[OKC] From NPR: After Dump, What Happens To Electronic Waste?

[Miles, Karen]

After Dump, What Happens To Electronic Waste?

by NPR Staff
December 21, 2010
  
 
In this file photo from 2001, a migrant child sits atop a pile of
unrecyclable computer waste imported to Guiya, China, from other
countries.
 
Many people will receive a new computer or cell phone this holiday
season - and throw out their old equipment. And when old TVs and
computers end up in landfills, the toxic metals and flame retardants
they contain can cause environmental problems.
Yet even recycling your e-waste, as it's called, does not always mean
you're doing the right thing.
"The dirty little secret is that when you take [your electronic waste]
to a recycler, instead of throwing it in a trashcan, about 80 percent of
that material, very quickly, finds itself on a container ship going to a
country like China, Nigeria, India, Vietnam, Pakistan - where very dirty
things happen to it," says Jim Puckett, the executive director of the
Basel Action Network, which works to keep toxic waste out of the
environment.
Recyclers can make money from selling scavenged metal from electronic
equipment, says Puckett, but the process to retrieve usable metals is
typically extremely toxic. Workers who remove the metals often have no
protective equipment and breathe in high levels of toxic chemicals,
which are then released into the atmosphere. And most of the countries
where the processing takes place - China, India, Ghana, Pakistan - do
not have regulations in place to protect workers or prevent the
primitive recycling operations.
Puckett describes a trip he took, to Guiya, China, in December 2001 as a
"cyber-age nightmare.  It's the only part of the world where you'll go
and see thousands of women on any given day that are sitting ...
basically cooking printed circuit boards," he says. "As a result,
they're breathing all of the brominated flame retardants and the lead
and tin that are being heated up. You smell it in the air. You get
headaches as soon as you enter this area. It really is quite sad."
What You Should Do With Your Old Electronics
So how does your computer or handheld electronic device end up in
developing countries, where people remove usable metals by hand?
Article continues at: 
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/21/132204954/after-dump-what-happens-to-elect
ronic-waste&sc=nl&cc=es-20101226
 
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