Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
"picked apart and strewn along rivers and fields."
What are they trying to do....grow more computers?
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
After all, it's just the wogs dying, right?
Best Slashdot Co
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?
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Last I heard from greenpeace about chemical corps just filling up a whole ship with waste barrels and letting it strand on an african shore. It sits there waiting to fall apart andspread it's deadly cargo into the oceans.
Eat more fish they say... contains no mad cow disease... ha !
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Have anyone seen those graveyards for ships where they are taking them apart? Looks like a scene for a post-nuclear-war movie.
"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.
This reminds me of a report a few years back that found that most paper being put into recycling bins actually wound up being stockpiled in warehouses because companies weren't buying enough post-consumer paper. Same thing was happening in Austria. It kinda made me a bit cynical about the whole environmental issue. (I still recycle most of the stuff I can, but I always get skeptical whenever a new 'study' comes out on the benefits of recycled materials.)
:-/
But I digress... so, in PA, we're not allowed to throw out computers. We have to take them to recycling centers... well, technically. I still think most people just toss the machines. For the reason that toxic metals will leech into the ground and pollute the water. What a shame that we're shipping all our crap to other countries to pollute.
Humorless sig goes here.
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. It actually says more about your lack of awarness than it does about any sort of industrial posture. Russia dumps subs off Japan and Korea. Britain dumps medical waste off the coast of Sri Lanka...Australia dumps scrap metal into the South polar seas...New York City dumps commercial waste into the Atlantic. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's new or newsworthy. Get outside and take a look for yourself. Visit India and the Balkans and the South Seas and Asia. Waste has a meaning you obviously missed during history class.
I think two points are worth noting - firstly, for better or worse, the source of the report and its tone are set firmly within the environmentalist camp.
Secondly - this problem is probably the tip of the iceberg, and is certainly a very real threat to the environment in the next few decades. I personally believe we should take significant action now to prevent the need for another Kyoto (where this would be a serious issue) ten years from now.
Apparently California is considering imposing fees on the purchase of computer hardware to cover the costs of recycling.
The question is, if I want to keep the hardware I buy in the closet forever when I'm through using it, do I still have to pay the fee?
appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars
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
CNN has a more detailed article regarding this. China, India and Pakistan are main destination for the rubblish.
The situation is quite frightening. Consequently, the groundwater (near Guiyu, China) is so polluted that drinking water has to be trucked in from a town 18 miles away, the report said.
These "high tech" waste is especially hazardous to these poor workers. Medical waste (eg used bandage) usually smells and look nasty, everyone know they are dirty. Villagers usually have no clue toxic heavy metal will leak to groundwater, burning the plastic will generate very toxic smoke... before too late.
Probably, it is now to add a "prepaid" waste recycling fee to new computers....
Thats where i sell all my old shit!
I understand someone puting the full text of an artical up when the source site is slow. But, this is from a BBC site, why can't people just read it on the original sources page?
Are you so sure that the title is warranted? Somehow I doubt that this effect is entirely unintended.
After all, speaking as the Ugly American that I am, it seems that the main point is to get the crap we don't want out of the country. Well, shit, mission accomplished there, huh?
What happens to it afterward is not our problem. And frankly, I live in an area once known for its steel foundries, and never known for environmental consciousness.
--saint
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??
And the point is ?
Yes I know this is bad for the enviroment, but the simple fact is its not like China is colony of the US and we are forcing th govt to accept the waste, THEY ARE BEING PAID !!!!!
If CHINA chooses NOT to give a shit about its citizens it on them, and THEY should have to answer for it.
This is NOT about the US, get it understand it and live with it.
Now, the people, well thats unfortunate, it really is, BUT IT THEIR GOVERMENTS(CHINA) FAULT !
Wide spread mass industrial pollution with NO regard to the enviroment is seen on both ends, the capatilist and the COMMUNIST side, the latter aswers to noone and it is thus a fair bit worse in general, no dont belive me ? Ask all the people in eastern europe what things were like during USSR rule.
Ok, so you want an alternative use ? Lets drop all this crap out of B52's on Iraq, and all the US enemies, a hell of a lot cheaper than smart bombs, could you imagine what damage a monitor would do falling form 30000 feet ?
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
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?
If what the Discovery channel is correct, dumping is a very incorrect term. An asian buyer is purchasing all of the steel for reuse. Purchasing scrap metal is hardly what I'd call dumping. Unless you want to consider that the seller is actually dumping on me when I buy recycled paper.
