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Inside the Fake PC Recycling Market
snydeq writes "OSNews' Howard Fosdick reports on the fake recycling market — one in which companies exploit cheap shipping, inexpensive labor, and a lack of safety and environmental law to export computers and other e-waste to China and Africa where it is 'recycled' with a complete lack of environmental and safety rules. 'This trade has become a thriving business. Companies called "fake recyclers" approach well-meaning organizations — charities, churches, and community organizations — and offer to hold a Recycling Day. The charity provides publicity, legitimacy, and a parking lot for the event. On the designated day, well-meaning residents drop off their old electronics for recycling. The fake recycler picks it up in their trucks, hauls it away for shipping, and makes money by exporting it to Chinese or African "recycling" centers. Nobody's the wiser,' Fosdick writes. Of course, the international community has, in fact, devised a set of rules to control e-waste disposal under the Basel Conventions, but the US — 'the international 'bad boy' of computer recycling — is one of four countries that have not ratified and do not adhere to these international agreements."
Market will sort it out.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Of course here in my home province, they recently added a ECE tax which is supposed to before recycling home electronics and such. Which means that the money goes right into the coffers. Of course I can never find anywhere to drop off my electronics, except at the same places which already did it.
Om, nomnomnom...
Pointer to an old 60 Minutes story on just this. The U.S. recycler in question was shocked that his dumpster-full of CRTs ended up in China.
I held a computer and electronics recycling day in my town. We were able to collect over 50 used computers and many other things. Several of them were refurbished and given to people who could use them, but the majority had to be recycled. We didn't ship them to China or Africa either. I'm sure that there will always be people out there trying to game the system to make a quick buck, but there are a lot of people who are just trying to help out (by reducing "ewaste" in my case).
Sent from my iPhone 5
Please, sir, cease your slander. The invisible hand is colour blind. It would be just as happy for white and asian children to wallow in toxic waste, assuming it is profitable enough. Only a racist, and one with insufficient trust in the market, would apply affirmative action policies to the booming "informal disposal" market...
I was talking with one of my friends who works in the oil business. He was going off how the cleaner energy technologies will never really take off while oil is 3-5 times less expensive. And sadly, I have to agree: efforts are, of course, being made but considering the amount of money that could be put towards green energy (or nuclear fission or fusion), it's very half-hearted. Cheaper is better in our society. And that applies to NIMBY projects too. It took about 20 years for people to really come around to attempting to recycle anything on a regular basis. It surprises me not in the least that people are tossing environmental concerns for cash.
I hope, someday, that we will learn that protecting our natural resources are part of the cost of doing business. Right now we're like a bunch of teenagers wondering how trigonometry is ever going to be useful in our lives. So we're being taught, but we're not really taking it in.
"Should We Throw Hazardous Waste Into Volcanoes?". Heavy metals and nuclear waste would just get dispersed into the atmosphere.
Given the fine article here, I see that China is one of the bad boys in actually doing bad stuff, yet the http://www.ban.org/country_status/report_card.html web site has China listed as "Excellent". So something seems more than slightly fishy. Reading again, the site merely rates how the countries in question perform lip service to a set of 4 treaties and totally disregards how the countries actually act regards limiting pollution.
Sorry people, but this is a prime example of actions speaking louder than words.
You can get anything you want at Natalie's Restaurant. (The punchline, half a decade later, is that the 21" CRT I salvaged from a dumpster still works, yet I've gone through one LCD monitor due to a failed inverter and a lack of easily-available spare parts since then.)
The only thing I've noticed in the five years since I wrote that parody is that it's getting increasingly hard to find surplus equipment these days. Product lifecycles are shorter, so consumption isn't reduced. It's sure as hell not getting reused. And it's only getting "recycled" in the sense that it's being dumped into the homes of people so poor that they melt solder off printed circuit boards over an open pit fire.
Recycling hardware for which you have no further use is a good idea, but if you're going to recycle your old electronics, do some research and find an organization that's doing it right. ACCRC turns the scrappy scrap into scrap, turns the interesting scrap into art, and the non-scrap into computers that go directly to people in its own neighborhood.
Did the author of this article, just blame the US, for the fact that China and Africa allow their citizens to poison the environment and dump hazardous chemicals into the water ? He should stop buying computer equipment, or call the African government with his complaint.
Who recycles fake PCs? I've seen them at Ikea and other furniture stores, I suppose most of them ARE cardboard...
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
(opinion) Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The least of which is Recycle.
People get fooled into thinking they can buy more and reuse less because they practice "feel good" recycling. Recycling at an energy/material loss (such as with paper), is more harmful than simply dumping or incinerating it, partly because of the actual net loss, but also partly because of the smug mindset people enter into. Compare hybrid owners who drive more because they own a hybrid.
