Slashdot Mirror
The Scope of US E-Waste
theodp writes "Every day, Americans toss out more than 350,000 cell phones and 130,000 computers, making electronic waste the fastest-growing part of the US garbage stream. A lot of the world's e-waste is exported to Guiyu, China, where peasants heat circuit boards over coal fires to recover lead (a 15" computer monitor can pack up to 7 lbs. of Pb), while others use acid to burn off bits of gold. Guiyu's willingness to deal with lead, mercury and other toxic materials generates $75 million a year for the village, but as a result. Guiyu is slowly poisoning itself with the highest level of cancer-causing dioxins in the world. The village experiences elevated rates of miscarriages, and its children suffer from an extremely high rate of lead poisoning. TIME suggests checking out recycling brokers and accredited e-stewards the next time you're ready to toss a gizmo."
that seems a little excessive to me, even for a CRT, i dont suppose the OP would like to provide some sort of reference to support it
I'm sorry but honestly why do I care what happens to this village in China? They aren't innocent victums, they willingly bring the toxic crap in and have their citizens work on it. As soon as they want to they can stop taking shipments when they feel the health risks are too great... Until they do that, why should I feel bad for problems they have brought on themselves?
Most of that 7 lbs of lead is in the glass (as an x-ray shield). The summary is wrong to imply that this lead can be recovered by heating, just like circuit board lead.
Not exactly, there is a difference between throwing away organic waste and electronic waste. The organic waste will at least decompose at some point, whereas the e-waste has to go through quite a bit of processing in order to be recycled. It is also difference from other non-organic waste such as scrap metal and plastic. At least that can be recycled relatively easy (as compared to e-waste). The "e" is appropriate, if somewhat over-used.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
If they're generating millions from e-waste we throw away then why is it the wests fault that they are polluting themselves?
If they dealt with the waste in a responsible manner and took even basic precautions then they wouldn't be polluting their own villages.
Guiyu's willingness to deal with lead, mercury and other toxic materials...
There's the problem. Don't do that.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
A quick Google puts the number of US cell phone users in 2005 at 208 million. A number of cell providers will give you a "free" phone every two years, and many people take advantage of that. I'd guess the cell phone number is plausible if you assume slightly less than 50% turn over rate per year and include growth in the cell phone market since the 2005 numbers were published.
We can't get but a handful of states in the US to put deposits on bottles, much less give people incentives to actually recycle their electronics. Put a damn $50 deposit/tax on new computer sales, and THEN maybe you'll have people recycling. Hell, we have core fees on automotive parts, why not electronics?
Laws and fines rarely push people to do this type of thing, and forget the "think of the children" ads. People get off their ass and do something when it benefits them directly, and nothing speaks louder than cash in hand.
TIME suggests checking out recycling brokers and accredited e-stewards the next time you're ready to toss a gizmo.
Even better: unless it really is broken beyond repair, re-use your old stuff or give it to someone who still can get use out of it. Freecycle what you can, recycle the rest, and throw away as little as possible.
PS! Read my tagline! ;-)
"Good news, everyone!"
There are a lot of people who actually want this stuff, and they are willing to pay the cost of shipping/handling to get it. I've asked a few of them: Why do you want an old gadget?
(1) "I need a PC that I can experiment upon."
(2) "I am a collector of old electronics."
(3) "My camcorder broke and I need a new magnetic head to fix it."
(4) "I need a cheap laptop for typing notes."
And on and on and on. Like the old saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure. Rather than toss your old gadgets in the junk, sell it on ebay for 99 cents + shipping. Somebody will buy it. Recyle.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
, would that increase costs for shipping the waste there?
Not really, the stuff is inert until you start disassembling and burning stuff. What it would do is increase the cost such that Guiyu wouldn't be making so much profit selling the resulting materials. Though substantial infrastructure upgrades(IE a PROPER recycling facility) would be more efficient, but would take decades or more to return on the investment.
ecyclers would probably look for another poor nation to accept the waste
why are these ecycler moving the waste to begin with?
Let's say I'm a recycling collection facility. Doesn't matter what I take. I collect various recyclable materials, from batteries to aluminum cans to paper to whole computers and refrigerators. I don't actually recycle anything myself. What I do is collect and sort the stuff. When I have around a semi-load of it, I get on the market for this stuff, keeping in mind shipping costs, and sell it to the highest bidder(IE who's willing to pay me the most), or to the lowest for stuff where I have to pay for them to take it.
International shipping is cheap - especially since with the trade balance ships are normally quite a bit lighter on their way back to china. So Guiyu wins the bids and gets the stuff because their 'processing' is extremely cheap and they gain enough money from the resulting materials to make a profit.
then the material would stay where it started its life cycle as waste. how would it be dealt with then?
1. If it's still economically viable to recycle in a less polluting manner, then it'll get recycled
2. If the host nation STILL insists it be recycled, you'll see recycling fees tacked on to either the purchase or disposal end to deal with the added expense. Like car tires here in the USA.