There are millions of tons of steel that would be much better served being melted down and put back into good use, than to sit in a landfill, left to rust.
[humor hat]
So I guess according to you when ever I buy something, the seller is actually dumping on me... yuck.
[/humor hat]
...before I read anything else, I expected to read about some mechowarrior / android / wireless WAN/ d.net cruncher / cybernetic exoskeleton, being created out of unused computer materials. That would've been the ultimate hack.
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"
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.
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.
What's worse about this case is we know that the Chinese government will not dispose of this responsibly, but instead leave the stuff to poison their own people. Yet we still keep sending it to them. Can there be any other explanation other than that we just don't care about those people? It does not make it any more moral when some American idiot like you (correctly) observes that their own government doesn't care about them either. Hell, let's sell S. Hussein some biowaste so he could poison those annoying rebels. Hell, once he hands us the check, it's out of our hands, right?
In Minnesota, we have strict laws about throwing out old computers too. In some places (Minneapolis), the laws are taken seriously. In other places (northern Minnesota), they aren't.
However, I was talking to someone who had a relative in the computer recycling business. If they recieved anything that had no resale value (and they frequently did), they'd just ship it to Wisconsin, which has lax landfill laws.
Much worse stuff goes on with European ships on the scrapping beaches in India and other places. Hundreds of people die just to take those things apart, something that would cost millions to do "by the book" in a western country.
So yes, Americans aren't the only shitheads regarding this.
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 any of you get/read the New York Times, they have an article on the same topic:
T OX I.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/25/technology/25
NYTimes registration yadda-yadda-yadda.
What is music when you despise all sound?
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.
As stated before here, we pay china and other nations to dispose of these Items.
Wrong! But thanks for playing...
Companies in China, India, etc. buy these items at auctions. They recycle some of the stuff.
Hello! This is Junis from South-Eastern China! I am writing this on a rusted PDP-11/34 with 8" disk drives and Linux I found in the river, which I hooked up to the Internet using barbed wire and a 300 bps modem I found under a chicken coop. I write to thank you, USA, for all the computers! It is really helping my country to progress in IT! I also love American culture like martial arts movies, anything to do with Star Wars, and rap! I believe "Temptation Island" and "Baywatch" will be number one shows in China soon!
Yours,
Junis
The US is bullish on Wasenaar, which is supposed to limit arms and dual-use technologies but is usually used to try to prevent the spread of encryption. A good resource for checking which treaties a country has signed (and ratified) would be the CIA World Factbook.
I can't be arsed remembering the link though.
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
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
that the US abides by?
Those which suit US interests at the time and those which were created by the corporate masters of the US government, maybe...
There's a lot of international traffic in garbage. For example, Kingston, Ontario has sent most of its garbage to landfills in Michigan (which is about 20 times further than New York State, but much more eager to receive it) for at least 5 years now. Toronto was set to do that too, but the Sept 11 events have made border crossing slower, so they're still keeping most of it locally.
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"
Vast amounts of used clothing and old US cars go to Mexico. Some of the clothes are re-used while others are recycled into industrial rags.
Damnear all the frame steel that goes into American buildings comes from the Far East. Where it originated as crushed cars shipped to China and Japan -- from America.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
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.
(A.P. News 25,237 CE)
Archeologists have made a great advance towards understanding the contents of fossilised "hard disks" with the discovery of what they are calling the "Pornsetta Stone"...
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Also reminds me of something that happened while I was visiting a client in Tokyo.... while riding the high-speed train to the convention center... he pointed to the land surrounding the convention center and said "this used to be ocean... how do you think we got this land?"... I said "I dunno"... He said "every year japaneese throw out old electronics and buy new electronics. We put electronics in bay and build convention center on top.".
Now... I never knew whether or not he was serious - I suspect he was... .but after reading the article - and pondering this... isn't that bad for their environment?
Let me know when you have kids, so I can give them my leftover smokes 'n beer.
/people/ of China (not the government), why are you so glib to furthur put them at a disadvantage? You're being just as discompassionate about the citizens of China as you claim the totalitarian government is. So why is your stand any more ethical and righteous than that of the Chinese Government?
I think the point is, if China is going to harm their (our) environment with this stuff, we should stop selling it to them.
Your 'buyer beware' argument only works up until that 'buyer' is someone you care about. Clearly, you don't care too much for (the government of, I hope) China, so your argument is likely biased to begin with, but you have to accept an ethical responsibility for providing access to things that certain societies are not fit or experienced enough to handle maturely. (Or lack the proper infrastructure to handle.)
