The "famous name" of the Jiaojiang Port in Taizhou is due to the e-waste from which ships and ships come from. In addition to the "foreign waste" of the United States, Japan, and South Korea, there are many places in Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang. Electronic waste. The town of Fengjiang in Luqiao District can be seen in villas of two or three floors. Famous vehicles such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz are commonplace. Porsche and Other 4S repair shops live in close proximity to a home where a metal rancid, garbage-filled dump site is spread.
1 pound of Intel's chip can be deposited more than 3 grams of gold, when the industrial gold sold, can earn a few hundred dollars. In a non-standard battery production workshop, the workers dismantled the used batteries and dumped the sulphuric acid at random. Then they threw the lead plates into the furnace. When the fire burned, the black smoke dispersed everywhere...
The owner of the grocery store in the village, Lao Wang, said that this place had not been able to grow any food for a few years. The villagers did not care. They were engaged in e-waste on almost every household. They were mainly dismantled during the day and were mostly burned at night. , smell a long time ceaselessly. “In the past two years, the electronic demolition did make a group of villagers rich, but in the past few years, the sequelae of this line have begun to appear, and many people have suffered from this or that disease. The boss who made some money runs. I went to other cities and even went abroad. The rest of the people who work here are mostly foreign workers."
This is a dirty secret of the electronic age. E-waste contains lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, and polyvinyl chloride, all of which are toxic and can damage the brain and cause cancer. In Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, Shanghai and the world's electronic waste collected here, compared with the notorious Guangdong Guiyu, Qingyuan and other places, Taizhou is known as the "rising star", here is the largest e-waste dismantling base in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and It is called "Chernobyl" by foreign media. A huge ecological chain enveloped the entire sky with diffuse black smoke. The IT Times reporter opened the box of this industrial chain and found the opium-like poisonous fruit that was immersed in it.
IT Times You Yifei Photography Report CFP
Shanghai: Unscrupulous traders are trying to seize electronic scrap. Zhang is a scavengers. He always went to the various districts of Shanghai Huayang Road and Changning Road in the morning and looked through the litter box to search for electronic waste that was ignored. "I'm looking for discarded computer motherboards, toner cartridges, ink cartridges, electrical circuit boards, and integrated blocks. Collect them and sell them directly to the waste recycling bins. Sometimes one board can sell tens of dollars." Zhang Xiang and his counterparts to grab time, grab the site. Others went to "mine mining" at 5 o'clock. He set off at 4 o'clock. In addition to dumping bins, Lao Zhang will occasionally put a stall in the community to receive electronic scrap at a low price and change hands to make some difference. Wastes that have not been excavated in the rubbish bin or useless scrap are treated as ordinary rubbish and transported by sanitation vehicles to the suburbs for routine incineration and burial.
Something more advanced than Lao Zhang is those small shops that repair and recycle electronic products. The reporter saw in the electronic market of Qijiang Road that shops with the words “recycling computers and recycling mobile phones†were everywhere. A clerk told the IT Times reporter that as long as they are valuable electronic waste products, they are very interested. Some of the newer second-hand mobile phones and second-hand computers can be sold directly after being polished. Electronic components that have already been damaged can often be obtained for only a few yuan or a few dozen yuan, and they can be sold to electronic waste recycling companies and can make money. “This type of recycling company is abound on the Internet.†I saw this clerk search for “e-waste†in Baidu, suddenly jumped out of a series of promotional advertisements such as “Fengshengâ€, “Huajinâ€, “Jieshengâ€, etc. Recycling companies all claim to have rich industry experience and financial strength. "They will generally pick up the goods at home, we will put together the waste, packaged and sold." And the future of these electronic waste products, both scavengers and shopkeepers do not know.
“The entire industry has a huge interest chain.†According to Jiang Yufeng, who is an industry source and the head office of the Shanghai Waste Recycling Service, e-waste should have a healthy ecological chain, that is, corporate and individual e-waste, which is collected through social channels. It goes to a small recycling station, then sells it to a formal electronic dismantling company, extracts valuable products through professional and environmentally friendly methods, and sells it to smelting foundry companies.
