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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.'"
I think I'm experiencing what we Europeans call an Ugly American moment.
It'll pass.
It is only thought provoking if you are like most americans that have never travelled outside the US to see these kinds of things first hand.
Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's new or newsworthy.
You come across as rather self-aggrandizing as well as patronizing.
First, if you know this is occurring all along and think it's a problem, I would imagine that you would be happy to see this get publicity in order that perhaps some corrective action might be taken. Instead you take the opportunity to point out that you personally knew about the "disposal of computer" problem beforehand, so everyone should have already been aware of it.
Anything that a large part of the population doesn't already know may well be considered newsworthy. Perhaps you should have said that it is sad that this *is* newsworthy.
Secondly, a visit to a particular less-developed countries does not automatically confer knowledge of various environmental disasters in all other countries. Your post really had the tone of "all eco-disasters in third world countries are alike". Each problem may have a separate cause and sure as anything has a different solution. Certainly, different disasters are worth different stories. I'd hate to think a single "Western goods cause echo-disaster" story is all one needs to know on the entire subject.
Lastly, the Americans may be famous for their insularity, but I'd bet money that the BBC was mostly addressing this to Europeans that were unaware of the problem. I know from personal experience that they could certainly have addressed this particular issue to Canadians.