[GreenYes] Fwd: Tech Trash Poisons Chinese Villages (fwd)

[Ted Smith <tsmith@svtc.org>]

> This is a follow up
> story to our report "Exporting Harm" which documents the human
> toll of globalization and free trade in toxics
> ---------------------
> Tech Trash Poisons Chinese Villages
> Thu Feb 28, 2:10 PM ET
> By MARTIN FACKLER, Associated Press Writer
>
> GUIYU, China (AP) - Chen Wu was glad when his village became a
> dumping
> ground for discarded computer hardware from the United States.
>
> Salvaging computer parts meant jobs for this rural area of China's
> southeast — even if it did poison the drinking water and create an
> unsightly landscape of broken circuit boards and hard drives.
>
> But Chen's attitude changed two years ago when his 11-year-old
> daughter
> grew weak, suffered nose bleeds and was diagnosed with leukemia. Two
> of
> her classmates were stricken by the same illness.
>
> Teachers say more than half the students complain of chronic
> breathing
> problems.
>
> "We did not care much when outsiders talked about the
> environmental
> pollution here. We did not see any harm," said Chen, 50, who works
> at a
> drug rehabilitation center. "But now our kids are getting
> sick."
>
> Environmental groups consider Guiyu, a cluster of five villages in
> Guangdong province about 150 miles northeast of Hong Kong, a
> cautionary
> tale for poor countries that accept high-tech waste.
>
> Over the last decade, these groups say, as much as 80 percent of the
> old
> computers, monitors and printers collected for "recycling" in
> the United
> States wound up in China, India and Pakistan, according to a report
> released Monday by environmental groups, documenting the flood of
> e-waste
> to the southeaster Chinese villages.
>
> Most of the e-trash, which environmentalists say comes mostly from
> brokers
> and recyclers who collect old equipment from larger U.S. businesses,
> ends
> up in Guangdong, in Guiyu and other towns.
>
> There, workers rip through the waste — trashed hardware bearing
> brand
> names including Compaq, Apple and IBM — looking for every reusable
> part.
> Some components are melted to extract precious metals such as gold
> and
> platinum.
>
> What's left — from sophisticated flat screens to low-grade plastics —
> is
> burned or dumped beside Guiyu's rice paddies and waterways.
>
> Toxic chemicals such as mercury, lead and dioxins are released into
> the
> air and water.
>
> The first sign of danger in Guiyu came when fish disappeared from a
> local
> river in the early 1990s, not long after the first truckloads of
> foreign
> computer waste rolled in.
>
> Chemicals poisoned the wells, so drinking water must now be trucked
> in.
>
> The odor of burning plastic is so strong that classes at the nearby
> Dongyuan Middle School must sometimes be halted.
>
> One teacher, who gave only his last name, Guo, said about 60 percent
> of
> students and even many teachers cough and have trouble
> breathing.
>
> "The villagers here are growing richer," he said, "but
> their wealth is
> built atop the health of other victims."
>
> This year alone, the United States will export as many as 10.2
> million
> discarded computers to Asia, including about 9 million to China, 
> the
> environmental groups' report said.
>
> It's hard to tell how much of it will end up in Guiyu, where the
> local
> economy has come to depend on computer garbage despite China's 1996
> banning of computers and monitors as waste.
>
> Environmental authorities in Shantou, a city with jurisdiction over
> Guiyu,
> say they have launched five crackdowns over the last two years,
> shutting
> down hundreds of computer waste operations.
>
> But most of these quickly reopened, they concede, often with the help
> of
> village officials. The Beijing government has weak control in Guangdong,
> a
> region where organized criminal gangs are strong.
>
> Environmentalists estimate the region now has some 2,500 computer
> waste
> businesses, mostly family-run. The industry may employ as many as
> 100,000
> people, many of them migrants from elsewhere in China.
>
> "People in Guiyu have made a living out of waste collection 
> for
> generations. They used to deal in pig bones and duck feathers. But
> now
> it's integrated circuits," said the head of the Shantou
> environmental
> bureau, who gave only his family name, Kuang.
>
> Officials in Guiyu refused to comment.
>
> Imported computer waste has grown into a full-fledged underground
> economy
> in this part of China, said one man who employs two dozen people
> stripping
> apart desktop PCs from California and Japan.
>
> The man, who asked to be identified only by his surname Li, said he
> buys
> about 200 tons of computer waste a year from Taiwanese brokers for
> about
> $600 per ton. The waste is smuggled via the port of Nanhai and trucked
> to
> Guiyu.
>
> Outside Li's dirt-floored workshop, workers use reed baskets to unload
> a
> truck full of hard drives, keyboards and PC bodies.
>
> Inside, workers rip them apart with hammers and screwdrivers. Others
> sift
> the debris for anything of value — tiny nuts and screws, 
> capacitors,
> high-grade plastic.
>
> In a smaller room, two women hold green circuit boards over open
> coal
> fires. As the fumes of melting lead solder redden their unprotected
> faces,
> they use pliers to pick off tiny black computer chips.
>
> The recovered parts are separated into burlap sacks. Li said he sells
> them
> by weight to buyers, mostly from Japan.
>
> Li said he earns more than $12,000 a year — 15 times the average
> rural
> salary in Guangdong.
>
> "We're worried about our children, sure," said Li, who said he
> has a
> 15-year-old daughter. "But what can I do? This is our
> livelihood."

Ted Smith
Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition/Campaign for Responsible Technology
760 N. First Street,San Jose, CA 95112
408-287-6707-phone;  408-287-6771-fax
http://www.sCa— org/svtc/
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Food for thought:  How Gandhi Defined the Seven Deadly Sins
· Wealth without work; · Pleasure without conscience; · Knowledge without character;· Commerce without morality;
· Science without humanity;· Worship without sacrifice;· Politics without principle