However, due to the low purchase price of formal electronic dismantling companies, a certain processing fee is usually charged, leaving many recyclers in the middle to avoid them. “Although there are only two or three companies that have the qualification for hazardous waste disposal in Shanghai, they still face the problem of 'flooding'. Many electronic wastes have flowed to illegal channels, and some self-employed people have acquired prices that are 10% to 20% higher than the market price. For example, the market price of a ton of scrap iron is 2,300 yuan, and they recycle it for 2,450 yuan, taking all the waste from the market into their arms."
So expensive to recover, why not lose money? Jiang Yufeng shook her head and said that these self-employed people walked along a pattern that was contrary to the laws of the market and led the entire ecological chain to the blind road. “The processing of electronic waste is very complicated. It is necessary to extract available metals, plastics, and other materials from electronic components, and to avoid as much as possible the huge environmental pollution. A formal large-scale dismantling company needs to spend a lot of money. When funds are used to purchase equipment, an environmentally friendly dismantling device often costs hundreds of thousands and millions, and through centralized disposal of harmful substances through these devices, the risk of environmental pollution can be effectively reduced. The flea market is sold to individual workshops at a low price, and precious metals are extracted by open methods such as open burning. The residual metal waste is often left untreated and discarded at will. The waste gas, waste liquid, and waste residue generated during the process are discarded. And so on, causing serious pollution to the atmosphere, soil and water bodies. Since their processing costs are very low, they can finally obtain considerable profits from companies that are dismantling more than normal."
Taizhou, Zhejiang: Where did the e-waste of the Yangtze River Delta's “most poisonous†e-waste dismantling place go after it was recovered by unscrupulous traders? In the mediation of many times and recycling companies, the reporter finally found clues - most of the electronic waste in northern cities gathered in Wen'an, Hebei, Huanghua, Guangdong, Fujian, most of the electronic waste flows into Guiyu Town, Longtang Town, Dali, Guangdong The town, and the ultimate destination of e-waste in Shanghai - Taizhou, Zhejiang. A person in charge of a recycling company told reporters that they had close cooperation with local dismantling companies in Taizhou, and that the electronic waste they had obtained was transported to Taizhou by means of shipping and land transportation.
“Today we will take you to the most poisonous places in the world to see. There are many people who do not want you to see those, that is, the small town in southern China. There you cannot breathe, you cannot drink water, there are blood vessels for the children there. Lead flows in.†In 2009, the beginning of a documentary, CBS chose this language to describe Guiyu, a small town in southern China.
So what is the current situation in Taizhou, the largest gathering place for electronic waste in the Yangtze River Delta?
Jiaojiang Port Terminal: 24-hour loading and unloading of e-waste Taizhou Jiaojiang Port Terminal “famousâ€, stems from the e-waste of that ship and ship from all parts of the world, in addition to the United States, Japan, South Korea and other countries, “foreign garbage†In addition, a large number of e-wastes such as Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang have been shipped to this place. On the afternoon of December 13, the reporter drove more than 20 kilometers to the northeast from Taizhou Railway Station and arrived at this "natural garbage dump."
One vessel of the cargo ship was berthed by the dock. Workers unloaded goods in turn, and all kinds of metal plates, circuit boards, wires, and waste plastics were piled up on a hill. They were then transported to trucks in batches. The sound of metal collisions came and went. Xiao Rong, a taxi driver in the area, told the “IT Times†reporter that the distribution center had a round-the-clock rotation and stayed up all night, sometimes spending only three days and three nights to unload one shipment. In order to transport more cargo for each truck, most of the trucks are overloaded, and the garbage piled up on the truck is only tightly covered with canvas. While driving on the road, a large amount of metal scrap was thrown at a turn, which made garbage all over the place. Some villagers in the vicinity lived by picking up litter.
