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Electronic waste in Guiyu

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Guiyu, China, in Guangdong Province is made up of four small villages. It is the location of the largest electronic waste (e-waste) site on earth,.[1] China is believed to be the predominant recipient of the world's electronic waste, with a roughly estimated one million tons being shipped there per year, mostly from the United States, Canada, Japan, and South Korea. The waste arrives via container ships through the ports of Hong Kong or Pearl River Delta at Nanhai. From there it is trucked to informal e-waste processing centres such as Guiyu, which receives more e-waste than any other area in China. Guiyu began receiving e-waste around 1995, and today, there are an estimated 150,000 e-waste workers in Guiyu who process the more than 100 truckloads that are dumped into the 52 square kilometre area every day.[2] Guiyu is appropriately nicknamed the "electronic graveyard" [3]

Health impacts

Many of the primitive recycling operations in Guiyu are toxic and dangerous to workers' health. 88% of workers suffer from neurological, respiratory or digestive abnormalities or skin diseases. Higher than average rates of miscarriage are also reported in the region. Workers use their bare hands to crack open electronics to strip away any parts that can be reused- including chips, or valuable metals such as gold, silver, etc. Workers also "cook" circuit boards to remove chips and solders, burn wires and other plastics to liberate metals such as copper; use highly corrosive and dangerous acid baths along the riverbanks to extract gold from the microchips; and sweep printer toner out of cartridges. Children are exposed to the dioxin-laden ash as the smoke billows around Guiyu, and finally settles on the area. The soil has been saturated with lead, chromium, tin, and other heavy metals. Discarded electronics lie in pools of toxins that leach into the groundwater, making it so polluted that the water is undrinkable. To remedy this, water must be trucked in from elsewhere. Lead levels in the river sediment are double European safety levels, according to the Basel Action Network.[4] Lead in the blood of Guiyu's children is 88% higher than in the average child. Piles of ash and plastic waste sit on the ground beside rice paddies and dikes holding in the Lianjiang river. Guiyu is world's second most polluted spot, while Lake Karachay is world's first most polluted spot.[citation needed] Even visitors to the city claim to still experience headaches and strange metallic tastes in the mouth.[citation needed]

A recent study of the area evaluated the extent of heavy metal contamination from the site. Using dust samples, scientists analysed mean heavy metal concentrations in a Guiyu workshop and found that lead and copper were 371 and 115 times higher, respectively, than areas located 30 kilometres away.[5] The same study revealed that sediment from the nearby Lianjiang River was found to be contaminated by polychlorinated byphenyls at a level three times greater than the guideline amount. Studies are under way to assess the extent to which chemicals like these magnify through bioaccumulation.[citation needed]

Economic rationale

In the interest of business, e-waste follows the path of lowest costs and lowest standards.[6]

The economic incentives created by strict domestic regulation, non-existent or unenforced regulations in developing countries, and the ease of free trade brought about by globalization, force recyclers to export e-waste. The value of parts in discarded electronics provides an incentive for poverty-stricken citizens to migrate to Guiyu from other provinces to work in processing it. Even still, the average worker, adult or child, makes barely US $1.50 a day (17 cents an hour).[citation needed] The average workday is sixteen hours. This $1.50 is made by recovering the valuable metals and parts that are within the piles of discarded electronics. Even this relatively tiny profit is enough motivation for workers to risk their health for.[7]

Agriculture

Once a rice village,[8] the pollution has made Guiyu unable to produce crops for food and the water of the river undrinkable.

Media coverage

Guiyu as an e-waste hub was first documented fully in December 2001 by the Basel Action Network, a non-profit organization which combats the practice of toxic waste export to developing countries in their report and documentary film entitled Exporting Harm.[4] The health and environmental issues exposed by this report and subsequent scientific studies[9] have greatly concerned international organisations such as the Basel Action Network and later Greenpeace and the United Nations Environment Programme and the Basel Convention. Media documentation of Guiyu is tightly regulated by the Chinese government, for fear of exposure or legal action[citation needed]. For example, a November 2008 news story by 60 Minutes, a popular US TV news program, documented the illegal shipments of electronic waste from recyclers in the US to Guiyu. While taping part of the story on-site at an illegal recycling dump in Guiyu, representatives of the Chinese recyclers attempted without success to confiscate the footage from the 60 Minutes TV crew.[10] Greenpeace has protested the environmental impacts of e-waste recycling in Guiyu using different methods to raise awareness such as building a statue using e-waste collected from a site in Guiyu, or delivering a truckload of e-waste dumped in Guiyu back to Hewlett Packard headquarters. Greenpeace has been lobbying large consumer electronics companies to stop using toxic substances in their products, with varying degrees of effectiveness.[11]

Clean up efforts

Since 2007, conditions in Guiyu have changed little despite the efforts of the central government to crack down and enforce the long-standing e-waste import ban. Recent studies have revealed some of the highest levels of dioxin ever recorded. However, because of the work of activist groups and increasing awareness of the situation, there is hope for the site to be improved. "It can be done. Look at what happened with lead acid batteries. We discovered they were hazardous, new legislation enforced new ways of dealing with the batteries which led to an infrastructure being created. The key was making it easy for people and companies to participate. It took years to build. E-waste is going the same route. But attitudes have changed and we will get there," Mr. Houghton says. Zheng Songming, head of the Guiyu Township government has published a decree to ban burning electronics in fires and soaking them in sulfuric acid, and promises supervision and fines for violations. Over 800 coal-burning furnaces have been destroyed because of this ordinance, and most notably, air quality has returned to Level II, now technically acceptable for habitation.

See also

References

  1. ^ Johnson, Tim (April 9, 2006). "E-waste dump of the world". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 2007-03-09.
  2. ^ "China focus: Chinese recycling base in pursuit of sustainable development". Xinhua General News Service. May 23, 2005. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |ref name= ignored (help)[dead link]
  3. ^ Yeung, Miranda (April 21, 2008). "There's a dark side to the digital age". South China Morning Post. Guangdong, China. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)
  4. ^ a b "Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia" (pdf). Basel Action Network. February 25, 2002.
  5. ^ Leung, Anna (March 4, 2008). Hong Kong http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es071873x?prevSearch=heavy+metals&searchHistoryKey. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help); Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)
  6. ^ Templeton, Nicola (Spring, 2009). "Is Washington's E-Cycle Program Adequate". Seattle Journal For Social Justice. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)
  7. ^ "Waste not want not? Not in the world of computers". Business Daily Update. September 27, 2006. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)(registration required)
  8. ^ "You'll never think the same way again". July, 2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  9. ^ "Scientific Articles". Basel Action Network.
  10. ^ http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/06/60minutes/main4579229.shtml CBS News, 60 Minutes, "Following the trail of toxic e-waste," Nov 6 2008
  11. ^ Chi-Chu, Tschang (May 24, 2005). "Greenpeace launches e-waste drive in China". The Straits Times. Singapore. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)
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