China's Electronic Waste Village

[calexanian]

Our government would rather give billions to junk science research than support a local recyceling industry. We subsidize corn which uses energy and creates waste, but won't fund something that has a direct inviromental impact. Let's fine companies who run short of carbon credits but let's help companies who import cheap junk that fails fast and fills up the landfill or worse, just gets burned in China.

[Someone]

I enjoy fixing rather than buying new as well.

The politicos will twist the issue to fit their agenda, but at its heart its an apolitical issue.

Cost Externalizing

Tragedy of the Commons

No easy solutions, unfortunately. Human nature is short term self interest.

Oversimplified and idealistic but a nice summary nonetheless:

Making lead out to be the evil character again, its use in such vast quantities not outweighing its low level of toxicity or lack of mobility in the environment compared to other industrial pollutants. Reducing lead use is a good thing but we should be equally focused on the similarly common pollutants of Mercury, Cadmium, Chromium, Arsenic, etc

[Kjelt]

Maybe it should be built into the purchase price.  Like car tires.

We already have that here in the netherlands. A few % extra with electronics and other recycables to pay for it.

Another true sad story, in the 70's we moved all our toxic waste esp. Ddt and carcogenic stuff like that (from the EU) to Poland to be disposed. Paid for it ofcourse.
They just stored it in large storage units but did not dispose of it, result when Poland became member of the EU they found these vast amounts of toxic waste and had to pay again billions to dispise of it properly. Lesson for the future: China is going to charge us one day again for cleaning the mess up.

[pickle9000]

Maybe it should be built into the purchase price.  Like car tires.

We already have that here in the netherlands. A few % extra with electronics and other recycables to pay for it.

Another true sad story, in the 70's we moved all our toxic waste esp. Ddt and carcogenic stuff like that (from the EU) to Poland to be disposed. Paid for it ofcourse.
They just stored it in large storage units but did not dispose of it, result when Poland became member of the EU they found these vast amounts of toxic waste and had to pay again billions to dispise of it properly. Lesson for the future: China is going to charge us one day again for cleaning the mess up.

Either that of they will compress it and make a new big seller, "Toxic Teddy Bears". Gets rid of the waste and makes extra cash. As a side benefit reduces human population growth by making everyone sterile (you also glow in the dark making it easier to read at night).

[VK3DRB]

The toxic pollution in third world countries like China is a by product of greed.

Agreed. That's why it needs to be done by the government: if $600 /iPhone isn't sufficient to deter excessive consumption of iPhones, how about $6K apiece?

I bet you that if a TV cost $60K each, or a 2n2222 cost $60 each, it will truly make some reason behavior changes.

Not to mention all the taxes that the government could then waste, oh, I mean, invest into the welfare programs for the poor, jobs for the teachers unions, green subsidies for the rich, .....

I can almost see an environmentalist utopia.

There are those environmentally aware and responsible, then there are tree hugging do-gooder greenies - vermin which has infested our governments at all levels. You remove a tree around on your own land around here will be fined $5,000 for each offence - such is the extent the greeny religion has spread. We even have a political party here called the Greens - a band interfering do-gooders telling everyone else how to live their lives.

I poison non fruit bearing trees or cut them down and I enjoy killing them.

Greenies should hang their heads in shame... http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/melbourne-storms-the-patch-mourns-boy-killed-in-wild-weather-20150301-13rtcn.html

[atferrari]

This is precisely why I do NOT give my electronics to be "recycled" - they simply get sold to some folks in China and end up polluting their land and poisoning their people.

And if you ever wonder where those "fake" chips come from, look at those pictures.

They are also some videos of those villages that make a living off those electronic junks and it pains me to think that some "environmental friendly" people are making a fabulous living off killing those poor people by dumping our electronics waste on them.

The same for India.

And many other "under developed" ones as well.

Danny,

Had anyone enough time it would be interesting to trace / find where:

Nuclear waste goes to.

Certain industrial process are implemented i. e. massive sandblasting, production of certain types of steel, vessels breaking...and the list goes on.

[cosmicray]

Stop it in one place and I'd bet it gets farmed out to another country. Even if you do the right thing in your own country how do you stop it elsewhere?

You have to stop in your own country first. There is no other choice.

[rollatorwieltje]

No doubt that is the correct and sane thing to do. Try to get the average consumer to pay for proper disposal is another matter.