Wash gold in black and yellow smoke
These “e-waste†destinations are Fengjiang Town and Xinqiao Town, Luqiao District, which is more than 10 kilometers away. Here, in addition to a small number of large-scale metal scrap processing plants, there are more secretive workshops scattered all over the country.
Along the G104 National Road, from the center of the Luqiao District to the town of Fengjiang in the south, the sky is getting dark and the smoke is filled with irritating odors from the burning of plastic. On both sides of the road, waste dumps made of high walls have been continuously stretched. Waste electrical enclosures and old computer parts have been piled up in disarray. From time to time trucks have entered and unloaded, and batches of cargo have been unloaded. The dismantled workers, who were covered with oil on the clothes and had no protective measures, silently sat in the rubbish heap and classified and separated the electronic waste. The peeled wire sheaths were thrown away or burned aside.
Anrong Village in Fengjiang Town is a miniature of the waste workshop in Luqiao District. One side of the road is farmland, the other is the villagers' houses, and a garbage dump and private workshop hidden by brick walls. They watched every outsider with vigilant eyes and the intimidating cry of the dogs at the door. In these workshops without professional equipment and environmental protection equipment, workers rely on bare hands and use their own health to gamble tomorrow.
The reporter found that in an open-air workshop, some people are “washing gold.†They put their computer chips in a pot, put it in sulfuric acid and put it on fire, burning the plastic on the chips, and then over and over again. Copper and iron are precipitated, and nitric acid is added. Gold powder is obtained after several processes. The black and yellow smoke from the sulfuric acid burns in the sky, and they repeat this process over and over again in the cough. It is reported that Intel's chip, 1 kg can be more than 3 grams of gold, when the industry sells gold, can earn a few hundred dollars. In a non-standard battery production workshop, the workers dismantled the used batteries and dumped the sulphuric acid at random. Then they threw the lead plates into the furnace. When the fire burned, the black smoke dispersed everywhere...
The Porsche 4S shop and the rancid metal are doing smelting work for neighboring men. Women and old people are not idle. They dump wastes into their homes, cook rice and cook for children, and use hand-punching to remove waste. When a reporter passed by a villager’s home, a local woman was at the door and cut a wire with a knife to peel off the copper core. She grinned at the reporter and said with a grin that this thing was very profitable. She was responsible for splitting. Her husband got outside to smelt and used the money she earned to build a three-story small building.
In the course of the investigation, the reporter discovered that there are two or three-storey villas everywhere in Fengjiang Town, Luqiao District. Famous vehicles such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz are commonplace. Porsche and other 4S repair shops live side by side with a metal rancid, rubbish-filled yard. It is a high-margin side and a high-pollution side. This is a ironic contrast.
The migrant workers do not know that pollution is harmful to health, but they are high-speed dismantling workshops. On the other side, they are barren farmland. The reporters found that workshops dumped solid wastes with extremely low utilization rates, organic pollutants such as heavy metals and polychlorinated biphenyls, and dumped them directly into farmland. Ditch water stained with colorful chemical colors and emitted stench. The owner of the grocery store in the village, Mr. Lao Wang, said in an interview with the reporter that the land had been unable to grow any food for a few years. The villagers did not care. They were engaged in electronic wastes almost every household. The dismantling took place during the day. Mostly burned in the evening, the odor lasted for a long time. “In the past two years, the electronic demolition did make a group of villagers rich, but in the past few years, the sequelae of this line have begun to appear, and many people have suffered from this or that disease. The boss who made some money runs. In other cities, even abroad, most of the workers working here are foreign workers."
Electronic waste is mainly divided into circuit boards, metal components, plastics, cartridges, ink cartridges and other major categories. The circuit board is the most valuable. In a ton of circuit boards, 130 kilograms of copper, 0.45 kilograms of gold, and 20 kilograms of tin can be separated. However, the pollution and harm of electronic waste is also enormous. TVs, computers, mobile phones, audio and other electronic products, containing lead, cadmium, mercury, six yuan chromium, polyvinyl chloride plastics, brominated flame retardants and other toxic and hazardous substances. According to statistics, cathode ray tubes in televisions or computer monitors contain large quantities of lead. Once lead enters the soil, it can seriously contaminate the water source, eventually harming humans, plants, and microorganisms. It can also have a great impact on children's brain development.
