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China Bans U.S. Electronic Scrap
ReverseC writes "Think twice before you throw that those computer parts in the garbage. Do you really know where it's going? The Guardian reports China has banned US's electronic junk." We did a previous story about the U.S. dumping electronic scrap in China.
With new modern recycling methods we can remove almost all the re-useable stuff out of computers, so what 'US junk' is china preventing from entering the country.
I mean if they were trying to block old 486's from coming in, why don't they let them in and build a Beowulf parallel tasking computer that would rival that of NASA's supercomputers.
Or perhaps this is just china trying to say 'we don't need the USA. The USA needs us. We are in control' as china is shipping us tons and tons of computer parts, and etc that will be 'junk' within the year.
If you don't try, you will never gain the opportunity to fail.
Medevo
import most of our "junk" of any kind from China anyway?
There is. Almost all materials can be taken care of in various ways; for most materials you don't even have to burn it. Some plastics can be reused instead of oil to make new plastics; metals can be extracted and used again and so on.
The trick is to make manufacturers design this possibility into the products. There is little point to know how to take care of the different materials if you can't separate them cleanly, or if you can't identify the material. In the EU, car manufacturers (and by and by, other product manufacturers) have to take disposal into account, by considering disassembly, marking materials with a material code and so on.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
You can't break down the heavy metals such as mercury and lead - I don't think that thare are any harmless compounds involving them.
It is potentially possible to extract and reuse them however, although doing this probably involves taking recycling (and preferably the cost of recycling) into account when designing the computer.
Actually, a mob in Australia developed a way of making some very good plastic like products using wheat. They can vary the thickness and other properties of the plastic to suit different ranges of requirements.
If electronic circuit board manufacturers used a plastic that was reasonably solid for, then so long as the board doesn't get soaked in water (which most boards aren't, right), then it'll stay together. If these boards are soaked in water, or if they are left in the open to get rained on or be buryed, then they will decompose.
This would also make it easy to recover metals from an electronic board by simply soaking it in a solution of some kind to disolve the plastic away from the metals.
The solutions are there, they just need someone with enough courage to take them on!
-JB
"I love deadlines. I love the "whooshing" sound they make as they pass by." - Douglas Adams.
Well I think the article is intended to be thought-provoking, but there is definitely some sensationalism - I certainly don't think that by putting my old defective TV out at the curb that I'm contributing to the child labour system.
Obviously somebody is picking up this scrap. Somebody else in China accepts it.
I fail to understand, though, how this process can possibly be profitable for anybody! Even to paying somebody 5 cents an hour to pick copper coils off circuit boards would probably yield less profit from raw copper than I would be paying for labour!
Semiconductors pulled from PC boards have no value because they are far too unreliable to be re-used in production.
Since the 1980's, there is too little solder used on circuit boards to be of any value.
Big transformers are worth money, but it is impossible to visually tell how they are wound, so there would be a great deal of trial and error in just getting the damn things to work in anything.
Switches and pots also have reliability issues, and even switches in perfect condition generally have size issues that prevent them from being used in anything.
Computer cases contain a significant amount of recoverable metals, but they are large and heavy, so there would be little point in shipping them overseas when you could make more money by recycling them here in North America. After all somebody in China would have to make money from this, as well as somebody in North America...
Is it just me or does this just whole thing seem like an impossible business model?
Of course, this is all just part of a much larger picture. For the past few years, relations with China have not been good. When we're not hitting one of their embassies with a missile (and effectively enraging their population), we're running spy missions off their coast. Then to ease the world's mind, we say that everyone does these things, but I do wonder how tolerant we'd be of a Chinese plane flying off the coast of California collecting data. Yes, it would appear that we may be on a collision course with China. Bush has repeatedly stated that China is a "strategic enemy", and Chinese leaders haven't exactly been glowing in their assessment of Bush. I remember an old Vulcan proverb that stated, "Only Nixon could go to China."
The new administration doesn't seem too concerned with the power of China, and that may be a grave folly. Not that this is any worse than Clinton practically getting into bed with the Chinese and selling secrets and favors, but it will be morbidly interesting to see how this potentially enormous future conflict develops.
Mod it as flamebait, but I have to be just a teense suspiscious whenever China does something for humanitarian reasons. "We don't want our citizens getting hurt rifling around in all this junk!" is the supposive claim. Then I read the first paragraph:
"Beijing has announced a clampdown on the import of electronic junk from the US and other developed countries which is being stripped by Chinese peasants in primitive and dangerous conditions."
Ladies and gentlemen, free entrerprise has come to China in a form they probably least expected. Beyond the "poor little girl poking her fingers in glass" and and "people washing in scab producing water" sypathy routine, I notice there is scarcely a word mentioned on what happens to this junk. These people are scavenging TV sets, computers, Xerox machines, video cameras and telephones, not to mention boiling circuit boards for valuble metals. Make no mistake: Money is being made by the private citizen, completely independent of the government and they don't like it one bit. Squash indepenence and bash the US in one blow, what could be better!?
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the conditions the reporters mentioned bare some truth and it's kinda sad that happens that way, but beneath this sympathy propaganda piece there is a revolution taking place.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
No it won't. In the next couple decades molecular nanotechnology will be quite mature.
Once we have the ability to build things molecule-by-molecule (pollution-free), that would imply we'll also have the easier ability to take things apart and sort then store the basic molecular building blocks for later reuse.
The ultimate in clean recyclability isn't that far off...
