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Electronic Graveyard

Guiyu

Guiyu• A town in the Chaoyang

district of Guangdong province in China

• Situated on the South China Sea coast

• 1.5 million tons of e-waste

Some Facts• Work 16-hour-days dis-assembling• Small, family-run workshops• 5,500 Total businesses • 150,000 workers

Health and Environment Hazards• Recycling operations are toxic and dangerous • 88% of children suffering from lead poisoning• Higher-than-average rates of miscarriage are also

reported in the region• Use of bare hands to rip of metals, printer toners etc• The soil has been saturated with lead, chromium, tin,

and other heavy metals. • Discarded electronics lie in pools of toxins that leach into

the groundwater, making it so polluted that the water is undrinkable

• Piles of ash and plastic waste sit on the ground beside rice paddies and dikes holding in the Lianjiang river; Once a rice village, the pollution has made Guiyu unable to produce crops for food

• Dust samples analysed and lead and copper were 371 and 115 times higher, respectively

Health and Environment Hazards

Using Bare hands for Scavenging

Burning of houses to hide open burning of metals

HOW..?

WHAT..?

• Not that simple!• Massive revenues to local governments trumps human

rights• Over 150,000 e-Waste workers would be unemployed• Revenues Earned: Tariffs + Taxation = 90% of regional

government’s revenues• Shortage of raw materials for major industry in China

Shut down Guiyu?

Other Factors• In countries like US,

workers recover $1.5-2

• Additionally, in 2011 the United States threw away about 130,000 computers every day. One hundred million cellular phones are thrown out annually

• Hazardous Incentives 8$

• Other developed countries involved are also doing the same, hence all the junk is sent to China, Ghana, India

Recent Trends and Actions• Central Government Initiatives in vain

• Work of activist groups and increasing awareness of the situation

• Non-profit organizations like Greenpeace and the Basel Action Network

• Safety measures are being followed and proper disposal means are getting adopted

What can be done?• Environment Friendly raw material

• Reuse judicially – gift products, reuse casings etc

• Electronic items from Asia are not following proper standards

• Create beautiful scrap articles similar to gardens and houses which are being made using plastic waste

Other Places of e Waste Junk

Thank You

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Prajakta TalathiGSEP13CMM031