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GUANGZHOU, China, 26 February 2002 --In recent years, Guangzhou city customs has intensified efforts to intercept and send back "foreign trash" that is unable to meet local requirements for inbound goods. In 2001, customs intercepted 2.84 million yuan (US$342,995) worth of "used goods," including 2,326 tires, 8,414 electronic home appliances, 339 computers and 84 parts and bits of used cars, according to the Feb. 25. Zhongguo Huanjing Bao (China Environment News) According to customs officials, this "foreign trash" entered China mainly through two ways: secretly carried by small ships sailing back and forth between Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau; through regular shipments, or by mis-declaring the types of goods. Experts noted that "foreign trash" is mainly discarded or cheap foreign goods that can easily be sold in China, such as used electronic home appliances. They are normally sold to economically backward regions of the country, the Zhongguo Huanjing Bao article said. Refuse from the developed world The Associated Press reported on Feb. 25 that a cluster of villages in southeastern China has been exposed to high levels of toxic waste as a result of local dumps of foreign computer parts. Quoting a recently released report issued by the Seattle-based Basel Action Network entitled "Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia," the AP story said that investigators who visited waste sites in Guiyu, China, in December witnessed men, women and children pulling wires from computers and burning them at night, fouling the air with carcinogenic smoke. In a desperate search for items of value (many computer components contain gold and silver), plastics and circuit boards are burned, printer cartridges are pried open, and lead-laden cathode ray tubes are smashed. Because of this, the ground water has become so polluted that drinking water has to be trucked in from a town 18 miles away, the report said. One river sample in the area had 190 times the pollution levels allowed under World Health Organization guidelines. Much of the waste has been sent from the United States. A 1989 treaty known as the Basel Convention restricts such transfers of harmful waste from one country to another, but the United States has not ratified it, according to the AP story. The "Exporting Harm" report says some in the industry estimate as much as 50 to 80 percent of the United States' electronic waste collected in the name of recycling actually gets shipped out of the country. A portion of it ends up in China, India and Pakistan. "Everybody knows this is going on, but is just embarrassed and don't really know what to do about it," Ted Smith, head of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, told AP. "They would just prefer to ignore it."

Mulling solutions Several organizations have proposed a way to solve the transer-of-waste problem: making electronics manufacturers accountable for their obsolete products. Electronics products makers are being singled out because these types of goods, especially computers, tend to become obsolete much faster than other products. One idea is to add a fee to the initial purchase price of a computer, much like a bottle deposit, to fund clean and efficient recycling programs. A few states are considering such plans, the AP story said, including California, where two state senators last week introduced bills that would slap fees on electronics to pay for reducing e-waste. To contact ChinaOnline, send an e-mail to infochinaonline.com. Copyright (C) ChinaOnline, 2002. All Rights Reserved