How America’s Trash Becomes China’s Treasure
Bloomberg Businessweek has published a lengthy excerpt from contributor Adam Minter’s...
e-waste
China: Electronic Wastebasket of the World?
As the world’s largest producer of electronic products, China also plays a key role in the recycling and disposal of e-waste. From old computer parts to refrigerators, a large share of the world’s old electronics end...
E-Waste: There’s an App for That
Adam Minter of Shanghai Scrap wrote about e-waste in China, an urgent problem that is about the get worse with the introduction of the iPhone, he argues: Before year’s end, Apple and China Unicom will finally launch the...
Video: Following The Trail Of Toxic E-Waste
With lead poisoning in China in the news, 60 Minutes reran and updated their story from last November about e-waste in Guiyu. From their introduction: 60 Minutes is going to take you to one of the most toxic places on Earth...
Photo Series: Villages Filled with E-waste
Wenxuecity.com carries some photos taken in Guiyu, Guangdong, and presents the scenes of the e-waste “recycling” processes in the villages of the trash town. Rivers run black, the air is filled with toxic fumes and...
China 2008: Environmental Crisis
This next article in the CDT series on important issues facing China in 2008 focuses on the Environment. See also previous posts on Nationalism, the Developing World, and the Global Financial Crisis. China’s environmental...
Electronic Waste Processing Puts Chinese Children’s Health at Risk
E-waste in China has been getting more attention in the Western media, with a report on last week’s 60 Minutes program. Chemistry World magazine also reports on new findings on elevated levels of lead and miscarriages in...
Photo: Discarded computers waiting to be dismantled in Guiyu, by Bert van Dijk
Discarded computers waiting to be dismantled in Guiyu, by Bert van Dijk
Following The Trail Of Toxic E-Waste
CBS News has released a preview of this Sunday’s 60 Minutes program about e-dumping in China, which shows a camera crew being roughed up while filming in Guiyu: Jumped by a gang of men overseeing the e-waste operations who...
EPA Lets Electronic Waste Flow Freely, GAO Report Says
A new report from the Government Accountability Office blames the Environmental Protection Agency for the dumping of hazardous electronic waste into other countries such as China. From the Washington Post: The 63-page report...
Greenpeace Says Protest Led Hong Kong To Detain Waste
From AFP: Three containers with suspected toxic electronic waste from the United States were detained by Hong Kong inspectors after environmental activists boarded a cargo ship, a campaigner said Sunday. The activists from...
Chinese Town Where Old Presents Go To Die – Richard Spencer
Another chapter in the Guiyu e-waste story, this time from Daily Telegraph with a holiday twist: The Chinese town of Guiyu is the graveyard of Christmas past. It is where presents – game consoles, laptops, mobile phones – come to die. It is also where they are reborn. In this giant scrap-yard, so dangerously polluted […]
America Ships Electronic Waste Overseas – Terence Chea
From AP: Most Americans think they’re helping the earth when they recycle their old computers, televisions and cell phones. But chances are they’re contributing to a global trade in electronic trash that endangers workers and pollutes the environment overseas. While there are no precise figures, activists estimate that 50 to 80 percent of the 300,000 […]
The Circuit Board Bakers of Guiyu – Andrew Leonard
Salon’s How the World Works blog writes about Michael Zhao’s eDump documentary: A lifetime of blog posts decrying the environmental toll of high-tech industrial production does not begin to approach the impact of Michael Zhao‘s 20-minute documentary on the processing of e-waste in Guiyu, China. The images are extraordinary and unforgettable. The land, air, and […]
Electronic Waste Documentary Preview – Michael Zhao
This film took a very long time (more than a year) to produce. And it took not only a great deal of hard work, but also a lot of sadness to overcome to struggle to the finish line (for now). First I produced a multimedia package on this issue, available at michaelzhao.net/eDump. Then my colleagues […]
The Tao of Junk – Daniel Gross
With the focus on exports arriving in the U.S. from China, Slate Magazine looks at what exactly the U.S. is exporting to China: Economists make a big deal out of all the junk we import from China: tainted pet food, lead-laced toys, and enough cheap plastic tchotchkes to load up a landfill the size of […]
E-waste Recycling is Serious Health Threat in China – Jeremy Elton Jacquote
From Treehugger.com: When used computers, televisions and other electronic products are ready to go up to that big scrap heap in the sky, they often end their journeys lying in some large landfill in China. Indeed, over the last decade, China has quickly become the de facto repository for developed countries’ discarded electronics, known collectively […]
eDump: A Multimedia Site About Electronic Waste – Michael Zhao
Today Reuters reports on Guiyu, a Chinese e-wasteland: Guiyu is a modern day gold rush town. But instead of panning for gold in babbling streams, workers shift through piles of broken old computer parts in acrid smelling shacks, smelting down parts with crude equipment to extract valuable metals like gold and copper. [Full text] For […]
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