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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."
What's wrong with you people?
This lead is then formed into figurines, painted, and sold as toys.
That's actually inline with most estimates that I've seen. Remember a CRT will often times weigh 20lbs or more and it's not that big of a box. Lead is something that's been used for quite a while for shielding radiation.
But, as for the story, it's China's fault for not enforcing their own regulations. There is now some recognition that it needs to be done responsibly, but assuming that it's the US' fault for not enforcing Chinese environmental legislation is kind of odd. Really the best thing would be for people to get information through ban.org.
Other than that my home state of WA just officially opened up manufacturer sponsored recycling sites. The only complaint that I've got about it is that there wasn't a provision requiring compliance with the Basel Convention. Hopefully there'll be enough transparency that we know whether or not a site is.
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.
China hasn't been accepting E-Waste for at least 18 months. Now it goes mostly to West Africa.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Hi,
I am a voluntary sys admin for a mental health charity, Contact, http://www.contactmorpeth.org.uk/
We take in local donations of unwanted PCs, refurbish them and give them away to people with mental health problems, their children or their carers. Some people have told me that their free PC was a life changing event (once they'd got broadband working).
Surely in America you'd be able to start up a similar scheme for charitable donations?
HTH,
Ian
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.
I sort of gagged on the number 350,000 cell phones (130,000) computers a day? But it makes sense. in 2005 a survey found 69% of americans had cell phones. That's about 250 million users. So if mean replacement time is 2 years, that's 342K a day! Computer's last longer aparently to account for the lower discard number.
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. If we assume that only referes to the computer itself and not the CRT we can still estimate the amount of lead using numbers from various studies:
According to this report 98% of the lead attributed to computers is in the CRT glass. (interesting the report also notes that 75% of CRTs are stored not recycled). However for a 15 pound computer system, only slightly more than half of that is the CRT. And CRT's are not made of 90% lead.
indeed this pdf article determiened that nearly all the lead in a CRT is not in the heavy panel portion but is in fact in the neck and frit seals.
most of the lead however is bound up. the leachable lead is still considerable however.
The actual amount of lead in a 27 pound CRT (19% screen) is 2.2 or less than 10%. If CRT's have 90% of the lead in a computer system then a computer is about 1% of it's weight in lead. so a 15 pound computer ought ot have about 0.15 pounds of lead not 7 pounds.
the article is BS.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
, 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
You can't be serious? Do you really think the people working with this toxic waste know the dangers? I'm sure their government does but China isn't exactly a free society.
Time makes more converts than reason
> TIME suggests checking out recycling brokers and accredited e-stewards the
> next time you're ready to toss a gizmo.
I guess TIME doesn't watch 60 minutes.
'"This is a photograph from your yard, the Executive Recycling yard," Pelley told Richter, showing him a photo we'd taken of a shipping container in his yard. "We followed this container to Hong Kong."'
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've always said, companies should be responsible for the entire lifecycle of any product they produce, including its safe disposal. The way things are now, they are allowed to just dump that cost onto the public, and everyone has to pay the price of mass-consumption, which is mass-disposal.
If your company's monitor costs $30 to dispose of properly, that cost should be your company's responsibility. Of course, the company will just pass the cost on to the customer, but that's OK, since it's the customer who's wallet is hit, not the general public. Products that are toxic and cause cancer if they seep into the groundwater SHOULD cost people much, much more, to disincentivise companies from making them in the first place. Maybe higher prices for toxic difficult-to-dispose goods would get people to repair things instead of just tossing them into the bin. At least the extra cost would get them to consider that whatever they are buying is expensive to toss into the Earth.
As it is now, people just buy the cheapest product they can find without regard for the damage it does to the environment, because that damage is done to "those other people somewhere". Make that damage hit their wallet, and you'll see change.
More to the point, you are responsible for throwing the stuff away in the first place. So pretending they brought the problems on themselves is pathetic evasion. You're just defending your right to pollute. Somebody still has to clean up after you.
Broken window fallacy much ?
Don't forget that the FCC-Mandated digital TV switch will likely result in tens of millions of perfectly good televisions going into the trash heap this year. Legally enforced obsolescence has some side effects.
I'd mod you up if I had the points.
This is the same mentality that people use to justify tossing garbage onto the street when there's a trash can one block further, or leaving your tray at the fast food table even though you'll pass the trash on your way out.
That said, it seems the e-waste getting to China is coming from people who were conscientious enough to not throw it in the garbage. May have even paid out-of-pocket for the recycler to take it.
Sad that an accreditation program has to be implemented, and even more government overhead to manage it. One more mark against the "the free market will take care of it" mantra; no it won't, it only gets it out-of-sight and out-of-mind, ending with the poorest of the poor.