Probably the funniest thing is, if you hate the government so much, and knowledge that its a totalitarian regime, and accept that the garbage is indeed hurting the
First you bash their government, saying the people don't deserve it, and then you shrug your shoulders and keep feeding the people of China your shit. Your disregard for Chinese citizens with respect to this issue is just as blatent (if on a smaller scale) as that of the Chinese Government according to you.
"Old man yells at systemd"
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.
I was talking to one guy that works for DRMO (a goverment agancy that sells old computers and such) He was telling me how they get 1-2 year old Sun servers and cover pot holes in roads with them. I could not sleep all night. They take these Suns that still work and have a good value and just grind them up to fill holes in roads. The reson they can't sell them (this is was the goverment want's you to belive) is that they held top secret information. Hmmm, hello? junk the hard drives but spare the other parts! Thats what they use to do but my guess is that it's "cost prohibitive" now.
This site is in Germany.
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
The companies that build these things should be made to set up facilities for getting rid of the products when they are no longer used. This would even apply to industries that produce things other than computers.
:-).
Think about it. GE should be the one to pay for getting rid of CFC's from the refrigerators that they manufacture. This would force them to either raise the price of what they sell, or find a better way to manufacture it (without CFC's for instance).
Computers are built with the knowledge that they will be obsolete in a few years, so it should come as no suprise that if they sell X number of machines in one year, that in 3-4 years that many machines will need to be recycled.
At the very least, a law like this would prevent AOL from producing millions of disks that get thrown into the garbage unopened, or from someone even proposing a throwaway product like DIVX (old DIVX, not new Divx
What would the anti-environmentalist camp's perspective on it be? That trees generate more waste circuit boards and plastics than disposed computers do? Or that discarded electronics make great fertilizer for trees?
First, the article does not say that the sovereign state of China buys it. Second, "China" is not a person. The analogy is just fine. You're paying some company in China to dump it in someones back yard.
With the amount of aid we send everywhere?
Nothing to be proud of here. The USA may be #1 in foreign aid in an absolute sense, but if you calculate it as a percentage of the GNP, it's not all that much. Look up the numbers if you don't believe me.
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
Try and get that one past the human subjects guidelines in America. Good luck! You might consider it ethical, but fortunately, the research community here does not.
But Dr. Spork, idiots like you (normally I don't flame, but I do believe in "tit for tat") feel that personal responsiblity extends only to things that you don't find too confining, or too difficult to do.
I think you've got that wrong. People like you want to create waste, and not take responsibility for its disposal. You also want to hold ordinary Chinese citizens responsible for the actions of companies that they can't control.
The government has come up with a solution, we are not responsible for all the worlds ills.
Dumping your shit in someone elses back yard is not a "solution". Your red herring about grain is just that.
As I stated earlier (something you failed to address) it isn't as if we are the ones spreading it on the countryside, we pay them money to dispose of the stuff. At that point (believe it or not) It's the responsibility of the ones taking the money to do the right thing by it.
Nonsense. If you pay the lowest bidder to dispose of your waste, and you know that they're cheap because they're dumping it in the river, you are responsible. It's like hiring mercenaries to drive people off your land, and claiming that it's the mercenaries responsibility to do it ethically.
That would be very flattering for the slashdot community. However, I think CNN has other things on their minds.
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
So yes, Americans aren't the only shitheads regarding this.
(This should be redundant) Of course not, it's all about money. It's cheaper to send it off somewhere than to dismantle and recycle in an environmentally responsible way. However, this is a typical case of short-term thinking. In the long run it's going to be more costly than attacking the problem now.
Ironically, I can remember that in the '70s and '80s (before the fall of the Berlin wall) Western European countries were shipping chemical waste to Eastern Germany. Cheaper than processing it in a responsible way. The East Germans then just dumped the stuff in the countryside. Of course, now that Germany is united, they have to clean it up after all...
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
If you read a little Dickens or brush up on your American West gold rush history you might come off your high horse. Just 100 years ago streams flowed purple with coal tars and green with copper cynide compounds here in the first world. It was dirty, but we are rich today from such efforts. Rich enough to clean up. Try telling a man who might die of starvation or common disseases next month that his current activities might give him cancer in thirty years. He will laugh, before he eats you.
