Electronic Waste

Electronic Waste

Wiqas Ahmed, Andrew Collinghan, Jennifer Huang

What is E-Waste?

• Loosely discarded, surplus, obsolete, or broken electrical or electronic devices.

• Television– 20% of CRTs are comprised of lead

• Cell Phones– Cell phone coating are often made of lead– Batteries were originally composed of nickel and cadmium.

• Computer– Lead, mercury, cadmium

• Guiyu 贵屿 – a town on the South China Sea coast.

• -largest electronic waste (e-waste) site on earth• -Guiyu began receiving e-waste around 1995• - The city has 21 villages with 5,500 family workshops handling e-waste• - roughly estimated one million tons of electronic waste being shipped to China per year, mostly from the

United States, Canada, Japan, and South Korea. Guiyu receives more e-waste than any other area in China• -90% of US e-waste is exported to China and Nigeria• -estimated 150,000 e-waste workers in Guiyu who labor to process the over 100 truckloads that are

dumped into the 52 square kilometer area every day• -Guiyu is appropriately nicknamed the "electronic graveyard"

Impacts: • -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• -Children are exposed to the dioxin-laden ash as the smoke billows around Guiyu• -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• -Lead in the blood of Guiyu's children is 88% higher than in the average child• -Guiyu is the world's second most polluted area• -Guiyu has the highest levels of cancer-causing dioxins in the world.

• -lead and copper were 371 and 115 times higher, respectively, than areas located 30 kilometers away

• -Once a rice village, the pollution has made Guiyu unable to produce crops for food and the water of the river undrinkable

• - In Guiyu the price of water is ten times more than in Chendian, the neighbouring township that is today the main source of Guiyu's water

• • American businessman Mark Dallura of Chase

Electronics says: "I could care less where they (the electronics) go. My job is to make money

• Unburdened by the costs of safe recycling, the economics behind e-waste disposal in Guiyu can mean a profitable living.

• In the past two decades incomes have risen sharply even as the quality of the environment has plunged.

• The locals, who were initially driven to garbage recycling by their poverty, have become middle class.

• Many of the locals have moved out of their traditional single story homes in to newly built three and four story buildings where the ground floor is reserved as a scrap-sorting workshop

• According to the local government Web site, city businesses process 1.5 million tons of e-waste a year, pulling in $75 million in revenue. As much as 80 percent of it comes from overseas.

• An average computer yields only $1.50 to $2 worth of commodities such as shredded plastic, copper and aluminum

• Taxes on e-waste businesses provide Guiyu with 90 percent of its commercial and industrial taxes, making officials reluctant to regulate them at all