Maybe it should be built into the purchase price.  Like car tires.

We used to have this bullshit tax in the Netherlands. It did exactly what you don't want, the collected money was actually often used to ship trash to China. It was about 30 cents per kilo, what are you going to do with that in a western country? Even someone on minimum wage can only blink his eye twice at a product and it's already not economically viable anymore to tear a product down properly.

[zapta]

We even have a political party here called the Greens - a band interfering do-gooders telling everyone else how to live their lives.

Beware, the proprietor is a staunch supporter

[madires]

Try to get the average consumer to pay for proper disposal is another matter.

That's where a well run government could have played an important role: a $20 surcharge for that rechargeable battery in your phone, a $50 disposal tax on that LCD monitor, a $120K surcharge on that nice Tesla of yours, ...

In-action / non-transaction should be just as taxable as action / transaction,

Good idea.  Even if it was only something like 1$ on hard drives, that 1$ could be paid back to the recycler at end of life in addition to the raw material recycling income (aluminum for example).  With some simple analysis, we should be able to turn recycling into a valid, profitable industry and recycle at the same time.

Actually, we got something like this here in Germany. Any vendor/importer of consumer electronics needs to be member of the official e-waste disposal system. He has to file the amount/size/weight of the consumer electronics sold and will be billed for the disposal. The vendor simply adds the disposal costs to the product's price, i.e. the customer buys the product inclusive disposal and brings the old or broken device to a municipal collection point. The system seems to work well, but it's quite unfair to very small vendors. There are several companies specialized in e-waste recycling. They do the same those poor Chinese do, just in an industrial way (locally!) and they are quite profitable. I doubt that the complete e-waste is processed by them, surely some villains ship parts of it overseas.

[Mechanical Menace]

There are several companies specialized in e-waste recycling. They do the same those poor Chinese do, just in an industrial way (locally!) and they are quite profitable. I doubt that the complete e-waste is processed by them, surely some villains ship parts of it overseas.

There's a massive (at least 10 acres) recyclers near to me that deal with e-waste, they seem to just take scrap in and pump raw materials out. I've talked a lot to people who work there and through what I can work out I don't think anyone would get a license to just ship stuff off to China, India, etc so the ones doing so must quite literally be villains lol.

Had anyone enough time it would be interesting to trace / find where:
Nuclear waste goes to.

In Britain (and I'd be pretty certain that like everything our standards are a bit lax compared to the rest of the developed world) it gets firstly dealt with in labs at the plant itself who basically filter it into 4 categories. The dangerously radioactive stuff that can't be reused goes into long term storage (i.e. hidden in abandoned mines). Then there's the stuff that can be reused as nuclear fuel, that's generally dealt with by the plant. Then there are radioactive but useful for industry/medicine byproducts, the most famous use for them is smoke detectors and sometimes plants will purposely run inefficiently to produce them. Then there's none radioactive stuff useful for industry, depleted uranium is probably the most useful and not just for bullets. <---That last one is probably the most dangerous to people and the environment believe it or not.

[funkyant]

Wow 

[Jeroen3]

It's incomprehensible how the human species can waste their living environments.
Is it overpopulation?

Do we feel guilty yet? For ordering those cheap pcb's in China?

[electr_peter]

I absolutely agree. But the problem is not only one of consumer mindset but an economic reality. Our economic system, as currently constructed, would (will) collapse if (when) we stop creating new stuff from virgin raw materials.

Had a chat with the dock supervisor at the county solid waste unit last week. He told me that there is no market for glass bottles, barely a market for soft plastic containers (milk, water, soda, etc), no market for heavier plastic (TV shells, etc), a minimal market for cardboard, no market for waste consumer electronics. Basically the county has to pay someone to haul most of this stuff away.

Some say that free market of recyclers will solve recycling issue. I call this nonsense, free market is not suited to recycle stuff by design (because there is no incentive to recycle materials with no demand without government action).

Few examples to illustrate he point. Recently I tried to recycle or refill (if possible) few toner cartridges. Toner shops said they only deal with non-refilled cartridges and cartridges that are in demand (so most old cartridges goes to waste and are not reused).

