for you without the eurotrash.
Reading a few history books suggests that one or two Russians died in WW2, but other then them I'm sure that the USA did it all. Of course, if it was announced that America would stand against Hitler as soon as he started, it is quite possible that a great deal fewer people would have died (and almost certainly no Americans...). However there was no real rush, as no-one was dropping bombs on their homes, nor driving tanks through their streets.
That the terrible suffering and infinite loss of those involved should be sullied by some prat who is quite happy to slur his own and another country's government, but gets upset when someone else offers up their opinion, is sickening, and shows a total lack of understanding, tolerance and maturity, I guess that is what scores on /. though...
I was going to make an on topic comment here, but
is considerable and I'm delighted to have a chance to share my own experiences on the topic in a way that might clarify some of the issues brought up by the article.
Although we often think of motherboards as the thing that holds the CPU, in fact monitors also have motherboards and even your power supply has a little motherboard in it.
One thing these motherboards or printed circuit boards all have in common is that they generally have all kinds of goodies like capacitors and transistors on one side and a bunch of solder holding them on from the back side.
By heating the back side of a printed circuit board with the component side facing down, it is quite possible and practical to remove many valuable and toxic components without damaging them because of the delightful fact that heat tends to rise rather than sink, so by heating the back of the board, you can save all those great little toys. This activity in itself can be quite entertaining. I like to call it "el bueno pinata" because the parts fall to the ground with a delightful clatter like the candy from a pinata with severed entrails.
I must confess that when I started playing "el bueno pinata" as a youngster, I did, in fact, use a propane torch which generated generous amounts of rather toxic smelling smoke. As this is both a cheap and effective technique for getting started in "el bueno pinata," it is probably what the report was referring to.
But let's not just jump to the conclusion that this means it's wrong to try and recycle components that have previously been soldered to a PCB. It just indicates that these people are hesitant about going about it the right way because they haven't seen enough profits yet. But don't worry. There's plenty of room for profits in the recycled electronics market and as the profits grow, the recycling techniques will become more sophisticated as mine have.
I no longer use a propane torch when I play "el bueno pinata" because there were simply too many complaints about the smell and the smoke etc. So, I tried a few different techniques. I tried using a clothes iron, but I found that it wasn't hot enough. Eventually I rigged up a custom device very similar to an iron, but with a greater heat output and I now use that to slowly and smokelessly desolder old TVs, monitors and power supplies. These are generally where the fun is at for my interests so far. But even if you don't want to get into tesla coils and all that nerd stuff, you can at least blow up the capacitors for fun and give the transistors to someone who enjoys such toys.
Once you clean the components off a circuit board, there's not much left and putting it in a landfill doesn't seem to be such a crime although I'm sure they could be further recycled for the metal sandwiched within the board. Either way, the mass is greatly reduced and many valuable parts that are usually for the most part in working condition can be used as is.
In the case of a monitor, all you're left with is a bunch of plastic and the tube itself which certainly should be recycled professionally as it has lots of valuable goodies within. Stripping it to that point though, is certainly worth doing if you care about the recycling and are interested in learning a bit about electronics.
As for power supplies, after you strip out the transformers, capacitors, transistors there's nothing left.
In fact, motherboards may be the most useless pieces of the whole PC for the average PC enthusiast while ironically being the only piece that most people care to deal with because of the warnings on all the fun stuff about "Dangerous Whoo Hoo Inside" It's a pity that the industry assumes everyone should stay and idiot instead of trying to educate the public about how they could safely repurpose some of those parts.
But that's what's cool about Slashdot. It makes up for where the PC industry left to its own devices fumbles the play.
Anyway, couldn't rant like this without at least one reference and that would have to be Sam's Repair FAQs. If you've never checked them out, then I highly recommend them.
For those of you with old hardware laying around, especially burnt our monitors and power supplies, I invite you, moreover I grant you permission to play "el bueno pinata"
That's why we create international treaties for these problems, that every countries ratify (except the US when the obligation would cost money to US companies).
