Photo caption: E-waste piled in the street waiting to be disassembled

Technology has brought greater convenience to people’s lives, but the downside is that it also causes all kinds of pollution, such as noise and air pollution. The environmental consequences of the rapid growth of the electronics industry and the consumer culture of increasing rates of mass consumption of electronic products are disastrous. Increasing rates of technological change has rendered electronic products virtually disposable due to rapid rates product obsolescence. Enormous amounts of electronic products are discarded by urban dwellers while they are still brand-new. These hazardous electronic wastes (E-wastes) are being exported to developing countries like China. However, the effect on people and environment caused by the e-waste is extremely harmful and irreversible. For example, if the soil and underground water are contaminated, it is almost impossible to make them pure again, thus endangering everyone.

Recently, a new scene has appeared on the street in Hong Kong. Makeshift signs saying, “Buy computers, TV sets, fax machines and cordless phones…pick up at your door” are set up in busy streets. Sitting next to them, you’ll find a buyer who looks like from Mainland China.

E-wasted shipped to China

According to Hong Kong Greenpeace, these buyers are mostly from Chaozhou and Shantou City in Guangdong Province. They not only sell this e-waste to the recyclers but also ship it to China, whilst the recyclers also send the garbage to China, Southeast Asia and Africa. Cities as Nanhai, Huizhou, Shantou and Chaozhou in Guangdong province have become the distribution centers of e-waste exported from Hong Kong.

The foreign garbage does not only come from Hong Kong, but also from US, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and other counties. Meanwhile, Chinese people own 0.3 billion TV sets, and every year 5 million computers are discarded in China. The amount of e-waste produced in China will also be surprising in the future.

Guiyu Township is well known for its e-waste industry. There are four villages in Guiyu, they are Huamei, Longgang, Xianpeng and Beilin Village. People there started to disassemble e-waste in 1995. There are at least 300 such family workshops and businesses. They hire tens of thousands of workers from Anhui and Hunan Province. A lot of workers are women and children. They dispose millions of tons of e-waste each year.

“The Pollution Is Shocking”

Lai Yun is the Poisonous Waste Project Director of Greenpeace. He went to Guiyu Township in June and July this year. He said, “The pollution in Guiyu is shocking.” The e-waste disposal factories are set up one after another along the street. The discarded computers and electronic devices are everywhere. Local villagers and outside workers live in humble shelters on the riverbank and farmland. There are countless black mountains of garbage near the river and the acid tanks are lining up. The burning of e-waste is releasing toxic gas containing bromine, chlorine, dioxin, DXNs, furan PAHs, etc.

Lai said as soon as he entered Guiyu, tears were coming out of his eyes due to the irritating effects of electronic parts dipped in sulfuric acid and of burning plastic. His whole body was soaked with the smell. He thought he could get rid of it by taking a shower, but the water in the hotel also had the smell. When he walked in a local farmer’s market, he saw the food stores were next to the disassembling workshops. “It’s heart-breaking to see things like that,” he said.

In Guiyu, the workers wear no protection when they working on the e-waste. They use bare hands to smash the monitors or cartridges in order to get the copper and ink, and dip computer chips into strong acid to extract the rare metals.

Green Peace tested the sediment on the riverbank. The results show that the concentrations of harmful heavy metals greatly exceed EPA standards. Barium levels were ten times over the allowable limit, tin 152 times, chromium 1338 times and lead 212 times. Contaminant levels in water exceed the standards by many thousands of times. Since the water is contaminated, people living in Guiyu have to get water from 30 kilometers away.

Contaminated water used for drinking, cooking and washing

Lai Yun had gone to a village where people eke out a living by burning the electrical circuits to extract copper. There were about 100 people in that village, including pregnant women. The land and houses were covered with black dust and children were playing football in the ashes. They used the contaminated water for drinking, cooking and washing.
Guiyu is just the top of the iceberg. Since China’s reform and opening up, the traditional recycling industry has revived. Most of the township enterprises are recycling plastic, electronic products and hardware, which greatly speed up the environmental pollution. However, poor people don’t have much choice between poverty and exposure to toxic chemicals.