Title: Responsible Recycling vs Global Dumping – Electronics TakeBack Coalition
Headings: Responsible Recycling vs Global Dumping
Responsible Recycling vs Global Dumping
Responsible recycling
Global e-Waste Dumping
Primitive Processing Contaminates Workers, Residents
Exporting Harm: The High Tech Trashing of Asia
How much e-waste do we export each year?
Federal GAO Report Finds E-Waste Exports Handled Unsafely
CNN Report: “China: The electronic wastebasket of the world”

Content: Global e-Waste Dumping
The problem is that many electronics recyclers don’t actually recycle the electronics they collect from us. They can make more money by selling old electronic products to exporting waste traders than by processing it here in the U.S. Traders send it to developing countries where workers earn extremely low wages (often a few dollars per day) and where health and safety and environmental laws, enforcement, infrastructure and citizens’ rights are very weak. Simply stated, we are solving our e-waste problem by exporting it to poor countries around the globe. Primitive Processing Contaminates Workers, Residents
Former farmers cooking circuit boards. “ We can make 10 times more money doing this than we can from farming because the local government taxes farmers to much. ”Taizhou, China April 2004. ©2006 Basel Action Network (BAN)
In these countries, the e-waste ends up in backyard recycling operations, often literally behind peoples’ homes. One example is Guiyu, China, an area where a lot of our e-waste goes. They use crude and unsafe methods of taking apart our old computers and TVs to get to and remove the metals, which they can sell, causing great harm in the process. These dangerous practices include: