Results tagged “ewaste”

• Ghosts of the Machines - OR - Just where do all of those Chinese PCs go to die, anyway? [Shanghai Scrap] On August 28, Science, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals, ran a news item regarding ongoing studies of the health effects caused by environmentally unsound processing of e-waste (PCs, monitors, printers, etc) in south China… But there’s a problem with the Science story, and those like it: they insist on blaming China’s e-waste problems on foreigners, and thus deflect attention away from the fact that Chinese e-waste is the fastest growing and largest component of the waste stream arriving in South China (and, especially, into Guiyu, the notorious e-waste processing hub). And, in doing so, publications like Science provide cover to the Chinese government officials, and the Western and Chinese consumer electronics companies who have - collectively - failed to do much of anything about the problem."
• China's First Female Railroad Engineer [All-China Women's Federation] "Sitting in her airy and clean apartment, 80-year-old Tian Guiying, appears no different from any other retired senior citizen. But Tian has the distinction of being New China's first-ever woman locomotive engineer. Tian was the youngest of six daughters in a fisherman's family, resident in a poverty-stricken village near the coastal city of Dalian in northeastern Liaoning Province. To her parents, Tian's birth meant little more than a heavier burden."
• Party’s Agenda in China Seems to Fall Flat [New York Times] "China’s Communist Party elite had billed its four-day strategy session as an attack on “acute problems” that threatened the party’s political standing, like official corruption, China’s yawning gap between the rich and poor, and the lack of democracy within the party’s own ranks. But besides an anticorruption directive that would force officials and their families to disclose their property holdings and investments, initial reports from the meeting last week suggested that the Central Committee’s members either were reluctant to make major changes, or disagreed over how those changes might be made."

Ever wonder what happens to your old electronics? 60 Minutes aired a story on the dirty underbelly of electronics "recycling" in the States, and it turns out that a significant amount of American "e-waste" ends up in Chinese landfills. As if China didn't produce enough garbage of its own, computers, cell phones, household electronics, and pretty much anything with petty salvageable parts find their way to Chinese junkyards, and are burned, ripped apart and corroded for valuable metals.

• E-waste 'recycling' in Guiyu, China [Alex Hofford] "So today I decided to upload more photos from a recent trip to Guiyu, the 'e-waste processing capital of China', that I made as part of a field project for my MJ course at the University of Hong Kong's JMSC. I have put these photos at the back of the album, behind the photos from Guangxi Province and Hong Kong that I took in 2007 and 2008."
• 9,000 officials guilty of graft: SPP [China Daily] "The Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) revealed yesterday that more than 9,000 officials were found guilty of corruption in the first six months of the year and said it had investigated 6,277 industrial bribery cases. Qiu Xueqiang, SPP deputy procurator general, told a conference of procuratorate chiefs that the industrial bribery cases involved 6,842 people."
• China snubs World Games opening [BBC] "China has boycotted the opening ceremony of the World Games in Taiwan, an official with the games has said. A spokesman for the games, Hermann Kewitz, said China had not given an explanation but said that Chinese athletes would compete in the events. Beijing's decision came after organisers allowed Taiwan's President Ma Ying-jeou to open the games."

Shanghai Scrap has a great analysis of the differences in mentality between recycling in China and recycling in the West. While in Europe and North America recycling is a moral act done almost as a penance for overconsumption, in the developing world it's done because it's economical.