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Strategies & Market Trends : China Warehouse- More Than Crockery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (5372)	8/18/2005 2:21:14 PM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6370

E-waste recycling yields toxics abroad By Karl Schoenberger Mercury News Greenpeace International released a report Wednesday documenting extraordinarily high levels of toxic contamination at electronic waste recycling centers in southern China and in the New Delhi suburbs. Sponsors of the report, including the San Jose-based Computer Take-Back Campaign, said the research also found evidence that the United States and other advanced nations are continuing to export hazardous e-waste to developing countries for recycling and disposal. Greenpeace tested recycling workplaces for heavy metals and toxic organic compounds -- such as lead, cadmium, PCBs and mercury -- and said it found levels of contamination that could pose serious hazards to human health. ``This is not recycling at all. It's hazardous waste dumping on the poor,'' Ted Smith, chairman of the Computer Take-Back Campaign, told reporters Wednesday. Rick Goss, director of environmental affairs at the Arlington, Va.-based Electronic Industries Alliance, said U.S. producers ``do not participate or condone the sending of used electronics to facilities or countries that can't manage them.'' ``What's going on in China and India shouldn't be happening,'' Goss said. He said secondary dealers, not electronics manufacturers, collect the devices and ship them abroad. ``We support the safe and appropriate recycling of used electronic products.'' Photographs posted Smith's group posted photographs taken on location showing electronic debris bearing the brand labels Apple, Panasonic and Philips. A junked power supply found by investigators in China bore an identification tag from the New York Stock Exchange. Smith said his group's research suggests more than half of America's e-waste is exported -- instead of being recycled responsibly under safe conditions at home. The Greenpeace study was conducted in March in the vicinity of Guiyu in China's Guangdong Province and in the New Delhi area. More than 70 samples were collected of ground water, river sediment and indoor dust. Dust collected from the floors of the workshops where metals are recovered from the solder used in computers contained concentrations of lead that were ``hundreds of times higher than typical levels recorded for indoor dusts in other parts of the world,'' the study said. In the Delhi suburbs of Mayapuri and Buradi, battery-dismantling workshops yielded dust samples that contained 40,000 times more cadmium than typical floor samples. The report, ``Recycling of Electronic Wastes in China & India: Workplace & Environmental Contamination,'' is available online at www.e-takeback.org/press_open/export_waste .htm. It supplements a 2002 study of conditions in Guiyu's recycling workshops titled ``Exporting Harm,'' which also was based on Greenpeace field work. That report can be found at www.ban.org/E-waste/technotrashfinalcomp.pdf. Smith and his collaborators timed the announcement of the Greenpeace report to coincide with this week's deadline in the European Union for implementation of the Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment Directive. The directive is a set of regulations that require producers of electronic products sold in European Union countries to take responsibility for the collection and recycling of their products when they become obsolete. Iza Kruszewska, a Greenpeace activist based in London, told reporters the importance of the directive is that it motivates companies to design their products to be easier -- and less hazardous -- to recycle. But she questioned the logic of not having the same obligations mandatory in the United States, the world's largest market. `Double standard' ``We see a double standard here, where companies are likely to design lead out of their products in Europe, but not in the United States,'' Kruszewska said. While federal legislation mandating European-style e-waste regulations is not likely to be enacted, several states have taken up the cause. California's e-waste law is not considered a good model because it levies an advance recovery fee instead of forcing producers to pay for recycling, according to proponents of the European system. California consumers pay a $6 to $10 fee when they buy new products containing cathode ray tubes or other displays to fund the recycling of old monitors and televisions. Maine passed the nation's first producer take-back bill last year, and similar legislation is under consideration in New Jersey, New York City and Massachusetts. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact Karl Schoenberger at kschoenberger@mercurynews .com or (415) 477-2500. mercurynews.com