This is an interesting article I thought I would share

Looooooong time reader. Over 6 years. Rare poster.
Chris Telschow from Houston Texas.

Here is the link. ( Replace [DOT] with . )

www
[DOT]

wired

[DOT]

com/story/international-electronic-waste-photographs/

See what y'all think. I believe the soon to be author / photographer is completely on the wrong side of this story.

The photography is terrific. Really amazing image composition. In my read this is a call to recycle. Yeah recycling but not as devestating as mining. And having been a longtime supporter of labor rights internationally, I'm down to do whatever I can to help improve labor conditions with others in the industry no matter where located.

[Working Link]
I wonder why no one goes down there and buys the CPUs, RAM, and other parts for cheap, than ship them directly to the refiner's .

Thanks for adding the working link RLS0812.

I was more under the impression that if this author traveled the world for 7 years studying these sites and researched enough to write a book he would know things like..

Pic 1-There is nothing left of value on that tube tv. No reason to smash open
Pic 4- No way they are melting boards
Pic 5-I see no melted board. Maybe slightly depopulated.
Pic 9- Scrapping more likely than repairing.

Please correct me if I missed something in those.

My opinion is that many of these are simple pics of recycling companies with a few actual landfill pictures mixed in.

These people are recycling E-scrap.

It's more of this first-world guilt, with us wringing our hands and moaning softly at subtly racist imagery that allows us to expunge our actual concerns about solid waste and exploitation and replace them with digital pity. And for Wired to run it is like a slap in the face. That whole rag is run by adspace basically threatening you with social pariahdom for not conspicuously consuming every new chunk of crap you will need to buy to stay in touch with Facebook trolls and Amazon Prime.

A recycler I spoke to once indicated this kind of journalism was more or less constantly recycled from a single story a few years ago about Ghana which had since been debunked. He claimed that the overarching industry figures like Apple and HP were in favor of shredding in order to preserve brand identity and prevent refurbishment outside of their operations and to that end, they would often nudge stories like this into the limelight in order to discredit recycling which doesn't involve shredding, despite the fact that shredding is a pretty lame way to recycle anything. But you can do it domestically, for a reasonable price, and thus it is a viable option for large corporations (who still export the junk which is leftover, anyway).

With National Sword in play, a story like this just serves to misinform the public that the developing world is suffering from our waste, thus justifying any objectives to keep recycling, in whatever form, a domestic enterprise, when the fact is that they really just want what they can market, like any other business. Now, when we can't export to China, we can pretend we're doing it for their own good, not because they straight up got sick of us polluting their country and told us to take our trash and GTFO.

Originally Posted by cct001

Thanks for adding the working link RLS0812.

I was more under the impression that if this author traveled the world for 7 years studying these sites and researched enough to write a book he would know things like..

Pic 1-There is nothing left of value on that tube tv. No reason to smash open
Pic 4- No way they are melting boards
Pic 5-I see no melted board. Maybe slightly depopulated.
Pic 9- Scrapping more likely than repairing.

Please correct me if I missed something in those.

My opinion is that many of these are simple pics of recycling companies with a few actual landfill pictures mixed in.

These people are recycling E-scrap.

I think in pic #5 that is some sort of hot plate for melting solder to depopulate boards???

I have used hot sand baths to melt solder and depopulate boards.
The one picture is of a hot plate used to quickly depopulate boards at the expense of the worker's lungs.