Most of the e waste recycled at Guiyu came from outside of China
Chapter ONE A HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER Guiyu is a collection of 28 villages in Guangdong Province in southern China It U has approximately 132 000 inhabitants and 100 000 migrant workers From the 1990s until 2015 60 to 80 percent of the families in Guiyu made a living recycling electronic waste or e waste They worked out of almost 6 000 family businesses These were informal businesses and the workplaces were unregulated The town was notorious for unhealthy work conditions
ELECTRONICS In the middle of the 1900s many home electronics such as radios and televisions used vacuum tubes to control electrical currents in ways that made the product work These large glass and metal tubes connected to other parts of the electronic circuit on a circuit board that held everything in place Because they are smaller and use less energy transistors eventually replaced vacuum tubes Then integrated circuits ICS or chips replaced large numbers of transistors and other components ICs are called chips because they are made on a chip or flake of silicon Some ICs contain millions of components within a small area ICs attach to a circuit board which connects to other electronic components Metals that conduct electricity connect all of the components on a circuit board The board itself is made of glass fibers and epoxy a tough polymer or glue mixed with a flame retardant Chinese scientists documented methods used to separate the materials in the e waste Workers baked circuit boards over coal fires to remove electronic components Workers soaked circuit boards in acid baths to extract precious metals such as gold and palladium They dumped the acid waste onto nearby fields or in streams Sometimes they stripped plastic from wires and cables or burned the plastic in open air to release the copper wire inside Workers burned fragments of plastics to identify the type of plastic by smell To remove valuable metals they hammered open many components including batteries transformers and computer monitors containing heavy glass cathode ray tubes CRTS For the most part workers carried out their tasks without protective equipment Children either helped process the materials or played with discarded electronic components These processes exposed the workers and their children to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals The toxins increased miscarriages and premature births Toxins were also related to children's lung health growth rates and behavior The processes polluted the air dust and drinking water with poisonous levels of heavy metals Many films and
photographs documented the conditions in Guiyu These images dramatically showed the human health risks poor working environment and environmental damage in and around Guiyu TOXIC DUMPING FORMAL VERSUS INFORMAL RECYCLING Recycling can be part of a regulated or For more than a decade Guiyu and similar places in other unregulated economy A garage sale is an example of an unregulated or informal developing nations have represented the ugly side of business activity It operates alongside Western countries throwaway culture especially that of the formal businesses such as bookstores pawn shops and antique stores that buy United States In throwaway cultures consumers buy cheap and sell used items The stores pay taxes have accountants who manage their money electronics use them for a year or two and then discard them and may be required to follow certain without worrying about where the waste ends up governmental regulations Garage sales account for a lot of money changing hands but they are a part of the informal economy Guiyu has been the subject of many news articles They do not pay taxes or follow regulations photographic essays a 2001 film documentary and a 2008 like formal businesses do Informal recyclers such as those in Guiyu operate as news documentary These stories contain powerful images of informal businesses piles of discarded electronics and cluttered workshops where workers roast circuit boards over open fires Images from Africa show young men standing in muddy fields surrounded by electronic debris and tending flaming balls of plastic coated copper wires the wires puffing poisonous black smoke Many of these stories say that the United States and other developed countries are dumping unwanted e waste into developing nations In developing nations workers who informally recycle e waste are
