In Salon today, an article by Elizabeth Grossman on the export of recycled computers overseas, where their toxic innards end up polluting poor communities. Snip:
For years, developed countries have been exporting tons of electronic waste to China for inexpensive, labor-intensive recycling and disposal. Since 2000, it's been illegal to import electronic waste into China for this kind of environmentally unsound recycling. But tons of debris are smuggled in with legitimate imports, corruption is common among local officials, and China's appetite for scrap is so enormous that the shipments just keep on coming.
Link. BoingBoing reader Richard says, "One thing that was only touched upon in the article was also the issue of data security, as apparently not all of the computers are wiped clean." (images: Basel Action Network, via Salon.com.)
Reader comment: Dan Gilchrist says,
My friend Adam Minter, who lives half the time in Shanghai and half the time in Minnesota, has been covering the Chinese scrap industry for several years for a variety of publications — Far East Economic Review, Wall Street Journal, and others. He has become the scrap story king! Here's one he did for the Wall Street Journal: PDF Link. He even traced a shipment of scrap from Minneapolis to the recycler in China: Link. Other stories: one, two, three.