All we can do is shout that it's wrong and point out propper methods of disposal. Hopefully, the world will hear and work on other things like sanitary sewerage, potable drinking water and other basic public health issues.
Would your Basel Convention prevent the transfer of new working computers? What other great things should the US ratify for you?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
The cost of disposing of any electronic item should be determined, then charged to the distributor in the country in question by the government, which then sets up modern disposal facilities where anyone can get rid of their old gear.
This is a perfect example of socialization of costs- and it's the reason we have governments.
You might argue, saying that this will make electronics more expensive- but this cost is *already being paid*, but by Chinese villagers, as this article notes. Tanstaafl, folks. The question is, do you want to face up and take responsibility?
Programs like this would also encourage more ecologically friendly designs- as well as delivering the death blow to the ecologically nasty CRT in favor of the less vile (although by no means clean) flat panel.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
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
> I'm skeptical. I don't think that circuit boards are so particularly dangerous.
.... no wonder they stopped teaching history in the USA. I think its the only place in the world where you can justify a shirking of responsibily by saying, "I don't think thats true."
.. ). The impedus should be on the US and Canada, et al to understand that just because another country /wants/ something, and claims it /understands/ something .. doesn't mean that they do, in which case the more ethical action is to discourage access. your point regarding your kids (which I agree, is the best way to go about things) is simply not possible on the scale of countries and political and economic systems. Education is near impossible between cultures, because the axioms of social behaviour and value systems are so far apart that neither side and truely and effectively judge whether the other culture truely can handle something forgeign resposibily. In this case, the ethical behaviour is to be conservative in one's analysis of another culture, and for the benifit of everyone, err on the side of conservation, safety and non-action. (As an aside, if the US absolutely can't sufficiently handle what they're consuming domestically, I think thats a larger problem what will go unrecognized so long as other parts of the world try to turn a buck on their cast off garbage.)
Sigh
Get over it, it's true; thats not up for debate, and frankly, I'm upset I wasted my time contending your limited indivual-centric world view in light of staggering social costs to the power of 'economic goodness'.
I don't know if you remember or not, but (relatively) modern economies were formalized and implemented in order to improve the quality of life. If you really think a tee-totalled land and serious health concerns deserve a back seat to a good business, you're defeating the original purpose of money.
Your ideology, successful by virtue on being made on the backs of others, has been sold successfully (and its certainly easier to sell in countries with little personal freedom such as China) to these people, who are all too happy to sell out their local neighbours for the almighty buck. You forget that the same mechanisms and resources that allowed the USA and Canada to raise their standard of living depended on many things that other nations and geographies do not have. In other words, making a buck in many other corners of the globe does more to destabilize the standard of living (nevermind increasing the wealth gap among citizens) and destroy the environment than would occurr if some countries (including mine) respected that their dirty ideologies and computer parts affect other societies and economies in far more adverse fashions than they do domestically. I mean, do you really think Africa woke up one morning to discover that the vfast majority of their drinking water was suddenly undrinkable, through some perverse act of god? No, it was people going, "Well, they're taking their shit, so they'll only have themselves to blame in the end." (Ironoically, NA probably likes it this way, as it keeps these areas under our economic thumb under the ongoing empty promise of helping them 'develop' out of their [sic] problems.) Cultures and political setups are like kids, at least when it comes to new toys (technologies, ideologies, etc). Other countries see everything on TV (and other media outlets) that works for America (remember that many other societies' only opportunity to judge and evaluate what living in the US is like is through episodes of Friends and Baywatch
I might sound a tad isolationist, but lets just say that there care cases where most of the above is a non-issue. But there are cases where it IS an issue.
Then again, I suspect you'll just say, "I'm skeptical." Nuthin' like self-serving axioms.
"Old man yells at systemd"
By that logic we should intervene in every political dispute in the world since, eventually, it may lead to a regional conflict and then to a world war--and then we're involved. So we automatically have a right to intervene in anyone's affairs.
THAT'S the attitude that causes so many people in foreign countries to hate Americans. It has nothing to do with the environment, it has everything to do with sticking our nose where it doesn't belong.
That said, an environmental problem in China is going to kill off China and/or cause them to fix the problem out of necessity long before it affects anyone downwind (which is 8000 miles of Pacific Ocean).
The amount of time for toxic waste dumped in sea to spread itself uniformly in water and terra firma is not decades but years.
Can you cite references for that?
Also, I'd like some concrete data regarding what in my computer is so toxic as to need to treat it as a superfund site.