3. If they don't, it'll be placed in a landfill until an economical method to recycle it comes along(or raw material expenses goes up) making it profitable to dig it out of the landfill.
I don't read AC A human right
Comment removed based on user account deletion
> However the 7 pounds of lead in a 15 pound computer is complete BS. First
> most CRTs weigh about 30 pounds so this 15 pound number is perverse.
15" means it's a 15 inch monitor, not 15 pounds.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
I worked at a computer store a few years back. We had 5 complete, working PCs they wanted to donate to a local thrift-store/charity. We had to jump through hoops to donate them. We never tried again because it was just too much hassle.
Don't assume that your area is the same as all others.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
How did you work your math? Assume 100million devices in service with turn over in equilibrium.
Take a device with a seven year lifespan. Every year, a seventh of the population must replace their devices (so in seven years, all of the population will have turned over their devices). That is a disposal rate of about 14million devices a year.
Now take a device with a one year lifespan. Every year, the entire population must replace their devices. That is a disposal rate of 100million devices a year.
Old electrolytic capacitors leak toxic chemicals. A capacitor popping and drying out is a leading cause of electronics failure. If that stuff gets on you or you inhale the vapors it's bad. How can you make the process safer? Use robots to pick at the stuff? They are too expensive for now, and not smart enough, without enough dexterity.
Maybe use huge smelter to melt down and combust all the epoxy boards, plastic casings and everything, including dioxins to carbon dioxide and slag. The slag will contain mostly oxides of calcium (from plastic fillers), aluminum, silicon, iron, tin, lead, copper, and minute amounts of gold and silver, and some other metals such as tantalum, indium, germanium and gallium and arsenic oxides.
Processing this slag to extract things like tantalum and indium is the same problem as oxygen extraction from lunar anorthite - we basically don't have a good technology to process calcium alumino silicate. And at least the lunar anorthite is a dust, somewhat reactive powder for acid processing, but the slag from this smelter is just going to be a hard chunk of rock. Moreover oxides of lead, arsenic and chlorides of copper and iron chlorides (especially if burnt with PVC plastic parts) will tend to distill out in the process, and would have to be collected from the vapor. If you can separate the plastic casings, that can cut down on the calcium at least but the electrolytic capacitors are loaded with aluminum, and aluminum oxide is hard to process. Not oxidizing the mixture, and just melting it down anaerobically is not workable, because the epoxy boards would turn into charcoal that absorbs everything else on the surface.
Newer circuits are smaller, more of the components such as capacitors in a circuit are purely silicon on chip, so waste in 2020 will not be as dangerous as the waste from say 1980 to 2010, so investing a lot into a recycling facility that has no future, well. In case a workable semi-economic lunar oxygen extraction is found, that could indiscriminately process and safetify waste of any kind, including medical and biological waste together with electronic waste, that would be a worthy investment. In the meantime slag in a landfill with a plastic sheathing on bottom that doesn't get punctured and leak dissolved lead, arsenic, indium and such into the groundwater table is the answer, and slag is much safer than unsmelted electronics in the same landfill, because at least the toxic organic contaminants such as chlorinated solvents are dealt with, and the slag may leach toxic metals, but do so at an extremely slow rate.
Or just give it to China? Let somebody else deal with the problem, and then there is no problem? The problem starts when we don't live like the Amish, completely organic with all waste naturally recyclable, with no technology, other than say steel, that's still naturally recyclable. Once we hydrogenate vegetable oil, once we make materials such as polyethylene that nature has never seen, nor can digest, once use a cellphone that has indium displays, or gallium arsenide chips, after that the problem is here. We still choose to do it because we derive economic benefit from it, but the real problem comes later. At least steel used by the Amish for nails, horseshoes and plows, is naturally recyclable - it rusts away. There has to be a way to have electronics from the start that will be recyclable later, that's where the problem needs to be attacked. Such as fully miniaturized electronics with everything on-chip, silicon the only raw material, and some board that's easier than epoxy to separate during recycling, such as simple pure polypropylene that can be melted down, then combusted without combusting the silicon, and silicon recycled from the metal through tetrachloride distillation. That's soon doable, unless the "economy" does not allow it.
Ethics is a luxury, and should be done as a showoff of luxury, as opposed to generating massive amounts of waste as a showoff of luxury.
You're giving Windows boxes to people who are already unstable? Are you trying to push them completely over the edge???
Virtually no one is using the millions of 386 and 486s out there. At some point, the items sold on eBay will end up being effectively worthless, and the question is, what then?
Why is it, that during the election....people were saying "Oh...you shouldn't vote for/against him due to his color", or if you did you were racist one way or the other.
Now that he's elected....why are new now singing praises to the US people that we elected a black man?
C'mon people, if you want a color blind society...at least try to stay consistent.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It's only fair considering most of this trash was made in China to begin with.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil