Tech Business
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Written by Gizmo
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Thursday, 28 May 2009 10:24 |
Tim Johnson - Knight Ridder Newspapers
GUIYU, China—When discarded computers vanish from desktops around
the world, they often end up in Guiyu, which may be the
electronic-waste capital of the globe.
The city is a sprawling computer slaughterhouse. Instead of offal
and blood, its runoff includes toxic metals and acids. Some 60,000
laborers toil here at primitive e-waste recycling—if it can be called
that—even as the work imperils their health.
Computer carcasses line the streets, awaiting dismemberment.
Circuit boards and hard drives lie in huge mounds. At thousands of
workshops, laborers shred and grind plastic casings into particles,
snip cables and pry chips from circuit boards. Workers pass the boards
through red-hot kilns or acid baths to dissolve lead, silver and other
metals from the digital detritus. The acrid smell of burning solder and
melting plastic fills the air.
"I don't think this is recycling," said Wu Song, an environmental
activist from nearby Shantou University. "They ignore the environment."
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