Without "feel good" recycling, people might be more inclined to think about purchases (which comparable food comes in the less reusable less wasteful container), and manufacturers might be more inclined to adjust the market accordingly.
~sigh~
http://ban.org/photogallery/index.html
Look at the human tragedy. Thank God today you don't live like that.
And it's no one's fault over here, no unsigned treaty, that could create that kind of depravity. Please just for once put down your politics and look a problem square in the eye: China's just got a bad culture and a worse form of government. It's shameful to allow people to live so rotten, period.
NO, before you get all guilt-ridden and try to heap the blame on "us": shameful, rotten, PERIOD, end of story! Good day, sir.
Windows will continue to bloat up and so will Apple's OSes. Why doesn't the Linux community make a nice slim and secure distribution that will run on a 486/586 with only 256M of memory - or less?
I've been thinking about a non-profit for recycling these machines. Many many poor people could use them.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
I have been seeing stories like these for several years. Although this situation is clearly undesirable, I have still to see anyone proposing a realistic alternative. The bottom line is doing proper recycling costs money, people do not want to pay.
To take something apart and separate the elements used in its construction may cost more than putting it together. Who wants to pay twice the price for anything?
The market pressure is all against any environmentally and safe recycling. The biggest part of most electronic equipment is plastic with very low value as scrap. Fiberglass, for instance, is nearly worthless, what could anyone possibly do with the fiberglass from an old circuit board? This fiberglass is mixed with small but significant amounts of lead, how would you remove the lead before sending the fiberglass to a landfill?
The market isn't working? OK, but would the government work either? Try telling people that their $50 phone will have a $100 tax added for properly recycling it.
People so ignorant and so determined to foist their "me, me, me, I, myself, mine, all mine, fuck you!" world-view onto everyone else should be exhibits in some sort of "museum of insanity" where researchers into mental disorders could at least get some use out of you.
I mean, you really suppose that people would "trade via garage sales" all that junk which they actually pay money for to be hauled away into massive, monumental, all-consuming land fills that keep growing year after year around any major city in the developed world? Really?
The natural state of affairs in the consumer distopia is to, get this, consume without any regard to the consequences. People buy plastic crap, they use it until it breaks (a period usually measured in months) and then they promptly throw it out, followed by a new purchase of cheap disposable crap. And this model is a pivotal element of all the so-called "industrialized economies". Recycling occurs in the fucked-up model of "free market" only if some material in the waste is somehow worth extracting, at a minimum effort possible, which is precisely why it is shipped to China and Africa where children can have the privilege of wallowing in toxic shit to extract traces of raw materials. That is an unregulated "free market" at work. It works as long as the children are disposable and dying of toxic exposure tomorrow beats dying of hunger today. "Freedom" of choice in the "free market", as long as it isn't spoiled by all these "evil communist gubmint" types trying to do meddle doing evil things like trying to stop impoverished kids from inhaling toxic fumes and mountains of toxic crap from growing. The glorious "freedom" to pollute as long as it is somewhere else then you, cause "you got yours and the rest should go get theirs", you mendacious fuck, no?
As his comments about gender and intelligence as President of Harvard demonstrate, the guy has a talent for sticking his foot in his mouth.
Are you adequate?
Nonprofit Technology Resources in Philly does something similar, without the art. A very worthy organization, and one that I am constantly surprised local geeks haven't heard about.
So Africa is going to start shipping its waste to Detroit? Sounds fair!
they start DEMANDING cleaner environments and standards
Here's the tricky part: both the environmental and workplace conditions in the photographs of the Chinese sitesare all already against the law in China because Chinese people have demanded that this kind of thing not be allowed. What is not pictured is the recycling center owners in their Benzes and the local party bosses in their Audis (bought with bribes from the owners). Enforcing the demands for better conditions will require not different market choices or even new elections but a complete political revolution. The situation is too far out of control for normal market forces to correct when the government utterly fails to enforce laws or contracts.
I don't think PC recycling can be done.
It takes more work to disassemble a PC than it did to assemble it from those parts in the first place. When you're done, there isn't much of a market for old 128MB RAM chips, 30GB hard drives, 500 MHz motherboards, etc.
Is there a viable technology that shreds computers with giant steel rollers and sorts the flakes according to material, and sells aluminum flakes, etc. and sells them? Is there a safe heat process? There must be something, since there are companies that claim to provide certified recycling to meet government regulations. But I can't find one. All I can find is stories of third-world dumping.
It may be safer and better for the environment to dump old PCs in U.S. landfills than to send them to parts unknown for "recycling." We should be able to make landfills that can take appliances with heavy metals and electronic plastics without passing it on to the water supply.
