Article as below:
For years, the environmentalists and the media have highlighted the danger to Chinese workers who dismantle the world’s junked electronics. People in the world refer it to “e-waste”. As the heartland of “e-waste”, China having a serious environmental problem due to the disposal of electronic wastes from all over the world.
This ugly business is driven by pure economics. The developed countries have a strict environmental regulations had make them paid much and they are trying to reduce the cost of disposal. China is one of their best options. It’s ten times cheaper to export the waste to developing countries. In China, poor migrants from countryside willingly endure the health risks to earn some money. They are melting the wires to recover the copper and cooking computer motherboards to release gold. They smash the picture tubes by hand to recover glass and electronic parts, releasing the lead dust to air.
Experts said that about 90 percent of e-waste end up in dumps that observe no environmental standards, where shredders, open fires, acid baths and broilers are used to recover gold, silver, copper and other valuable metals while spewing toxic fumes and runoff into the sky and river. They estimated about 70 percent of the 20-50 million tons of electronic waste produced globally each year is dumped in China, with most of the rest going to India and poor African nations.
As noted by UNEP (2005):
“Every year, 20 to 50 million tones of electrical and electronic equipment waste( “ e-waste”) are generated world wide, wich could bring serious risks to human health and the environment. While 4 million PCs are discarded per year in China alone.”
The rapidly growing “e-waste” stream must be solved together by the governments, not just strengthen the regulations. They must seek the cooperation of NGO like greenpeace to overcome this problem.
This ugly business is driven by pure economics. The developed countries have a strict environmental regulations had make them paid much and they are trying to reduce the cost of disposal. China is one of their best options. It’s ten times cheaper to export the waste to developing countries. In China, poor migrants from countryside willingly endure the health risks to earn some money. They are melting the wires to recover the copper and cooking computer motherboards to release gold. They smash the picture tubes by hand to recover glass and electronic parts, releasing the lead dust to air.
Experts said that about 90 percent of e-waste end up in dumps that observe no environmental standards, where shredders, open fires, acid baths and broilers are used to recover gold, silver, copper and other valuable metals while spewing toxic fumes and runoff into the sky and river. They estimated about 70 percent of the 20-50 million tons of electronic waste produced globally each year is dumped in China, with most of the rest going to India and poor African nations.
As noted by UNEP (2005):
“Every year, 20 to 50 million tones of electrical and electronic equipment waste( “ e-waste”) are generated world wide, wich could bring serious risks to human health and the environment. While 4 million PCs are discarded per year in China alone.”
The rapidly growing “e-waste” stream must be solved together by the governments, not just strengthen the regulations. They must seek the cooperation of NGO like greenpeace to overcome this problem.
1 comment:
ya, i agree with the fact that e-waste can be a more troublesome and irretable problem due to its huge amount of waste. But how come CHina is the one country where the e-waste in thrown from all over the world. There are many solutions to turn this e-waste into recyclable products to gain monetary values for a country like China.
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