This is not a happy story to start your Monday with. That TV or computer you put out for recycling, feeling all eco-friendly? It’s killing children in Ghana. More »
There are plenty of ways of recycling unwanted mobile phones and other portable gadgets, but when it comes to ditching your old TV or computer, finding a viable recycling option can actually be nigh on impossible. And it looks like that may not change in the near future, despite attempts at creating a national e-waste recycling scheme. More »
I’ve used e-waste recycling service Gazelle a few times now, so I’m comfortable recommended other recyclers use it as well, but today’s news isn’t about recycling – it’s about reselling. More »
With just a few months before the digital TV conversion renders millions of sets obsolete (well, kind of), a group called the Electronics TakeBack Coalition is trying to shame major companies into some e-waste recycling initiative by giving them report card scores. Of all the companies surveyed, the highest score (B-) went to Sony, which launched the first national takeback program in 2007. More than half of everybody else got a big fat F for having absolutely nothing in place.
We’ve posted about China’s e-waste problem before; a problem that stems from other countries needing to offload their trash and China being more than receptive because of good money to be had from salvaging. But what we haven’t seen much of is video. 60 Minutes tried recently to capture it, but were attacked from Chinese residents that wanted to keep their lucrative e-waste mining business intact. VWag found this longer Current documentary from 2007 that has longer footage—and angry citizens. See for yourself where that old 386 PC you threw away is going. [Current via Valleywag]
60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley went to Guiyi, China to document the lives of Chinese e-waste workers there. He was able to get footage of what these pits, which process much of the toxic electronic scrap we in the West throw away, look like–despite being jumped by angry e-waste lot owners and nearly having his camera confiscated.
A new report by the US Government Accountability Office is claiming that the majority of US E-Waste recycling services should reconsider dumping our 20 million plus pounds of waste on Asia, where it’s cheaper but also less effective. Many of the major electronics manufacturers (Samsung, Sony, Best Buy, more) have been proudly rolling out recycling services in greater numbers over the last year or so, but the new information confirms that tonnes of recycled e-waste never makes it to the actual “recycling” part, at least as far as US standards go.
