Electronic waste in Guiyu - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Guiyu, China, in Guangdong

Guangdong

Guangdong is a province on the South China Sea coast of the People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province...

Province is made up of four small villages. It is the location of the largest electronic waste
Electronic waste
Electronic waste, e-waste, e-scrap, or Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment describes discarded electrical or electronic devices. There is a lack of consensus as to whether the term should apply to resale, reuse, and refurbishing industries, or only to product that cannot be used for its...

(e-waste) site on earth,. China is believed to be the predominant recipient of the world's electronic waste, with a roughly estimated one million tons being shipped there per year, mostly from the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, and South Korea

South Korea

The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

. The waste arrives via container ship

Container ship

Container ships are cargo ships that carry all of their load in truck-size intermodal containers, in a technique called containerization. They form a common means of commercial intermodal freight transport.-History:...

s through the ports of Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

or Pearl River Delta

Pearl River Delta

The Pearl River Delta , Zhujiang Delta or Zhusanjiao in Guangdong province, People's Republic of China is the low-lying area surrounding the Pearl River estuary where the Pearl River flows into the South China Sea...

at Nanhai. From there it is trucked to informal e-waste processing centres such as Guiyu, which receives more e-waste than any other area in China. Guiyu began receiving e-waste around 1995, and today, there are an estimated 150,000 e-waste workers in Guiyu who process the more than 100 truckloads that are dumped into the 52 square kilometre area every day. Guiyu is appropriately nicknamed the "electronic graveyard"

Health impacts

Many of the primitive recycling

Recycling

Recycling is processing used materials into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution and water pollution by reducing the need for "conventional" waste disposal, and lower greenhouse...

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. Workers use their bare hands to crack open electronics to strip away any parts that can be reused- including chips, or valuable metals such as gold, silver, etc. Workers also "cook" circuit boards to remove chips and solder

Solder

Solder is a fusible metal alloy used to join together metal workpieces and having a melting point below that of the workpiece.Soft solder is what is most often thought of when solder or soldering are mentioned and it typically has a melting range of . It is commonly used in electronics and...

s, burn wires and other plastics to liberate metals such as copper

Copper

Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...

; use highly corrosive and dangerous acid baths along the riverbanks to extract gold

Gold

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...

from the microchip

Integrated circuit

An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...

s; and sweep printer toner

Toner

Toner is a powder used in laser printers and photocopiers to form the printed text and images on the paper. In its early form it was simply carbon powder. Then, to improve the quality of the printout, the carbon was melt-mixed with a polymer...

out of cartridges. Children are exposed to the dioxin

Dioxins and dioxin-like compounds

Dioxins and dioxin-like compounds are by-products of various industrial processes, and are commonly regarded as highly toxic compounds that are environmental pollutants and persistent organic pollutants . They include:...

-laden ash as the smoke billows around Guiyu, and finally settles on the area. The soil has been saturated with lead

Lead

Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...

, chromium

Chromium

Chromium is a chemical element which has the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in Group 6. It is a steely-gray, lustrous, hard metal that takes a high polish and has a high melting point. It is also odorless, tasteless, and malleable...

, tin

Tin

Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn and atomic number 50. It is a main group metal in group 14 of the periodic table. Tin shows chemical similarity to both neighboring group 14 elements, germanium and lead and has two possible oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4...

, and other heavy metals

Heavy metals

A heavy metal is a member of a loosely-defined subset of elements that exhibit metallic properties. It mainly includes the transition metals, some metalloids, lanthanides, and actinides. Many different definitions have been proposed—some based on density, some on atomic number or atomic weight,...

. Discarded electronics lie in pools of toxins that leach into the groundwater

Groundwater

Groundwater is water located beneath the ground surface in soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated deposit is called an aquifer when it can yield a usable quantity of water. The depth at which soil pore spaces or fractures and voids in rock...

, 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 54% higher on average than that of children in the nearby town of Chendian. Piles of ash and plastic waste sit on the ground beside rice paddies

Paddy field

A paddy field is a flooded parcel of arable land used for growing rice and other semiaquatic crops. Paddy fields are a typical feature of rice farming in east, south and southeast Asia. Paddies can be built into steep hillsides as terraces and adjacent to depressed or steeply sloped features such...

and dikes holding in the Lianjiang river.