<futurist>Your home 'trashcan' in 2030 will probably be more like a compost heap on speed, with pipes carrying away the constituent molecules into a future "feedstock grid"</futurist>
Sorry for going off on a tangent... I can't help myself sometimes. :)
--
Power to the Peaceful
Which is harder to learn English or Chinese? You underestimate peoples intelligence.
Never Underestimate the power of stupid people is large groups
Yeah and you are at the forefront of that group...Once more you prove that collectively, Americans are as dumb as an Ox. Oh yeah and one more nugget for you: A recently published study said that 40% of American scientist and engineers are naturalized citizens (foreigners).
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
(* Why yes, yes I do. If I put it in the trash it goes to a dump. If I take it to a recycle center it is more likely to be shipped to China. *)
Where *are* we supposed to take it? It is harder to get rid of an old PC than it is to get a new one.
Nobody wants them. Sometimes there are public funded events to pick them up, but you have to go out of your way to find them, and they don't happen very often.
Although I hate taxes, one interesting idea is a disposal tax on each machine or motherboard sold to pay for collection and disposal costs. It is kind of like the aluminum can tax in some states. It generally works.
Table-ized A.I.
And they were only too eager to buy it. Besides a hiccup during the spy plane fiasco, chinese buyers were lining up to buy old tech from the scrapyard where I work and scrounge in San Francisco. It stopped cold the day they got into the WTO, months ago.
Chinese people showed up with money and bought container loads of unsorted scrap. Done deal, it's miller time. Honestly, we assumed without even thinking about it that it was being recycled in factories, though probably unsafe ones, or that the working stuff would go to schools or offices, where a 386 would be worth the trouble to set up. Who cares, they're doing more with it than us.
So the bottom has fallen out of the scrap market, and now monitors are toxic waste you have to pay to get rid of. But, there are still countries buying.
Is this the fault of the bad, bad US? Should we be required to keep our junk away from irresponsible people? Have we forced anyone? Or even been deceptive?
You know, people from India buy old tires by the container to ship to india. Other countries do it too. Totally bald, worn out tires. They just love 'em. You know where they wind up? ON CARS! GOD! This HAS to kill people.
We've been told that these are NEW tires, and if we're worried we should go and see what an OLD tire looks like. So are they killing people, or saving lives?
It just ain't like it is here, in most places! It may be hard for us to understand, but 'chinese peasants' with scrap to sort, and people filthy rich enough to have a car to put bald tires on, are a hell of alot better off than at least 50% of the people on this planet!
You know there's a famine in africa right now, and I don't think they care about dying of cancer in 30 years. All they can think about is keeping their children alive for just one more day. Think about that when you're in the supermarket. Go when they're throwing out the fruit. That's when I go.
I'd like to solve these problems, but it's saturday, and we've got tires to stack. Maybe we'll save a life.
=Rich
You make an excellent point, but keep in mind that there was a time when kings who believed in the 'might makes right' doctrine lost their heads. Of course, that hasn't stopped people ever since from overestimating their power. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Kruschev, Lyndon Johnson, Napoleon, Alexander the Great...the list is endless.
The real problem here is that strong-arming smaller countries makes us look worse every day to the world community. I constantly hear talk on the major news sources about Muslims hating us because of our extravagant lifestyle, and that may play some small part, but the real cause for their anger is the things we do that meddle in other countries' politics. I heard an interview on Pacifica with a Palestinian girl who said that she went out for a walk one day after a vicious Israeli attack, and she found a fragment of a missile with USA stamped on the side. Sometimes we supply a rebel group or government with weapons and it works out well for us, but far more often, as was the case with supplying Israel and other Arab enemies, we end up with skyscrapers acting as landing strips. Not that I condone those terrorist acts, but Osama bin Laden would not have NEARLY the popularity in the Arab community with regular people if we weren't meddling, and we wouldn't have dead civilians.
Still don't believe the trouble we cause for ourselves? Consider Cuba. It used to be a resort with gambling and beautiful beaches and hotels. Then someone in U.S. foreign policy decided that we didn't like the government that housed it, and the United States government armed a young revolutionary named... can you guess? Fidel Castro. Shortly thereafter, Castro overthrows the government, establishes communist rule, and points medium range ICBM's at us.
Or perhaps something a little more modern? In the 70's Russia had a border dispute with Afghanistan and decided to invade. There was a group of fighters known as the mujahadeen who was trying unsuccessfully to fight off the more experienced Russian troops. Lo and behold, the United States forks over some heavy duty weapons, and Russia spends 10 years of failure trying to penetrate Afghanistan. High in the ranks of these mujahadeen is a now heavily armed man named Osama bin Laden. Oops.
You asked my point. I suppose its that we would be wise to take a far more isolationist view in our foreign policy and stop letting other countries' troops fight wars that are in our interest.
"But you seem to feel that the U.S. plane was justified in its espionage, and had a God granted right to be collecting radio transmissions and the like from the Chinese coast."
No. I feel it was stupid that the earlier poster claimed our plane had attacked/rammed their plane.
As far as our God given right to do anything, the entire universe is a "might makes right" kind of place. The only rights anyone has are the ones that can be enforced.
We spy on them. Yes.
They spy on us. Yes.
We spy on our enemies, our allies, everyone.
They all spy on us, each other, everyone.
You make it sound like spying is this bizarre thing unique to the US that we inflict on the poor Chinese.
As far as the "poor dead pilot" goes... if he didn't fly his jet into the propellors and wasn't a hot dog idiot, he'd be alive today.