Some demolition workers are ignorant of the harm that this work may cause. At the junction of Anrong Village, a 40-year-old demolition worker pushed through the e-waste. She told reporters that she was working from Sichuan and that she was sitting and disassembling electric wires and beating metal plates every day, which was much easier than planting land. There are still more than two thousand yuan of income each month. However, when reporters asked whether workshops had protective measures for employees and whether they knew that electronic waste would affect health and pollute the environment, she was very upset.
Relevant reading of national regulations has not been respected. “Although the state implemented the Regulations on the Administration of the Recycling of Waste Electrical and Electronic Products on January 1, this year, government departments and all walks of life have not paid enough attention and recognition to the industry.†said Jiang Yufeng. The government has not effectively cracked down on many illegal recyclers. In the eyes of many people, e-waste is just like ordinary rubbish. Dealing with these wastes does not seem to be a “decent job†and should be done by these hawkers and self-employed people. Do not understand the existence of the value and the possible pollution.
Companies are also the "big players" in the production of electronic waste. Throughout the world, the responsibility of “production-recycling†for electronics manufacturers is very clear. However, why do so few electronics companies invest in recycling? Dahl asked Chen Liwen of the Institute of Natural Knowledge and Discovery, because for enterprises, the primary factor in handling corporate e-waste is economic interest. "A lot of formal dismantling companies not only don't pay for the recycling of used electronic products, but they also have to collect a certain amount of electronic waste disposal fees from companies. For this reason, many companies prefer to sell used electronic appliances to self-employed individuals."
Is the reporter's notes necessary for health, employment, or money?
According to one data, China is already the world’s second largest manufacturer of electronic waste, with 2.3 million tons after the United States’ 3 million tons. In e-waste, it is possible to extract real money and silver, and it may also bring environmental pollution to future generations. Who should be responsible for the pollution of e-waste? The government responsible for managing public goods? The company that produces these wastes? Electronic waste disposal company? Or is it everyone who uses computers and mobile phones? In people's doubts and evasions, the entire industrial chain has been deformed into the hands of unscrupulous traders, unscrupulous companies and private workshops.
The unscrupulous traders have created channels for the circulation of electronic waste products. Unscrupulous companies and private workshops are engaged in the dismantling of electronic waste. The ultimate result must be to focus only on money and interests, not on ecology and environmental protection. It is puzzling to see what the government is doing in the regulation, governance, and guidance of the industry. Faced with so many people suffering in pollution, why not punch out and ban illegal enterprises and small workshops? In March this year, there was a “blood lead incident†in Shangtao Village, Luqiao District. 172 people had excessive levels of lead in their blood. The local government had scraped the "remediation whirlwind" for a period of time. However, after a wind had passed, everything was revived.
A local related department said in an interview with the media that the dismantling industry involved the employment of more than 10,000 people in 43 villages in Luqiao District. What is ridiculous is that the lives and health of more than 10,000 people can be ignored. How can we talk about employment? An insider revealed to reporters that the whole unlicensed industry chain of dismantling, many of which are the pillar industries of the local economy and large taxpayers, tend to balance the balance to the latter when managers weigh the pollution and achievements.
At the same time, the lack of awareness of green environmental protection is also a weakness of the entire society. Looking at the bad air, poor farmland, and dusty roads in the Luqiao area of ​​Taizhou, do the small workshop owners not realize that they are playing a gambling game with their own physical and mental health and the future of future generations? They have gained short-term benefits, but what they have lost is the future of a township and a city!
