Business

E-waste not, want not

After receiving much media exposure about its illegal “e-waste” problem, the Chinese government is taking steps to crackdown on markets that import electronic garbage, such as old printers and copiers, but experts say the raids won’t do much to reduce the importation of high-tech garbage, which is often extracted for raw materials or reassembled and supplied to other markets in the country.

“Market for illegal e-waste shut down“
People’s Daily Online
June 14, 2007

SHENZHEN: A market in Foshan, South China’s Guangdong Province, that imported illegal electronic waste products for nine years, was smashed by the local government on Tuesday.

More than 100 law enforcement officials in Dali Town, where the Huafa Electrical Appliance Market is located, sealed off the market about 3 pm and seized several tons of illegal electronic products, including printers, duplicating machines and electrographs, from four warehouses . . . .

The waste products were mainly sourced from developed countries such as Japan and the United States.

While most of the waste products were sent to illegal treatment factories for extracting raw materials, some were cleaned and reassembled at Huafa and supplied to other markets in China, according to CCTV.

A reassembled printer could be sold for as low as 200 yuan ($26.30) at the Huafa market. The buyer could then sell it at four times the price at other markets.

What’s scary to me is that those of us who recycle our old gadgets probably think we’re doing a good thing, but few of us realize that we’re contributing to a dangerous toxic loop around the world. The stuff we dump on other countries gets reassembled into stuff like kids’ jewelry, then it’s sent back to where it came from, prompting consumer recalls, because apparently, when you try to turn a computer into a necklace, you expose toxic pollutants into the environment. Eek!

Read this great article from the Wall Street Journal, which explains everything better than I can.

“Lead Toxins Take a Global Round Trip”
By Gordon Fairclough
July 12, 2007

YIWU, China — High levels of toxic lead turning up in cheap jewelry from China are prompting recalls in the U.S. But some of the lead used by these Chinese manufacturers comes from an unconventional source: computers and other electronic goods discarded in Western countries and dumped in China.

Two recent studies suggest lead from such sources is turning up in Chinese-made jewelry sold at U.S. discount stores and malls — closing a globalization loop in which toxic materials from high-tech garbage are turned into potentially dangerous goods for kids and shipped back . . . .

The United Nations estimates that up to 50 million tons of e-waste is thrown away world-wide each year. Large amounts are shipped into China, even though the country’s laws essentially ban imports of e-waste, according to China’s State Environmental Protection Administration.

For lead, the trip to China from the U.S. typically goes something like this: U.S. consumers and businesses send their old electronics to recycling firms — often by way of innocuous recycling drives. Some of those firms then sell the electronics to dealers in the U.S., who sell them to dealers in China. Chinese companies buy the e-waste and strip lead and other re-sellable materials from it — often discarding harmful materials along the way, adding to local pollution. Those firms then sell the recovered lead to alloy makers like Ms. Liu, who provide it to Chinese manufacturers. The lead makes its way — sometimes at toxic levels — into trinkets sold to consumers in the U.S.

Here are some important links to sources mentioned in the story:

According to the U.N., some 20 to 50 million metric tonnes of e-waste are generated worldwide every year.

I found an uncorrected proof of the lead contamination study here, thanks to Google (look at it in HTML format; I couldn’t open the PDF.) If anyone has the real thing, please post your comments below.

China’s State Environmental Protection Administration banned the import of e-waste a long time ago.

The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition: “Talk about globalization,” says Ted Smith, the organization’s founder. “If you drew a map of this, the arrows would go in lots of different directions.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t regulate the export of most old electronics, according to the WSJ.

Additional info:

An e-waste FAQ from the U.N. Environment Programme.

“Where does e-waste end up?” from Greenpeace.

And I found a great string of posts about China’s e-waste, written by EcoIron, who blogs about “green computing and sustainable technologies in IT.”

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