Current has, in its Naked China series of videos, this interesting but scary breakdown of just what happens to all those old PCs, printers, and DVD players that are obsoleted every year and binned.
In a place like China, where manual labor is their most abundant natural resource, it isn’t hard to turn a profit from tearing down imported e-waste and selling the valuable bits. The thing is, so much of e-waste is toxic or otherwise dangerous (not to mention the poor conditions in general for laborers) that the towns where it is the chief industry are seriously troubled. Take a few minutes while scarfing down your daily ramen to get a close look at where our PCs go to die.
awful. this saddens me. it’s good apple is really concerned about the environment. hope others to follow.
Good video, but I didn’t see any kind of call to action at the end of it.
Also, what are the alternatives to this? Let’s say we accepted that treaty and don’t export hazardous materials, what will we do with them? Do we have methods to deal with them? If so, what kind of increase in cost would that have for consumers on the purchase of electronic goods?
Like I’ve always said… shoot ‘em into the sun.
There are lots of precious metals in electronics. Shooting them into the sun is a waste of money. What China needs is a government regulated method of extracting the metals in a safe way.