Although the voices of the community calling for environmental protection come and go, but in front of the camera of the CBS television station in the United States, “these recycling practitioners are pleasant farmers, they cannot rely on the land to make a living,†in the tangible financial benefits and intangible In the face of eco-environmental choices, human nature always appears to be so fragile and ignorant.
1 pound of Intel's chip can be deposited more than 3 grams of gold, when the industrial gold sold, can earn a few hundred dollars. In a non-standard battery production workshop, the workers dismantled the used batteries and dumped the sulphuric acid at random. Then they threw the lead plates into the furnace. When the fire burned, the black smoke dispersed everywhere...
The owner of the grocery store in the village, Lao Wang, said that this place had not been able to grow any food for a few years. The villagers did not care. They were engaged in e-waste on almost every household. They were mainly dismantled during the day and were mostly burned at night. , smell a long time ceaselessly. “In the past two years, the electronic demolition did make a group of villagers rich, but in the past few years, the sequelae of this line have begun to appear, and many people have suffered from this or that disease. The boss who made some money runs. I went to other cities and even went abroad. The rest of the people who work here are mostly foreign workers."
This is a dirty secret of the electronic age. E-waste contains lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, and polyvinyl chloride, all of which are toxic and can damage the brain and cause cancer. In Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, Shanghai and the world's electronic waste collected here, compared with the notorious Guangdong Guiyu, Qingyuan and other places, Taizhou is known as the "rising star", here is the largest e-waste dismantling base in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and It is called "Chernobyl" by foreign media. A huge ecological chain enveloped the entire sky with diffuse black smoke. The IT Times reporter opened the box of this industrial chain and found the opium-like poisonous fruit that was immersed in it.
IT Times You Yifei Photography Report CFP
Shanghai: Unscrupulous traders are trying to seize electronic scrap. Zhang is a scavengers. He always went to the various districts of Shanghai Huayang Road and Changning Road in the morning and looked through the litter box to search for electronic waste that was ignored. "I'm looking for discarded computer motherboards, toner cartridges, ink cartridges, electrical circuit boards, and integrated blocks. Collect them and sell them directly to the waste recycling bins. Sometimes one board can sell tens of dollars." Zhang Xiang and his counterparts to grab time, grab the site. Others went to "mine mining" at 5 o'clock. He set off at 4 o'clock. In addition to dumping bins, Lao Zhang will occasionally put a stall in the community to receive electronic scrap at a low price and change hands to make some difference. Wastes that have not been excavated in the rubbish bin or useless scrap are treated as ordinary rubbish and transported by sanitation vehicles to the suburbs for routine incineration and burial.
Something more advanced than Lao Zhang is those small shops that repair and recycle electronic products. The reporter saw in the electronic market of Qijiang Road that shops with the words “recycling computers and recycling mobile phones†were everywhere. A clerk told the IT Times reporter that as long as they are valuable electronic waste products, they are very interested. Some of the newer second-hand mobile phones and second-hand computers can be sold directly after being polished. Electronic components that have already been damaged can often be obtained for only a few yuan or a few dozen yuan, and they can be sold to electronic waste recycling companies and can make money. “This type of recycling company is abound on the Internet.†I saw this clerk search for “e-waste†in Baidu, suddenly jumped out of a series of promotional advertisements such as “Fengshengâ€, “Huajinâ€, “Jieshengâ€, etc. Recycling companies all claim to have rich industry experience and financial strength. "They will generally pick up the goods at home, we will put together the waste, packaged and sold." And the future of these electronic waste products, both scavengers and shopkeepers do not know.
“The entire industry has a huge interest chain.†According to Jiang Yufeng, who is an industry source and the head office of the Shanghai Waste Recycling Service, e-waste should have a healthy ecological chain, that is, corporate and individual e-waste, which is collected through social channels. It goes to a small recycling station, then sells it to a formal electronic dismantling company, extracts valuable products through professional and environmentally friendly methods, and sells it to smelting foundry companies.
