You'll never work in this industry again - AST 1997
|
|
|
China's toxic e-waste pollution worsens
MAINLAND CHINA'S toxic pollution from "recycling" electronic scrap is a worsening problem, writes the Associated Press.
The US is a major source of e-waste that ends up in China, because it's the only developed country that hasn't ratified the Basel Convention, the UN ban on the export of hazardous waste to developing countries. It's ten times more expensive to recycle e-waste in the US.
It's been going on for years - we first wrote about the problem more than five and a half years ago - but now the situation in China's getting worse because China is generating, and dumping, more electronic scrap internally as its rapidly urbanising population gets more affluent. Beijing has signed the Basel Convention, but isn't enforcing it effectively.
China produces over a million tons of e-waste per year, but almost none of it is recycled safely. China doesn't yet have the recycling regulations, or the will, to do so, apparently.
Much more electronic scrap enters the country illegally from overseas, primarily from the US, due to the corruption of customs inspectors. A crisp hundred dollar bill taped to the inside of a container of electronic scrap will get it through Chinese customs, it's reported. µ
L'INQ
PeoplePC
Share this:
Share
Only the US? are you suggesting ships from the EU and other places don't make a nice trip to china?
Let's be fair here.
With all the crap about emissions standards and recycling stateside, They need to start doing something about shipping all this sCrap to china in the first place. Yep I blame the same environmentalist that cheaply ship it to china instead of spending the proper money to have the chemicals neutralized/ recycled.

I am all for the environment. I am all for moving towards some sort of technological equilibrium. However, That will never happen until people become responsible for their own sCrap. 

I doubt people will ever become responsible though. I figure hell will freeze over first.
Since so much of the un-recyclable crap came from China in the first place they need to figure out what to do with it when it comes home. I don't have much hope in them doing anything though. 

My "made in China" IBM monitor had three parts when I called IBM. The swivel base, the power cord, the rest. It went in the trash because I could not buy the part needed to fix it, maybe it got shipped back to China.