China’s ‘e-waste’ nightmare
p2pnet news | Off Topic:- “The air smells acrid from the squat gas burners that sit outside homes, melting wires to recover copper and cooking computer motherboards to release gold. Migrant workers in filthy clothes smash picture tubes by hand to recover glass and electronic parts, releasing as much as 6.5 pounds of lead dust.”
That’s the way Associated Press kicks off in a story centering on what’s euphemistically being called China’s “e-waste”.
“China now produces more than 1 million tons of e-waste each year, said Jamie Choi, a toxics campaigner with Greenpeace China in Beijing,” says the story, going on:
That adds up to roughly 5 million television sets, 4 million fridges, 5 million washing machines, 10 million mobile phones and 5 million personal computers, according to Choi.
“Most e-waste in China comes from overseas, but the amount of domestic e-waste is on the rise,” he said.
Accurate figures about the “shady and unregulated trade” are hard scarce, but “experts agree that it is overwhelmingly a problem of the developing world,” says AP. “They estimate about 70 percent of the 20-50 million tons of electronic waste produced globally each year is dumped in China, with most of the rest going to India and poor African nations.”
The European Union bans such exports, but Smith and others say smuggling is rife, largely due to the lack of measures to punish rule breakers. China, meanwhile, allows the import of plastic waste and scrap metal, which many recyclers use as an excuse to send old electronics there.
US states, “increasingly require that electronics be sent to collection and recycling centers, even from those centers, American firms can send the e-waste abroad legally because Congress hasn’t ratified the Basel Convention,” says the story, adding:
Shanghai opened a dedicated e-waste handling center last year, but most residents and companies prefer “guerrilla” junkers who, “ride through neighborhoods on flatbed tricycles ringing bells to attract customers,” AP hasYu Jinbiao of the Shanghai Electronic Products Repair Service Association, a government-backed industry federation, saying.
“Those guerrillas are convenient and offer a good price,” Yu said, “so there is a big market for them.”
Also See:
Associated Press – China Not Fighting Off E-Waste Nightmare, November 18, 2007
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for the download, and here for details. Click here or here to learn how to by-pass censorship in your area.
