space Press Releases, News Stories

Business Daily

CHINA, 26 February 2002 -- An international network of environmental groups claimed on Monday that China, Pakistan and India had become the world's dumping ground for toxic technology garbage, warning there was no limit on their size as users dump older computers and other high-tech gear. The amount of "electronic" or "e-waste" is growing at a rate of 18 per cent annually, charged the coalition including Greenpeace China, SCOPE of Pakistan, Toxics Link India and the US-based Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, with 1998 figures tabulated by the US National Safety Council exceeding seven million tonnes. Discarded computers and other gear contain a "witches' brew" of toxic substances including PVC plastic refuse, lead, brominated flame retardants, barium and phosphor, the groups said, putting the onus for the dumping on the United States and other "rich economies" that contribute 80 per cent of e-waste. These countries "made use of a convenient, and until now, hidden escape valve -- exporting the e-waste crisis to the developing countries in Asia," the activists stated in a report. Among the most egregious dumping sites is the formerly bucolic area known as Guiyu in China's Guangdong Province, off the Lianjiang River, a four-hour drive northeast of Hong Kong. As many as 100,000 poor men, women and children use hammers, chisels and other crude tools to bust apart discarded computers and computer monitors, earning pennies for the computer junk recycling they do. The workers are "often unaware of the health and environmental hazards involved in operations," including open burning of plastics and wires, using acid to extract gold, melting and burning soldered circuit boards and cracking and dumping toxic lead laden cathode ray tubes used in computer monitors. These pollutants are being dumped into the Lianjiang River, as well as along the banks, in open fields and in irrigation canals, polluting ground water. Such dumping has necessitated the import of potable water, the report said. The mess is a "cyber-age nightmare," claimed coalition spokesman Jim Puckett. "They call this recycling, but it's really dumping by another name."

Other e-waste sites are thought to exist on the Asian subcontinent, the coalition reported -- in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi and in New Delhi in India.

The activists blamed the US technology industry for the dump, saying it had backed legislation exempting the export of computer junk by categorizing it as recycled trash instead of toxic waste. "Silicon Valley is not out to poison China," insisted Margaret Bruce, director of environmental programs at the Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group (SVMG), a high-tech US trade and policy organization that counts Intel, Cisco, Apple among its members.

"Unfortunately, the legacy of our high-tech explosion ends up where it shouldn't."

Michael Wero, another SVMG spokesman, said the technology industry was wrestling with who is responsible for policing e-waste dumping, though enviromentalists counter industrialists have had ample time to deal with the problem. "They've had 20 years to figure out what they should be doing," said Ted Smith, a spokesman for the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. "It's not very responsible leadership for an industry that prides itself as being cutting-edge."