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Report is Critical of US For Dumping E-Waste Overseas
coondoggie writes "In what may be the least astonishing news of the day, some major US companies who say they are environmentally recycling electronic waste — aren't. Rather more startling — they are dumping everything from cell phones and old computers to televisions in countries such as China and India where disposal practices are unsafe to people and dangerous to the environment. Controlling the exportation of all of the e-waste plops on the doorstep of the US Environmental Protection Agency which is doing a woeful job, according to a scathing 67-page report issued by the Government Accountability Office today."
The I'm-not-the-only-one-who-does-it excuse is just a shame.
You mean taking advantage of a situation removes all blame from you? You really think the US companies are dumping this waste without knowing full well what will happen to it? I doubt it.
Then again, we could have another Mattel-lead-paint situation, where they got it done for cheap overseas, without fully looking in to how bad the situation really was.
Nice try.
Its the USA's waste, it is ultimately the USA's hands that are dirty. (metaphorically of course, the poor B'Stards that get trash dumped on their doorstep are obviously going to have dirty hands literally)
This is yet another example of green washing and corporates (in this case US ones) flushing our environment down the toilet for their own short term gain.
However, it is not just the US that engages in this crap. Lots of others do also! Even here in "green NZ", there are instances of "recycling" companies shipping recycling overseas to the more dodgy chinese outlets.
disclaimer: it appears that the majority of ours do the right thing however. (One retail chain even does it FOR FREE! Not to mention E-day www.eday.org.nz )
And these filthy buggers will moan and complain when regulation is forced upon them to stop being little piglets. Sheesh.
Makes one really feel sorry for mother nature to be honest.
So the US goes and allows (or perhaps worse, is complicit in allowing) it's corporations to keep up profits by dumping toxic products in other countries, where it kills and maims children (which is well proven) who struggle to live by supplying their lives to people who use them as slave labour to recover valuable materials from the dumped items through lethal practices, such as burning plastic from wire.
Then some people argue that if the countries allow it, why is that the US's problem?
And then twenty years later they whine like little babies that they can't understand why the survivors of this situation in those countries hate them so much and want to kill them and everyone else they see as a part of the "Western" world...
And they can't even blame the CIA this time. US corporations are doing a far more sinister job that the CIA ever did.
GrpA.
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
Ruthless exploitation at both ends is the big deal.
If party A is using a service provided by party B that you think is immoral, what's the right way to go about stopping it? Well, at both ends. You try to convince party A not to use the service, and you try to convince party B not to provide it.
In this case, you're right, these countries shouldn't allow unsafe waste-processing, and shouldn't allow importing of waste unless it can be safely processed. That's one place to put pressure. However it's also perfectly legitimate to put pressure at the other end: US companies shouldn't be exporting waste except to safe processing facilities.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"Ruthless exploitation at both ends is the big deal."
Ruthless competition is how China moved into being an economic powerhouse. The pollution and body count for the US was pretty high too (and so long ago it is largely forgotten) but that was the price of "progress".
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Ruthless competition is how China moved into being an economic powerhouse. The pollution and body count for the US was pretty high too (and so long ago it is largely forgotten) but that was the price of "progress".
That's the kind of argument that sounds attractive if you don't look too close. But it can be stood on its head with equal justification -- if not more.
Ruthless exploitation has been a permanent fixture of human civilization, and progress has not been its reliable result. I would argue then that ruthless exploiters are not creators of progress. They're parasites on progress. Exploitation in the time of progress is not something new, it's jut the old exploitation robbing a richer bank.
The dire predictions of economic disaster and stagnating innovation have not for the most part come true when society has stepped in to regulate abuses like child labor, food adulteration, inhumane treatment of workers. Rather, progress has on the whole accelerated.
Of course, progressive policies do hurt many exploitative enterprises, but they don't harm innovation. Businesses that require the ability to exploit people or the environment to thrive are fundamentally non-innovative. It's making money the old -- very, very old -- way. First you get some power (in this case capital), and then you look for somebody weaker than you to exploit, either directly or by leaving them holding a very expensive bag.
You can see the architectural proof of the antiquity of this business model in Europe. You find yourself a nice river valley on a trading route and you build yourself a castle to shake down everybody who wants to pass.
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