Looked to me like a lot of recycling was going on in the photos. Burning "e-waste" isn't recycling, but the other three pictures showed people in the act of recycling electronic waste. So what makes recycling, "fake" recycling? At a glance, it is recycling in a developing world country where environment laws of developed world countries don't exist or aren't followed, if they do exist.
The summary says the US is "one of four countries that have not ratified" but the link just lists four notable countries. Scroll down a bit and you will see that they list 15 countries haven't ratified any of the "International Toxics Agreements" (only 15 have ratified all). But is it worse than that since they only list 163 countries when there are 195(*) countries in the world. Assuming the countries they don't list haven't ratified on then that means there are a total of 47 countries that haven't ratified.
Technically the US is "one of four countries that haven't ratified", but technically it is also one of five countries that haven't ratified, and one of three, one of 12, one of 18 and one of 47 countries that haven't ratified.
(*) The UN has 192 member countries but excludes Vatican City, Kosovo and Taiwan.
Fake-recycler gets hardware donated for free.
They pay $X in collection costs.
They pay $Y to ship to China.
Chinese company pays $X+$Y+$Z to buy the hardware.
Fake-recycler makes $Z profit.
Chinese company pays $A to strip hardware to components (copper wire, metal cases, individual chips).
Chinese company sells components for $X+$Y+$Z+$A+$B to whoever is buying the wire and so on.
$X probably isn't very much. It's not like it's a delicate operation.
$Y is low because there are so many otherwise-empty containers going back to China.
$Z doesn't have to be very much for the business to be worthwhile - it's not like it employs a lot of skilled people.
$A is very low. There's a large surplus of unskilled labour in China.
$B is probably low, but it's not like the company is doing the dirty work itself.
As long as $X+$Y+$Z+$A+$B comes out cheaper than the cost of buying the stuff new everyone's getting paid. I honestly don't know how cheap new copper wire is or exactly what chips can be reused in this way.
A lot of this is due to externalities, after all.
Graham
I have no idea where you are getting your info, but you are wrong on plastic bottles. They sell them as regrind.
I got a lot of old computer parts from the 1990's. Motherfracking Recycling companies near me are a darnned joke and refuse to take tech made before 2002. Then calls me picky and unreasonable when I ask them to take my 90's tech.
Then some want $50 to haul off a $15 CRT tube monitor that do.
Any ideas or suggestions? I don't want to throw them in a dumpster and have mercury leaks and all that, I don't want to harm the environment. I don't want to pay $50 a monitor to get rid of them either.
Are those types of businesses scams and frauds as well? How can I find one to take them for free. The Freecycle group in my area is a joke BTW, get a lot of no shows and then nothing happens and nobody cares.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
1. "Regulations" are the mechanism society has for enforcing a common concensus. As a society, "we" decided that cholera was bad. The solution (alongside education and convincing, of course) is regulation: all houses in area "x" must have sewer connections and must not have an outhouse. And there's a team of people to take water samples. And there are regulations on how to test the water.
2. Laws are created by congress. There's too many to talk all at once; the solution they and every other large organization in the world have picked is to make smaller groups. These groups are called "committee"s. Are you objecting to dividing into smaller groups and attacking problems in-depth? Or is your object to the word "committee"? Did you know the libertarian party has a committee?
3. There are no "czars" in this government. Some people are more senior, and have more authority; other people are less senior and have less authority. Are you in favor of everyone having the same authority? Or do you object to the word "czar"? Heaven knows it's an objectionable word, but it's one that the media uses to describe otherwise boring titles.
4. I don't understand your problem with agencies. One of the agencies, for example, is the Presidio trust (I picked them at random). Do you object to a group of people, experts in the Presidio, from managing the place? Or is your objection that this group of people has a common name, "The Presidio Trust". Would you be happier if we called them group 184? Perhaps you think that we should simply sell off this land -- does this mean that you think there should be no parks at all?
Really, I don know why you got moderated as "insiteful". It sounds more like "thoughtless".
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As recently as 3-5 years ago you could go to a hamfest get a reasonably up-to-date laptop computer and save $500-700 from a new computer.
Now with new laptop with good specs going for $400-500, the margins are gone, so the hamfest guys are selling laptop computers for $300$400. There's no sense in buying used in that case since it has no warranty and will probably be less energy efficient than a new one.
The issue really is that we're getting so efficient at building new computers that it makes the old stuff worthless pretty quickly.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
$25,000 for a car with $10,000 for recycling it.
Cars are already one of the most recycled items out there. When they are taken out of service (usually after 150-200k miles worth of driving), the parts tend to land up in other cars. When all the good parts are gone, they are turned into cubes, melted and turned into cars again.