However, due to the low purchase price of formal electronic dismantling companies, a certain processing fee is usually charged, leaving many recyclers in the middle to avoid them. “Although there are only two or three companies that have the qualification for hazardous waste disposal in Shanghai, they still face the problem of 'flooding'. Many electronic wastes have flowed to illegal channels, and some self-employed people have acquired prices that are 10% to 20% higher than the market price. For example, the market price of a ton of scrap iron is 2,300 yuan, and they recycle it for 2,450 yuan, taking all the waste from the market into their arms."
So expensive to recover, why not lose money? Jiang Yufeng shook her head and said that these self-employed people walked along a pattern that was contrary to the laws of the market and led the entire ecological chain to the blind road. “The processing of electronic waste is very complicated. It is necessary to extract available metals, plastics, and other materials from electronic components, and to avoid as much as possible the huge environmental pollution. A formal large-scale dismantling company needs to spend a lot of money. When funds are used to purchase equipment, an environmentally friendly dismantling device often costs hundreds of thousands and millions, and through centralized disposal of harmful substances through these devices, the risk of environmental pollution can be effectively reduced. The flea market is sold to individual workshops at a low price, and precious metals are extracted by open methods such as open burning. The residual metal waste is often left untreated and discarded at will. The waste gas, waste liquid, and waste residue generated during the process are discarded. And so on, causing serious pollution to the atmosphere, soil and water bodies. Since their processing costs are very low, they can finally obtain considerable profits from companies that are dismantling more than normal."
Taizhou, Zhejiang: Where did the e-waste of the Yangtze River Delta's “most poisonous†e-waste dismantling place go after it was recovered by unscrupulous traders? In the mediation of many times and recycling companies, the reporter finally found clues - most of the electronic waste in northern cities gathered in Wen'an, Hebei, Huanghua, Guangdong, Fujian, most of the electronic waste flows into Guiyu Town, Longtang Town, Dali, Guangdong The town, and the ultimate destination of e-waste in Shanghai - Taizhou, Zhejiang. A person in charge of a recycling company told reporters that they had close cooperation with local dismantling companies in Taizhou, and that the electronic waste they had obtained was transported to Taizhou by means of shipping and land transportation.
“Today we will take you to the most poisonous places in the world to see. There are many people who do not want you to see those, that is, the small town in southern China. There you cannot breathe, you cannot drink water, there are blood vessels for the children there. Lead flows in.†In 2009, the beginning of a documentary, CBS chose this language to describe Guiyu, a small town in southern China.
So what is the current situation in Taizhou, the largest gathering place for electronic waste in the Yangtze River Delta?
Jiaojiang Port Terminal: 24-hour loading and unloading of e-waste Taizhou Jiaojiang Port Terminal “famousâ€, stems from the e-waste of that ship and ship from all parts of the world, in addition to the United States, Japan, South Korea and other countries, “foreign garbage†In addition, a large number of e-wastes such as Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang have been shipped to this place. On the afternoon of December 13, the reporter drove more than 20 kilometers to the northeast from Taizhou Railway Station and arrived at this "natural garbage dump."
One vessel of the cargo ship was berthed by the dock. Workers unloaded goods in turn, and all kinds of metal plates, circuit boards, wires, and waste plastics were piled up on a hill. They were then transported to trucks in batches. The sound of metal collisions came and went. Xiao Rong, a taxi driver in the area, told the “IT Times†reporter that the distribution center had a round-the-clock rotation and stayed up all night, sometimes spending only three days and three nights to unload one shipment. In order to transport more cargo for each truck, most of the trucks are overloaded, and the garbage piled up on the truck is only tightly covered with canvas. While driving on the road, a large amount of metal scrap was thrown at a turn, which made garbage all over the place. Some villagers in the vicinity lived by picking up litter.
Wash gold in black and yellow smoke
These “e-waste†destinations are Fengjiang Town and Xinqiao Town, Luqiao District, which is more than 10 kilometers away. Here, in addition to a small number of large-scale metal scrap processing plants, there are more secretive workshops scattered all over the country.
