Where Does America's E-Waste End Up? GPS Tracker Tells All (pbs.org)

The United States produces more e-waste than any country in the world, reports PBS News Hour. But where does this e-waste go? The publication utilized the GPS coordinates in some of the e-waste to find out. Basel Action Network, a Seattle-based e-waste watchdog group partnered with MIT to put 200 geolocating tracking devices inside old computers, TVs and printers. They dropped them off nationwide at donation centers, recyclers and electronic take-back programs -- enterprises that advertise themselves as "green," "sustainable," "earth friendly" and "environmentally responsible." From the report: About a third of the tracked electronics went overseas -- some as far as 12,000 miles. That includes six of the 14 tracker-equipped electronics that e-waste watchdog group dropped off to be recycled in Washington and Oregon. The tracked electronics ended up in Mexico, Taiwan, China, Pakistan, Thailand, Dominican Republic, Canada and Kenya. Most often, they traveled across the Pacific to rural Hong Kong. You can read the report in its entirety here.

Comments

Welp

[ADRA]

"Most often, they traveled across the Pacific to rural Hong Kong"

RURAL Hong Kong, haha -- Even the New Territories can't be considered 'rural' by the most urbanite standards.

Newsflash: "Green" companies BS their customers

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> a Seattle-based e-waste watchdog group ...dropped them off nationwide at donation centers, recyclers and electronic take-back programs -- enterprises that advertise themselves as "green," "sustainable," "earth friendly" and "environmentally responsible." ...About a third of the tracked electronics went overseas

A lot of businesses quickly figured out that people who go "awww" when they see whales or polar bears are often more easily parted from their money than the general public, and since calling themselves "green" takes no actual extra work - you might even get the ganza-smelling dude hauling monitors to work cheaper if he thinks he's working for "a cause" - what did you really expect?

Let's be real

[wcrowe]

Let's be real. This stuff is not being "recycled". Oh, there might be some places pulling some precious metals out of the mix, but most of it is just plastic and metals that no one has any interest in recycling. There would be a lot less waste if devices were more modular, and standards were not constantly changing, but I don't know how you get companies to build stuff like that.