A new wrinkle in the “China as Global Trash Receptacle” story from UK’s Daily Mail:
“This is one of the most polluted towns in China – everyone who has come here says the same,” complains migrant worker Li Lengen, cradling his 18-month-old daughter as he sits beside a fly-blown pile of imported rubbish that represents his livelihood…
Preparing imported plastic for use by Chinese factories has transformed Lian Jiao [on the outskirts of Guangzhou] from a sleepy backwater into the world’s rubbish dump…Here, household waste from around the world is shipped via Hong Kong to be recycled in a chaotic and haphazard industry that is contributing to the Pearl River Delta’s environmental deterioration and putting the health of migrant workers and their children in jeopardy.
When we visited Lian Jiao in early September, we found a newly arrived 10-ton consignment of mostly British household waste being picked over by workers and their children to recycle for use in Guangdong’s plastics factories….The rubbish, which was carefully separated and placed into coloured bins in suburban driveways around the world, was shipped to Hong Kong in one of the container ships that used to return empty after bringing Chinese goods to the UK. [Full Text]
See also “China Serves as Dump Site for Computers” from the Washington Post.
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