I'm in the computer (and other haz waste) recycling industry in Wisconsin. MN may or may not have the most strict landfill regulation in the Great Lakes region - but the problem in Wisconsin is not lax regulation, it's lax *enforcement* of existing regulation. If the DNR or EPA were to suddenly start enforcing RCRA and CERCLA strictly, a great many landfills (not just in WI) would probably be Superfund sites, IMHO. My *guess* is that (most?) regulatory agencies lack the staffing to enforce all regulation, so they need to work a priorities #1-#2-etc., while other problems exist unchecked, or "under" enforced. That imbalance between MN and WI enforcement, unfortunately, makes it a convenient option for people in MN to send their computers across state lines to avoid the cost of properly handling computers.
However, I would disagree with your statement about lax laws (or enforcement) in WI, because "lax" needs to be considered as a relative term. While MN's enforcement may be *somewhat* more strict than WI, I would say that MN, MI, and WI have some of the most strict landfill and hazardous waste regulation -and enforcement- in the country. There are other hotbeds of decent enforcement in the country - CA, FL, the northeast, but this region is definitely up there in terms of enforcement.
I would also take a guess that while your acquaintance's relative's statement may be accurate now and in the past, it's a matter of time (eg, happening now) before WI catches up with MN in enforcement. Computer waste has been a hot issue for maybe 2-3 years now, which is a short period of time in regulatory bureaucracy terms, and I do know that there are arms of the DNR that are - and have been - moving to deal with the problem. It's just that movement in areas like this are a relatively slow process, unfortunately.
So rather than blaming the US, in general, you might want to start by considering the people who buy these things and toss the remnants, or the middlemen who make a living carting it there to auction off to them.
... hu hom, no one in the US took care to prevent those people dieing.
... I think again I will get a flaimbaite for this :-/ at least it does not substract form my little karma.
So?
Of course you said: in general.
Its not the US in general which is to blame.
So we have electronic waste in china. Asbest waste in India. A raising level of sea water all over the world (climate/CO2), threatening Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia etc.
So in 15 years some people, yellow this time, not with long beards and turbans, will go somewhere where they suspect to be the cause, the root of all evil. There they will drop a bomb or something similar.
And then we will read again: why do they hate us?
Well, because their children died in the polution of heavy metals, their parents died by cancer caused by asbest or burning plastics, their family or friends drunk in a Taifun.
But
Regards,
angel'o'spehre
Hm
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Not so very many years ago (~10), I was traveling around a country usually derided as "Third World."
One day, in a major city, I was walking near the river, and came across a small road where dozens of older men were squatting with old circuit boards and soldering irons. They would unsolder resisters, capacitors, etc, and place them into bins according to the kind of component.
A few streets further down, I came across another group of old men. These guys were pulling apart what looked like damaged automobile transmissions. One set of guys unscrewed, decoupled, and removed pieces, one set of guys cleaned the grease off of them, one set of guys sorted the parts (gears, synchros, etc) according to their size and level of damage.
It really got me thinking. Here in the States, you don't even think of repairing broken consumer electronic stuff -- it's cheaper to get a new one, and it'll probably have more features. There, the labor costs are virtually nil in comparison to the cost of the materials.
It made me think that there was a valuable process at work. Our garbage was recycled, and it actually benefits someone. Now, it is clear that this is an artifact of an unfair, unjust system. Obviously, fixing the overall system would be better. But within the context of the way things currently are, it's a reasonably good thing.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Interesting read. I am from India (now in the US).I did not know about the Alang shipbreaking yard from back home. It's really sad to see this kind of exploitation. Instead of blaming the west and the developed world for this mess totally, we must really look at the connivance of the "brown" man as well. This was possible only because the government of India, Indian businesses (who own the yards) "co-operated" and of course these guys are all Indians. All this is because of the lure of "greenbacks" offered by the developed nations. This is a case of man exploiting man. Forget about "neo-colonization" and other big words, it's the worst case of exploitation one comes across in which people of the same race,ethnicity are involved, in other words not "white" expoiting "brown" but "brown" exploiting "brown" and preventing their own kind from succeeding(in any sphere of life). This phenomenon is observed mostly in India, which is the reason why Indians dont prosper at home, when they go abroad they do ! In the end who really cares about those 40,000 people at the ship breaking yard ? No one really.