A recent study of the area evaluated the extent of heavy metal contamination from the site. Using dust samples, scientists analysed mean heavy metal concentrations in a Guiyu workshop and found that lead and copper were 371 and 115 times higher, respectively, than areas located 30 kilometres away. The same study revealed that sediment from the nearby Lianjiang River was found to be contaminated by polychlorinated byphenyls at a level three times greater than the guideline amount.
Studies are under way to assess the extent to which chemicals like these magnify through bioaccumulation

Bioaccumulation

Bioaccumulation refers to the accumulation of substances, such as pesticides, or other organic chemicals in an organism. Bioaccumulation occurs when an organism absorbs a toxic substance at a rate greater than that at which the substance is lost...

Economic rationale

In the interest of business, e-waste follows the path of lowest costs and lowest standards.

The economic incentives created by strict domestic regulation, non-existent or unenforced regulations in developing countries, and the ease of free trade brought about by globalization, force recyclers to export e-waste. The value of parts in discarded electronics provides an incentive for poverty-stricken citizens to migrate to Guiyu from other provinces to work in processing it. Even still, the average worker, adult or child, makes barely US $1.50 a day (17 cents an hour). The average workday is sixteen hours. This $1.50 is made by recovering the valuable metals and parts that are within the piles of discarded electronics. Even this relatively tiny profit is enough motivation for workers to risk their health.

Agriculture

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

Media coverage

Guiyu as an e-waste hub was first documented fully in December 2001 by the Basel Action Network

Basel Action Network

The Basel Action Network is an non-governmental charitable organization working to combat the export of toxic waste, toxic technology and toxic products from industrialized societies to developing countries. BAN operates globally but is based in Seattle, Washington, United States, with a partner...

, a non-profit organization which combats the practice of toxic waste export to developing countries in their report and documentary film entitled Exporting Harm. The health and environmental issues exposed by this report and subsequent scientific studies have greatly concerned international organisations such as the Basel Action Network and later Greenpeace

Greenpeace

Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...

and the United Nations Environment Programme

United Nations Environment Programme

The United Nations Environment Programme coordinates United Nations environmental activities, assisting developing countries in implementing environmentally sound policies and practices. It was founded as a result of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in June 1972 and has its...

and the Basel Convention

Basel Convention

The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, usually known simply as the Basel Convention, is an international treaty that was designed to reduce the movements of hazardous waste between nations, and specifically to prevent transfer of...

. Media documentation of Guiyu is tightly regulated by the Chinese government, for fear of exposure or legal action. For example, a November 2008 news story by 60 Minutes

60 Minutes

60 Minutes is an American television news magazine, which has run on CBS since 1968. The program was created by producer Don Hewitt who set it apart by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation....

, a popular US TV news program, documented the illegal shipments of electronic waste from recyclers in the US to Guiyu. While taping part of the story on-site at an illegal recycling dump in Guiyu, representatives of the Chinese recyclers attempted without success to confiscate the footage from the 60 Minutes TV crew. Greenpeace has protested the environmental impacts of e-waste recycling in Guiyu using different methods to raise awareness such as building a statue using e-waste collected from a site in Guiyu, or delivering a truckload of e-waste dumped in Guiyu back to Hewlett Packard headquarters. Greenpeace

Greenpeace

Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...

has been lobbying large consumer electronics companies to stop using toxic substances in their products, with varying degrees of effectiveness.

Clean up efforts

Since 2007, conditions in Guiyu have changed little despite the efforts of the central government to crack down and enforce the long-standing e-waste import ban. Recent studies have revealed some of the highest levels of dioxin ever recorded. However, because of the work of activist groups and increasing awareness of the situation, there is hope for the site to be improved. "It can be done. Look at what happened with lead acid batteries. We discovered they were hazardous, new legislation enforced new ways of dealing with the batteries which led to an infrastructure being created. The key was making it easy for people and companies to participate. It took years to build. E-waste is going the same route. But attitudes have changed and we will get there," Mr. Houghton says. Zheng Songming, head of the Guiyu

Guiyu

Guiyu is a town on the South China Sea coast, infamous in the global environmentalist community for its reception of E-waste.-Administration:...

Township government has published a decree to ban burning electronics in fires and soaking them in sulfuric acid, and promises supervision and fines for violations. Over 800 coal-burning furnaces have been destroyed because of this ordinance, and most notably, air quality has returned to Level II, now technically acceptable for habitation.

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