E-Waste Capital of the World: Guiyu, China

We all know how important it is to recycle our old electronics and it's becoming easier to do so by all the services out there who give incentives for bringing back those electronics to be recycled. I know a lot of companies take those electronic goods and refurbish them so they're able to sell them back to consumers. But not all companies and recyclers do that... so what do those people do with those parts and where do these discarded items end up? 

Guiyu, China employs over 150,000 e-waste workers who work long 16+ hour days, dis-assembling 1.5 million pounds of old electronics and recapturing whatever metals and parts they can re-use or sell. The people of Guiyu begin work right on the side of the street, as massive piles of various computer parts, wires and cables are strewn about the streets and into their river banks. These laborers snip and untangle wires,  grind plastic computers cases into particles, pry chips from circuit boards and then dip those circuit boards in acid baths to dissolve the lead, cadmium, and other very toxic metals. There's no doubt that is city is facing serious environmental health problems. The air reeks of burning plastics and noxious metals, and the water is incredibly toxic.
It's easy to say that this industry should stopped and that imports of electronic waste should be banned and enforced, but the whole economy of Guiyu is dependent on this industry. Another key factor is that even if the town of Guiyu was shut down, this industry would just continue on to somewhere else because people from all over the world are still going to dispose their used up electronics and suppliers will still pay for those raw materials. 

How do we fix this problem? When reading articles about Guiyu, the e-waste capital of the world, it reminded me of the video we watched earlier in the quarter, "The Story of Electronics." Our country especially just consumes, consumes, consumes and doesn't even think of where are disposed goods go to. It's sad to me how places like Guiyu and other e-waste villages are driven by our consumption, and how little educated they are about the health impacts that are being exposed to them through this process. 

Story of Electronics Video

Guiyu: E-wasteland of the world