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

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.

[bhcompy]

Rare earth minerals actually aren't rare and we have tons of proven reserves. We just stopped because it's a dirty business.

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.

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting AC, as I'm too lazy to log in.

A few years ago, I was looking to build a project. I found out there were two tiers:

Built it up to high standards: The US, Russia, Germany, Japan, Sweden, the UK, China, Canada, and many other countries could build what I needed to a top spec.

Build it cheap: China could undercut everyone, and could offer bargain basement specs turned into bargain basement products with canned ass for quality.

What I ended up doing, after looking for manufacturing the world over is finding a place that could do what I wanted... all within 50 miles (~80 km) of where I lived. Since prices were almost identical across the board, I just went with local factories to crank the thing out for sale.

tl;dr, if you want it cheap, China is your go to guy. If you want it done right, the entire world can do it.

The only exception to this was a type of mechanical security piece which had to be milled in Switzerland due to the insanely high tolerances required. I later replaced the proprietary key assembly with an Abloy PROTEC2 cam lock and key switch [1].

[1]: Security is something to be taken seriously. Yes, someone can wrench their way in by force, but it leaves an obvious signature... if a lock gets picked, there is little to no proof of intrusion, so I use top tier locks to do the job right. In the late 1980s, and early 1990s, many data center appliances used Medeco or other high security brands. Now, if I see a lock on something, it likely is a CH751 lock or something just as shitty.

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.

Manufacturing profitibility is complicated

[sjbe]

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.

Not correct, or at least not completely true. The primary reason China has captured a lot of manufacturing business is because they have a large supply of cheap labor. And most of the reason it is cheap is precisely because the supply is so large - economics 101 stuff. Lots of laborers competing for jobs keeps wages suppressed. You are correct however that lax environmental policies do play a role in some industries as well. Stuff like glass, steel, etc can be pretty rough on the environment and not having to pay for these externalities can be a competitive advantage. China doesn't have a bad pollution problem just by coincidence. That is the result of decades of sacrificing the environment to boost wages and build industry. (It also has a lot to do with the number of dirty coal fired power plants they use)

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.

Depends strongly on what exactly you are producing. I run a manufacturing company. Whether something costs more to make in China versus the US depends primarily on the labor content of what is being produced. Labor intensive goods tend to get produced in low labor cost countries. Capital intensive goods tend to get produced in capital efficient (usually high labor cost) countries. It's obviously not quite that simple but it's a good first approximation. Stuff that can be automated or which has a lot of IP content tends to stay domestic. Stuff that requires the lowest possible labor costs tends to migrate elsewhere.

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.

Hasn't dropped retail prices much? A quick trip through Walmart should disabuse you of that notion. I've quoted jobs for stuff that is sold through Walmart. The target prices sometimes were below our cost of materials. Much of that cost savings is being passed on precisely because that is Walmart's business model - to be a price leader you have to pass on savings to customers or someone else will. If you think manufacturers are keeping all those profits from offshoring then you are very, very mistaken.

Profit margins are sometimes higher on domestically manufactured goods because of selection bias. The companies that are left are generally those which are not in labor intensive industries where offshoring makes sense due to intense price competition. The ones that are left are those that can for one reason or another protect their margins. Sometimes through IP, sometimes through capital efficiency, sometimes through automation, sometimes due to customer requirements, sometimes due to regulations. The US manufacturing sector is roughly the same size as China's when measured in dollars so plenty of stuff gets made here. Just not your McDonalds happy meal toys.

Re:Great article.

[itzly]

The motors and battery (which needs to be replaced every X years) for your new Prius are not so great for the environment.

The motors last forever if they are properly constructed. The battery is a prime target for recycling, because it's a lot cheaper to "mine" the battery for metals than digging them out of the ground. Whether the original mining is bad for the environment depends on whether people care about it or not. Making such a toxic lake is not a requirement, it's just cheaper. But if people no longer accept it, it's possible to make a clean factory.

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.