I'd be totally in agreement if China was dumping nuclear waste into the ocean. But dumping computers into rivers? I'm sorry, I don't see the threat. There are a million things in this world much more dangerous than used computers; perhaps we should address those million things first rather than harping on consumerism in the United States.
For anything longer you need to think harder.
How about getting rid of communist governments so everyone can enjoy to the benefits of capitalism? That way the number of poor people will decrease, as well people exploited into doing this kind of thing.
Heck, while we're intervening in world environment and world politcs, why don't we just topple every third-world government and replace it with something like what we have at home?
China and others want our junk for the raw materials, not because they're looking for 300 baud modems that still work.
First and foremost: Gold or silver connectors and contacts. What do you think all those shiny yellowish pins on the underside of a processor are made of? They're not copper; it would tarnish quickly and your system would stop working. In many cases, the older the hardware, the more gold that was used due to physically larger components. Steel used in cases and racks may also be valuable enough to salvage.
Why isn't this done in the US? It is, but it's not as profitable because labor costs are higher, not to mention overall costs of living. Basically, you're talking about hiring people to take old parts and chisel away the gold with a hammer all day. The rest is discarded, hence the waste strewn along rivers. Not a pleasant situation regardless.
So the question is whether we can do a better job of *truly* recycling old parts. I believe we can. It just requires some innovation. The biggest problem I see is solder removal. It's entirely impractical to do by hand. As any electronics hobbyist knows, old circuit boards are a goldmine of perfectly good parts. What if there was a way to quickly heat and vacuum off all the solder on a board? Then, violently shake the board to cause all the components to fall off into a bin, after which they'd be mechanically sorted, packaged, and sold as surplus. Waste solder is nearly pure lead which can be melted and recycled at little cost. The remaining plastic circuit boards can be scraped of copper traces, then melted down. This would work pretty well for really old boards. New ones with mostly surface mounted components would much much trickier. On the other hand, there's much less material to waste to begin with!
..how about a surcharge at the time of purchase to pay for disposal? Businesses could make a living disposing of these things according to some guidelines. They'd get paid per computer, like those who collect bottles. Just a thought.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Not to swift on economics, are we now?
Hello, requiring disassembly of everything would NOT be a boon to the economy. It would increase costs, tend to have inflationary effects, and cost jobs.
You can argue whether or not these are acceptable prices to pay to implement this environmnetal policy, but do not be mislead into thinking it would help the economy. It would increase costs and would make the world, as a whole, less productive since the businesses disassembling the stuff would be doing that instead of something PRODUCTIVE.
Take another whirl through Econ 101 and then we'll talk.
No, it's not a red herring. The fact is that your viewpoint that it's acceptable is not a widely held one. I do address the "personal responsibility" point.
Wel, that's bull, and the chinese citizens should be taking their actions against the companies that are dumping the stuff - i.e. their own people.
Yes, to the extent that they have the means to do so. However, you shouldn't be paying people to dump it in their back yards.
Yes, your reply is nonsense, and you failed to address the rest of my points which clarified it.
No, it isn't nonsense at all. The mercenaries analogy is perfectly analogous, IMO. If you pay a waste disposal (nudge nudge, wink wink) company to dump your trash in someones back yard, you are responsible.
Environmentalists have been saying this for decades to make us feel bad to the point of doing what they say.
While I'm not against recycling, this argument doesn't hold. Despite how destructive environmentalists think humans are, there are no signs of any natural resource being depleted. Even petroleum--which was supposed to be used up by 2000--suddenly has decades more to go.
It also assumes that our great grandchildren are going to being using the same raw materials that we do. They very well may have a need for other raw materials at that point.
Besides, China is currently taking care of the need to recycle these parts by removing the copper and gold from the computers. It's the environmentalists that apparently do want that to continue.
We can do better than to push the cost (of disassembly) to our great grandchildren's grandchildren.
Yeah, let's push it to China. Or, rather, let's let China buy our old PCs, let them disassemble them and make some bucks in the process. Then we aren't wasting these valuable resources and everyone makes a buck in the process.
They fought with tough and nail to oppose pollution-control devices in cars and claimed that these devices would drive up costs and hurt the economy.
And they did. It's common sense. As always, the question is not whether regulations and taxes hurts the economy and raises costs--the question is whether society believes the benefits by the regulation and tax outweight teh cost.
But Ford, GM and Chrysler all were right. Any and every regulation and tax increases costs and hurts the economy and should be carefully considered.