I think you meant "the 3rd episode of the new season of Futurama".
So why is it such a bad problem for countries that make this stuff to get it back when we (Western countries, not just the US) no longer need/want it? I'm singling out China but not Africa here...
Let's be fair... I don't want anyone, especially children, being exposed to chemicals involved in e-waste. But I'm of the mindset that if you want to take our jobs away and make a product cheaper than we (Western countries) can make it, then why shouldn't you (China) get it back when we don't want it or it's no longer useful? This treaty basically states that countries that manufacture items get the benefit and profit of manufacture, while incurring little-to-none of the costs of disposal. US landfills have had to deal with e-waste since the early days of radio and TV--most of which were manufactured here...
To add, I have little sympathy for countries that can't or won't control what they import. Each country is responsible for what comes across its borders. It's not like someone's hiding 2 CRT monitors in the trunk of a car & driving them into China--we're talking about huge shipping containers full of these items. If Chinese officials are too corrupt, unwilling, or inept to stop the flow of e-waste, then they get what they deserve...
[End of rant...]
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
If you want a good glimps into the whole recycling of electronics in 3rd world countries check out the movie Manufactured Landscapes. Some pretty incredible shit...
Everyone should know about paper recycling - it costs more to use recycled paper than new. The quality is questionable as well. The result is that most paper is dumped into an incinerator or a landfill by recycling centers because it is pointless to attempt to recycle post-consumer paper.
Plastic bottles can be recycled... except if one tiny little bottle cap or ring gets into the mix the entire batch is worthless. Since this happens most of the time again plastic bottles are not generally recycled.
Fortunately, this being Slashdot, you can make a bunch of off-the-cuff, bullshit claims with no support whatsoever, and bam! +5 insightful.
Really, it's an excellent Slashdot-style karma-whore-post:
1) Derides environmentalist/"green"/liberal ideas,
2) Has an anti-establishment bent, with a "the people are stupid" twist,
3) Heavy dose of smug superiority.
You couldn't have played it any better. Kudos!
So, a girl who can earn a months wage in a factory in just three nights on her back is far worse then the Bhopal disaster?
This is not insightful at all. It is a terrible justification for keeping people in terrible conditions and it's wrong, people want to believe it because it makes them feel better.
You're rant against "do gooders" ignores all the people who work to establish sustainable farming and industry with safety that meets most western standards. That means workers aren't standing around in toxins, have helmets and gloves as well as several other simple safety measures like training (e.g. spot the hazard). It helps you to belittle people actually trying to make lives better as that means you aren't being as selfish as you really are. It may come as a surprise to you but most people involved in "doing good" in poorer nations actually want to help develop sustainable communities, these are people like non-religious private aid agencies and the UN amongst others. I used to work for a company that formed a non-profit charity organisation after the tsunami in Asia, for the most part all this organisation does is zero interest loans and business advice (supporting the people who take the loans).
You really have no clue about the third or developing world. The problem isn't when the average wage out of 100 people is 10K, I can show you that in Thailand and 80 of the 100 people will be subsistence farmers. The problem the developing world has is that the distribution wealth is so terribly lopsided, a few people make billions whilst most of the population makes little.
Do you honestly think that factories in China, Vietnam and Thailand operate without the consent of the local politicians or business leaders? No, of course not they're involved and getting their cut.
I'm sorry to interrupt your free market drivel, but ignoring the problem will not make it go away, it took 20 years just for the Indian people to get to declare Union Carbide exec's guilty, they were fined US$2000 and let go, not a single exec ended up in jail, not a single western exec was even charged.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I just want to thank the folks at Slashdot for posting e-waste stories like this. I've got 45 bookmarks on e-waste http://delicious.com/joerowe/e-waste I'm looking for other teachers to develop lesson plans for e-waste education. For example: National Geographic published a good story, but it contained some major myths. I've contacted NG and they refused to admit it's only a myth that computer screens from Monitex in Texas are turned into in low cost TV sets in Thailand. See the 5th picture in this set. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/high-tech-trash/essick-photography BTW: This story was well documented by the TV show 60 minutes, which you can watch online. See my bookmarks.
To elaborate on what an AC already posted, Best Buy has an electronics recycling program in the US which will take all manner of products, regardless of where they were purchased. Use the drop-down menu on the right to see the rules for your particular state.
Generally they insist that hard drives be removed from computers -- apparently they don't want the responsibility of dealing with sensitive data. They also charge $10 to take CRTs, but they give you a $10 gift card in return. Say what you will about Best Buy's other practices; this is a very useful program.
Their standards statement indicates they don't do anything dastardly with the stuff once they collect it. I'd be interested to know if anyone has direct experience with how they deal with it all.
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.