Perhaps this video will make you think twice before sending old computers to a computer recycling center:
Salvage is big business overseas, where every imaginable kind of waste, from old cell phones to outdated cruise ships, is broken down so that valuable components can be recovered.
Unfortunately most foreign salvage workers are the working poor. They are seldom, if ever, taught how to safely handle toxic materials and they generally work without any personal protective equipment. And the waste left over from salvage is largely disposed using no environmental safeguards. Much of it is dumped into lakes or rivers or simply piled into mountains of rubble.
This is the other side of the clean, convenient, and modern lifestyle of affluent Western nations.
Readers, are you comfortable with this?
You got an alternative?
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I think a good place to start would be for computer and electronics manufacturers to take responsibility and oversee the recycling process. Perhaps that would best be accomplished by convincing computer manufacturers to build their own overseas recycling centers that utilize proper worker safety and pollution control procedures. Recycling can be a beneficial business if done safely.
The virtual absence of environmental and employment laws overseas means that no one can force these companies to do this. It will have to be a decision on their part. And it will require them to sacrifice some of the financial benefits of unregulated recycling.
Perhaps a heavy dose of shame would encourage such responsibility. I also believe that we need to dismiss the "sunshine and roses" propaganda about recycling and look at what is really going on.
- Mike
Posted by: Vigilante | October 19, 2007 at 10:58 PM