The Dystopian Lake Filled By the World's Tech Sludge

New submitter trevc sends this story from the BBC: Hidden in an unknown corner of Inner Mongolia is a toxic, nightmarish lake created by our thirst for smartphones, consumer gadgets and green tech. The city-sized Baogang Steel and Rare Earth complex dominates the horizon, its endless cooling towers and chimneys reaching up into grey, washed-out sky. Stretching into the distance, lies an artificial lake filled with a black, barely-liquid, toxic sludge. ... You may not have heard of Baotou, but the mines and factories here help to keep our modern lives ticking. It is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of “rare earth” minerals. These elements can be found in everything from magnets in wind turbines and electric car motors, to the electronic guts of smartphones and flatscreen TVs.

Comments

Objectivist utopia

[Camel Pilot]

Sounds like an objectivist utopia

Re:Objectivist utopia

[aaron4801]

Do you realize that the company is a state-owned entity in a communist country? It's pretty much the exact opposite of an objectivist situation.

Unnecessary, but profitable.

[chihowa]

You may not have heard of Baotou, but the mines and factories here help to keep our modern lives ticking.

We're able to produce most of what we use, including rare earth minerals, without creating toxic sludge lakes. The only reason we send all of these industries to China is to because their lax environmental and labor laws allow cheaper production, and thus higher profit margins.

Our modern lives don't depend on utterly fucking up our environment, but ridiculous executive pay and concentration of wealth at the top benefit greatly from it. Studies (which I'm too lazy to look up, but I'm sure others can find easily) show that it doesn't cost that much more to make goods in the US and Europe, labor and environmental regulations and all. The outsourcing of manufacturing hasn't even significantly dropped retail prices much, though profit margins (and net profits) are at record highs across most industries.

Re:Unnecessary, but profitable.

[zlives]

"I want my two dollars"
and for that damn the species.

Re:Unnecessary, but profitable.

[Tailhook]

The operative word there is "was". That plant is gone now, moved to Asia in 2014. Also, it was an "assembly" plant; the major components were made in China, as you suspected.

There were big claims made and lots of happy talk about 'merican jobs, herp derp. The cold reality is the plant is gone, the 'experiment' failed, and whatever statements about how it "wasn't cost considerations" is just so much corporate grifter B.S.

The ability of the West to feather its environmental regulatory nest without multiplying the cost of manufactured goods depends entirely on evacuating the industrial base to unregulated third world Asian hell holes. That is reality. Don't like it? Feel free to substitute whatever fiction you like best, just like everyone else does.

Re:Unnecessary, but profitable.

[LibertarianLawyer]

You may not have heard of Baotou, but the mines and factories here help to keep our modern lives ticking.

The only reason we send all of these industries to China is to because their lax environmental and labor laws allow cheaper production, and thus higher profit margins.

In the global economy China competes by having "lax environmental and labor laws" to attract "these industries." The fault, if we are to assign fault and blame, lies with a political system in China that is not yet robust enough to protect the environment. The same conditions would exist and did exist in the United States until the political economy forced change. Look into the Copper Hills of Tennessee then and now. For a few years in the late '60s and early '70s I lived on Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga, TN. The air quality at the time was significantly worse than in LA. Both cities burdened by geography that traps air pollutants. Because its problem arose from fixed source pollution, as opposed to vehicular traffic, Chattanooga's problem is now virtually eliminated. The Copper Hills problem has been solved or the solutions are far enough advanced that alarm is not an appropriate response. Domestic not foreign political pressure cause the change and will see it through. I do not confuse domestic political pressure with government power. Government power is easily captured by economic interests if the political economy is not robust enough to respond to health and related concerns of the effected populations. If Government power was the solution, China would not have any environmental problems. The economy of the United States is no longer dominate enough to allow the United States to dictate environment policy to foreign markets, especially China. Only the people of China and their leaders can bring about the necessary reforms. As China's economy grows and allows more leisure to the masses pressure on leadership to address health and related concerns of the effected populations will grow a pace.

Re:Unnecessary, but profitable.

[jandrese]

Ultimately, lax environmental regulation is a big competitive advantage if you have an inherently dirty process.

Re:Unnecessary, but profitable.

[Twinbee]

That's because they're investing the profits into an even bigger success in the future.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE CONSUMER

[Anonymous Coward]

Move along! Move along! Could I interest you in yet another incremental improvement in technology?

Author Doesn't Understand mining

[Anonymous Coward]

The author makes a good point: we shouldn't be treating gadgets as disposable.

Where the article fails is the implication (intentional or not) that "green" tech is creating some new problem that didn't exist before. Every hard rock mining operation no matter the purpose (INCLUDING some mining operations that extract oil from tar sands) produces toxic chemical laced by-products that must be dealt with (frequently by putting them in tailings ponds).

Re:Author Doesn't Understand mining

[SuricouRaven]

We've treated them as disposable in recent years because technology was advancing too rapidly to bother about building them to last. There's no point making a phone that can be repaired and maintaned for twenty years when next year's model will have twice the memory and three times the processing power, and a radio that moves bits twice as fast too. There may come a time when that will change.

Great article.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always been concerned about people who can't see the negative side of all the "green" technologies today.

The motors and battery (which needs to be replaced every X years) for your new Prius are not so great for the environment. Sure, it makes you feel good to not fill up at the gas pump, but what is the true environmental cost of that car?
Same goes for windmills, etc. Are they really better for the environment than, say, nuclear power?
This article shows what you're missing when you sign that lease, or buy that new iPhone.

I'm glad someone out there is forcing us to look at the downside of all of the technology we use. Kudos to them for doing it.

Re:Great article.

[kwiecmmm]

Same goes for windmills, etc. Are they really better for the environment than, say, nuclear power?

Uranium has to be mined (most likely using similar circumstances) as well. Most everything that we use and dispose of has an environmental impact.

The real point of this is the fact that China doesn't have better environmental protection laws. The US had issues like this up until the states and the EPA began to regulate environmental impacts. The Cuyahoga River fire was a good example of why we began to clean up our act in the US.

But the reason that I quoted that line is because windmills, solar, nuclear and geothermal are good sources of electricity that our going to lower CO2 emissions and hopefully slow the human environmental impact on the world. All of these can cause a negative environmental impact, if done in an unregulated environment, but they can all hopefully improve the environment as well.

Green Energy

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an example of why there it no such thing as 'green energy'. Every form of energy has an environmental cost, the cost of making windmills and solar panels are mostly hidden in China, so Al Gore and his buddies can pretend that the cost doesn't exist. I bet there are other toxic lakes just outside the processing plants that make solar panels too, since China currently doesn't care much about pollution.

The Good, The Bad, and The Stupid

[Tablizer]

We outsourced our jobs and our pollution.

Check the data!

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Google Maps, Baotou, Inner Mongolia, has one fairly small sludge pond from which carefully posed hysterical pictures are taken for the referenced article, while the remainder of the city appears quite nice. So once again we find that we have here just another over-hyped fictional story from the evil media.

Re:Unintended consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

Republicans:
1) abolish EPA
2) Profit!!
3) Giant lakes of goo

Let us know when you start planning ahead

Re:Their choice.

[jythie]

The problem tends to be that the people who make the decisions get enough cash out of it to live elsewhere.