Another example. NY Times paper few years ago write about electronics recycling business and problems with it. One problem was a cascaded resell of recycling services/trash (so papers looks good but recycling is not done), other was recycling of parts that are no longer in demand (like CRTs). When CRTs monitors were popular, cycle went like this: materials for glass + lead + manufacturing -> CRTs -> CRTs recycling for raw materials -> manufacturing... Now CRTs are not popular, there is no demand and all this stuff is going to dumps. Free market has no real solution to this problem, it will only increase it.

We are pretty much screwed when only plastic bags are said to cause massive issues in environment. Solutions would be to use less stuff (with massive economic consequences), include costs of environment into product cost or similar.

[cosmicray]

We are pretty much screwed when only plastic bags are said to cause massive issues in environment. Solutions would be to use less stuff (with massive economic consequences), include costs of environment into product cost or similar.

I really do wonder if there is a large untapped market here. Once you disassemble a piece of consumer electronics, the constituent parts may be more recyclable than the assembled unit is. For example, in another thread I mentioned the Epson printer someone handed me at the rubbish truck a while back. My disassembly of that yielded 2 circuit cards, a power cord, a considerable amount of plastic shell, plus various ribbon cables, a few pieces of stamped formed metal, servos and gears. The plastic shell might be recyclable if it were chopped into smaller pieces/pellets, and bulk packed with others of the same plastic type. The same theory goes for glass containers (clear, brown, green, etc). If you collate like material, then reduce it to a manageable granule size, there may be someone out there quite happy to buy it from you. The trick is disassembly, and sorting, which is not terribly high skilled labor. The material chopper should be relatively straight forward.

[free_electron]

it's not just electronics.

google 'fake eggs' and 'gutter oil' ...

and there was a recent article on olive oil ... most of it isn't even olive oil at all...

lead laced toys,
melamine enriched milk
poisoned dog food
and glycol laced toothpaste ...

we're screwed.

[zapta]

We live longer than ever.

[pickle9000]

We live longer than ever.

Must be the melamine milk.

[dannyf]

I really do wonder if there is a large untapped market here.

That's precisely how it works today: those pcbs are identified, desoldered and resulting parts resorted and in many cases remanufactured to be sold as "new" parts.

[dannyf]

What angers me the most here is the unfairness. Here you have poor parents and kids laboring in toxic environment, really mortgaging their lives so that someone can pay a lower price for their Leaf, while the entirety of their environmental costs has been shifted to the people who can least afford to take them.

Yet, no one is championing for the poor Chinese or Indian's rights to equality.

[dannyf]

There is where I really hope a special and hefty tax is levied on those pcbs, electronics and especially batteries. I really don't mind paying $6K for an iPhone, or $20K for a new laptop if it means someone somewhere doesn't get sick from the electronic waste.

[pickle9000]

What angers me the most here is the unfairness. Here you have poor parents and kids laboring in toxic environment, really mortgaging their lives so that someone can pay a lower price for their Leaf, while the entirety of their environmental costs has been shifted to the people who can least afford to take them.

Yet, no one is championing for the poor Chinese or Indian's rights to equality.

That is the issue for me. I also know that if China and India are fixed another location will end up being nailed.

[tom66]

There is where I really hope a special and hefty tax is levied on those pcbs, electronics and especially batteries. I really don't mind paying $6K for an iPhone, or $20K for a new laptop if it means someone somewhere doesn't get sick from the electronic waste.

While we're at it can we tax the life-cycle environmental cost of ICE cars too? Including typical fuel usage, production cost, environmental pollution (local and global), etc.

[Kjelt]

What angers me the most here is the unfairness. Here you have poor parents and kids laboring in toxic environment, really mortgaging their lives so that someone can pay a lower price for their Leaf, while the entirety of their environmental costs has been shifted to the people who can least afford to take them.
Yet, no one is championing for the poor Chinese or Indian's rights to equality.

That should be the role of the chinese and Indian government. Esp. the chinese, they produce the stuff so it is in a sense good thinking that they should properly dispose of it also again. A lot of european countries do this already themselves but if and I say if the chinese government allows the import of the recycle electronic garbage for disposal they take upon themselves the duty to do this in a people friendly and eco friendly way. The real problem is the people responsible for this looking the other way while accepting a envelope with green.

[Kjelt]

But the good news is this will start to escalate and laws will be made. Don't forget that only 50 years ago in Europe and the US very dangerous chemical waste was also just dumped in lakes and the sea. I think it is fair to say that China in this case is at least 50 years behind europe and the us and they will solve it and take measures or they have to pay big time for the pollution in the future.