Along the G104 National Road, from the center of the Luqiao District to the town of Fengjiang in the south, the sky is getting dark and the smoke is filled with irritating odors from the burning of plastic. On both sides of the road, waste dumps made of high walls have been continuously stretched. Waste electrical enclosures and old computer parts have been piled up in disarray. From time to time trucks have entered and unloaded, and batches of cargo have been unloaded. The dismantled workers, who were covered with oil on the clothes and had no protective measures, silently sat in the rubbish heap and classified and separated the electronic waste. The peeled wire sheaths were thrown away or burned aside.
Anrong Village in Fengjiang Town is a miniature of the waste workshop in Luqiao District. One side of the road is farmland, the other is the villagers' houses, and a garbage dump and private workshop hidden by brick walls. They watched every outsider with vigilant eyes and the intimidating cry of the dogs at the door. In these workshops without professional equipment and environmental protection equipment, workers rely on bare hands and use their own health to gamble tomorrow.
The reporter found that in an open-air workshop, some people are “washing gold.†They put their computer chips in a pot, put it in sulfuric acid and put it on fire, burning the plastic on the chips, and then over and over again. Copper and iron are precipitated, and nitric acid is added. Gold powder is obtained after several processes. The black and yellow smoke from the sulfuric acid burns in the sky, and they repeat this process over and over again in the cough. It is reported that Intel's chip, 1 kg can be more than 3 grams of gold, when the industry sells gold, can earn a few hundred dollars. In a non-standard battery production workshop, the workers dismantled the used batteries and dumped the sulphuric acid at random. Then they threw the lead plates into the furnace. When the fire burned, the black smoke dispersed everywhere...
The Porsche 4S shop and the rancid metal are doing smelting work for neighboring men. Women and old people are not idle. They dump wastes into their homes, cook rice and cook for children, and use hand-punching to remove waste. When a reporter passed by a villager’s home, a local woman was at the door and cut a wire with a knife to peel off the copper core. She grinned at the reporter and said with a grin that this thing was very profitable. She was responsible for splitting. Her husband got outside to smelt and used the money she earned to build a three-story small building.
In the course of the investigation, the reporter discovered that there are two or three-storey villas everywhere in Fengjiang Town, Luqiao District. Famous vehicles such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz are commonplace. Porsche and other 4S repair shops live side by side with a metal rancid, rubbish-filled yard. It is a high-margin side and a high-pollution side. This is a ironic contrast.
The migrant workers do not know that pollution is harmful to health, but they are high-speed dismantling workshops. On the other side, they are barren farmland. The reporters found that workshops dumped solid wastes with extremely low utilization rates, organic pollutants such as heavy metals and polychlorinated biphenyls, and dumped them directly into farmland. Ditch water stained with colorful chemical colors and emitted stench. The owner of the grocery store in the village, Mr. Lao Wang, said in an interview with the reporter that the land had been unable to grow any food for a few years. The villagers did not care. They were engaged in electronic wastes almost every household. The dismantling took place during the day. Mostly burned in the evening, the odor lasted for a long time. “In the past two years, the electronic demolition did make a group of villagers rich, but in the past few years, the sequelae of this line have begun to appear, and many people have suffered from this or that disease. The boss who made some money runs. In other cities, even abroad, most of the workers working here are foreign workers."
Electronic waste is mainly divided into circuit boards, metal components, plastics, cartridges, ink cartridges and other major categories. The circuit board is the most valuable. In a ton of circuit boards, 130 kilograms of copper, 0.45 kilograms of gold, and 20 kilograms of tin can be separated. However, the pollution and harm of electronic waste is also enormous. TVs, computers, mobile phones, audio and other electronic products, containing lead, cadmium, mercury, six yuan chromium, polyvinyl chloride plastics, brominated flame retardants and other toxic and hazardous substances. According to statistics, cathode ray tubes in televisions or computer monitors contain large quantities of lead. Once lead enters the soil, it can seriously contaminate the water source, eventually harming humans, plants, and microorganisms. It can also have a great impact on children's brain development.
