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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.'"
It was an anime/manga in which a whole society lived on a planet that was a dump for another society's high tech trash. Enough of the junk worked or partially worked that they were able to make a fairly high tech society themselves; although it was a fairly lawless one. Living off of the trash of others has a psychological impact...
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
I've been amassing old computer junk in my closet for years. I'm almost to the point where I was going to pay to have them recycled. But damn, for all I know, I'm probably just paying for shipment to China!
I think there has to be an upcoming business opportunity in recycling this stuff, and doing it in an environmentally responsible manner. I'd almost be willing to start the ball rolling myself. Any resources out there for learning how to do it?
Apparently, I was wrong.
These kinds of things really tick me off. I've recycled numerous old systems, in the hopes that they either went to some good, or were safely broken down, to be used in other applications. Instead, they probably just got dumped in a landfill.
I guess I shouldn't be so surprised, these types of things always happen with recycling. Recycled papers sit in warehouses because companies don't frequently buy post-consumer stock. Glass & tires that were originally planned to be melded together to make a new, cheap pavement wind up sitting in their respective piles. Tires that were supposedly going to be used for recreating habitats for aquatic life are instead burned.
And now, all our old 286s are dumping mercury & lead into China. If my old Vendex Headstart 8086 is sitting over there, instead of being recycled, I'll be very, very upset.
Is there anything we can really do to ensure that our equipment doesn't wind up in some other country's landfill??
I keep having this picture of archeologists in thousands of years in the future going through all of this stuff, and trying to piece together an old PC. no tech manuals, etc.
Alot of their success would depend on the level of their own technology, of course.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
1. Practically everything in China is recycled. I've seen old folks / poor people rummage through trashbins with tongs looking for whatever is valuable for picking up some cash. This usually is cans or plastic soda bottles, which usually end up being turned into low-quality polyproplene or such.
2. While the cities I've been to in the last five years have considerably cleaned up their act, China still has an enormous problem with littering. Ever seen the commercials showing the roadside trash from the early 70's in America? That's China nowadays.
3. Many electronic components are desoldered and reused by small mom-and-pop outfits that want to get into business, and don't mind cheaper used components. When you've got lots of people who want to get ahead in life, they will use any resource at their disposal.
i would, and so would a lot of other people. they need to ship them to a stockyard, put them in catalogs and place them on the internet. that would catch, especially if all you have to pay for is shipping for the item you want to buy.. hell, put a 5 item or weight minimum on each order. now that's something alot of the younger generations would visit many times a day religiously just to see what's around--and they would actually be able to afford some things to tinker around with. imagine the amount of drivers and documentation that such an act would surface into the open source community. Allowing the new generation of soft and hard coders to work with some simpler devices would pay off for everyone in the long run. every great coder has to start somewhere..
I cannot believe that this comment is modded as insightful.
1. The people there are too poor that they have to make a little money off your toxic garbage, risking their lives probably without knowing it. Why are you still selling the stuff to them when you know it is going to kill them?
2. Well do you think they know the stuff is toxic or have the proper knowledge of how to dispose of the harzardous material? They are all lowly educated farmers or workers for fsck's sake. If I let a 3-year-old kid drink detergent or whatever, can I still say without guilt something like "Don't complain to someone else because you decide to crap there"?
3. Just because you commit murder in a foreign country where the government is too incompetent to charge you it doesn't mean you are doing something right.
If you fully know your old computer will end up killing some poor people in China or India, why don't you spend a little bit more, probably insignificant to your well being, to save them from being exploited? Or do you think a life in China is not worth your $30?