Digital Waste Worth More Than Gold, Copper Ore 302
tcd004 writes "Imagine sheer mountains of discarded Pentium IIIs, tractor trailers overflowing with discarded wall warts. Photojournalist Natalie Behring visited Guiyu, China and documented the world's biggest digital dump where, for $2 per day, the locals sort, disassemble, and pulverize hundreds of tons of e-waste. The payoff is huge: computer waste contains 17 times more gold than gold ore, 40 times more copper than copper ore. But the detritus also leaches chemicals and metals into local water supplies."
Good for them (Score:4, Insightful)
It's kind of sad though that environmental laws here, even though they mean well, ultimately make it too costly for us to recycle PCs here compared to China.
Who cares about the gold and copper? (Score:3, Insightful)
Quick solution : out of sight, out of mind (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, this is a very irresponsible way to dispose off the toxic waste. Sure, the rich can claim that it is actually beneficial to the local economy in the poor countries. As the article mentioned, some dump site employs as many as 100,000 people. And sure, it's a global economy, meaning that anything can be "exported".
But, have we ever considered the consequences to the planet as a whole? After all, this planet belongs to everyone, and we should take up the responsibility to protect it better. The rich countries have the proper means and resources to handle the wastes better than the poor countries. But instead, we all chose the easy way out: we just let the poor poison the planet. It's currently poisoning China's, India's and Nigeria's backyard, so that America, Europe, Japan etc, can have their own little clean and green lawn.
Guess what happens when they run out of dumping ground? I visited a site a couple of years ago. I happened to ask what they would do in this case. The foreman said:"Easy, there are plenty of fishermen out of job, as the fish stock is running out. They would be happy to help us dump into the ocean." Ha, same attitude as to how the rich get rid off their wastes.
Good to know that we are all alike, rich or poor. Eventually, it will come to bite us all back from behind. Happy dumping, everyone.
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
And regarding both environmental and social standards it would be rather short-sighted to further lower our western standards only to be more competitive to countries which are even more exploitative towards both environment and populace. Instead, efforts should go in the direction of installing world-wide minimum standards in both regards...
Stupidity (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if it is true that computer-trash contains 17 times the gold, compared to gold-ore, it does not follow that it is "worth more", that would be true only if getting the raw-material, handling it and extracting the valuable metals cost precisely the same. Which ain't likely.
You also don't find all that many million-ton piles of computer-scrap just sitting around.
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is amusing (Score:4, Insightful)
what's the alternative? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's good that this stuff is being recycled at all. We should now focus on:
-- reducing the amount of heavy metals we put into electronics
-- improving the safety and working conditions of the people doing the recycling
-- redesigning electronics to reduce overall waste and make parts easier to recycle
-- making sure that more electronics reach those countries in working order (open hardware standards and increasing compatibility can help with that)
Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
How about a law that would ban US imports in France (and other european countries) because the poor American workers have to work for more than 35 hours a week?
Re:Good for them (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The shipbreaking essay is pretty sweet too (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that's the usual platitude in defense of sweatshops. That it's the "best alternative of a bad lot."
Thing is, the people who use this line usually don't mention why the other choices are so few and so bad. It's due to economic policy and the pressure of foreign multinationals to "modernize" the economy of third world nations, and it's nothing new.
Back in England there was a thing called 'The Enclosure of the Commons.' This was a period when the people of England had their self-subsistence systematically taken away from them by force of law. New rules took away rights to previously public land and put restrictions on personal gardening on small plots, so people who previously grew their own food or traded with their neighbors were suddenly forced to buy at the markets, which required money, which meant getting a job, probably at a factory. It was frequently justified at the time by letters written by wealthy industrialists (who, in a completely unrelated fact, were having a hard time getting a self-sufficient people of artisans, craftsmen, and farmers to come in and apply for jobs in factories for pennies a week) claiming that leisure-time was bad for people and would lead the commoners to crime and wickedness and perhaps even revolutionary politics. (Gasp!)
Similar things have happened and are happening all over the world. People have their traditional way of life destroyed, their self-sufficiency ripped away from them, and in the end, are given the 'free choice' of hard labor in a sweatshop or dying of starvation.
There's a good post on Kevin Carson's Mutualist blog on the whole 'Sweatshops Ain't So Bad!' argument over here. [blogspot.com] No, I'm not affiliated, actually I'm more of a red anarchist sort than a mutualist, but damned if he isn't one of the smartest people writing on the internet.
Re:Environmentally irresponsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
If I remember my Spanish right, it's the English word for "Amiga".
Re:Good for them (Score:2, Insightful)
Trying to describe "western-run sweat-shops" as the great new saviour for third-world countries, just because their exploitation is slightly less brutal than that of "local ones" (I won't take that as a proven rule either), is simply cynical.
Our future "mining" will all be like this (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good for them (Score:3, Insightful)
Want proof? Count prostitutes in places where prostitution is such a mass phenomenon, introduce adequate social welfare there, count prostitutes four weeks thereafter.
Re:Fool's gold (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good for them (Score:2, Insightful)
What the heck would you consider the minimum those workers in some of the worlds poorest countries should have? $7.00/hour minimum wage? Sick leave, vacation leave, retirement plan? 6 months of unemployment if they get laid off?
When the industrial revolution started in the west, people ran from the farms to work in the "dark satanic mills", because they made a lot more money than they would have otherwise. For many it was a choice between a job and starvation, just like the "sweat shop work" that you are talking about.
Sometimes I think some of our western friends would prefer if the people starved, instead. How about comparing the working conditions in the "sweat shops" to the conditions of other poor people living in those countries, instead of to the condition of westerners working in air-conditioned cubicles. More of an apples-and-apples comparison, I mean.