Some demolition workers are ignorant of the harm that this work may cause. At the junction of Anrong Village, a 40-year-old demolition worker pushed through the e-waste. She told reporters that she was working from Sichuan and that she was sitting and disassembling electric wires and beating metal plates every day, which was much easier than planting land. There are still more than two thousand yuan of income each month. However, when reporters asked whether workshops had protective measures for employees and whether they knew that electronic waste would affect health and pollute the environment, she was very upset.
Relevant reading of national regulations has not been respected. “Although the state implemented the Regulations on the Administration of the Recycling of Waste Electrical and Electronic Products on January 1, this year, government departments and all walks of life have not paid enough attention and recognition to the industry.†said Jiang Yufeng. The government has not effectively cracked down on many illegal recyclers. In the eyes of many people, e-waste is just like ordinary rubbish. Dealing with these wastes does not seem to be a “decent job†and should be done by these hawkers and self-employed people. Do not understand the existence of the value and the possible pollution.
Companies are also the "big players" in the production of electronic waste. Throughout the world, the responsibility of “production-recycling†for electronics manufacturers is very clear. However, why do so few electronics companies invest in recycling? Dahl asked Chen Liwen of the Institute of Natural Knowledge and Discovery, because for enterprises, the primary factor in handling corporate e-waste is economic interest. "A lot of formal dismantling companies not only don't pay for the recycling of used electronic products, but they also have to collect a certain amount of electronic waste disposal fees from companies. For this reason, many companies prefer to sell used electronic appliances to self-employed individuals."
Is the reporter's notes necessary for health, employment, or money?
According to one data, China is already the world’s second largest manufacturer of electronic waste, with 2.3 million tons after the United States’ 3 million tons. In e-waste, it is possible to extract real money and silver, and it may also bring environmental pollution to future generations. Who should be responsible for the pollution of e-waste? The government responsible for managing public goods? The company that produces these wastes? Electronic waste disposal company? Or is it everyone who uses computers and mobile phones? In people's doubts and evasions, the entire industrial chain has been deformed into the hands of unscrupulous traders, unscrupulous companies and private workshops.
The unscrupulous traders have created channels for the circulation of electronic waste products. Unscrupulous companies and private workshops are engaged in the dismantling of electronic waste. The ultimate result must be to focus only on money and interests, not on ecology and environmental protection. It is puzzling to see what the government is doing in the regulation, governance, and guidance of the industry. Faced with so many people suffering in pollution, why not punch out and ban illegal enterprises and small workshops? In March this year, there was a “blood lead incident†in Shangtao Village, Luqiao District. 172 people had excessive levels of lead in their blood. The local government had scraped the "remediation whirlwind" for a period of time. However, after a wind had passed, everything was revived.
A local related department said in an interview with the media that the dismantling industry involved the employment of more than 10,000 people in 43 villages in Luqiao District. What is ridiculous is that the lives and health of more than 10,000 people can be ignored. How can we talk about employment? An insider revealed to reporters that the whole unlicensed industry chain of dismantling, many of which are the pillar industries of the local economy and large taxpayers, tend to balance the balance to the latter when managers weigh the pollution and achievements.
At the same time, the lack of awareness of green environmental protection is also a weakness of the entire society. Looking at the bad air, poor farmland, and dusty roads in the Luqiao area of ​​Taizhou, do the small workshop owners not realize that they are playing a gambling game with their own physical and mental health and the future of future generations? They have gained short-term benefits, but what they have lost is the future of a township and a city!
Although the voices of the community calling for environmental protection come and go, but in front of the camera of the CBS television station in the United States, “these recycling practitioners are pleasant farmers, they cannot rely on the land to make a living,†in the tangible financial benefits and intangible In the face of eco-environmental choices, human nature always appears to be so fragile and ignorant.
Longdi Light Equipment Technology Co., Ltd , http://www.gz-ledlight.com