an article about e-waste on Al Jazeera

have u guys seen this?
On the e-waste trail - Witness - Al Jazeera English

come on over to my place and dump it.....I won't even charge a fee

thats what im wondering about

we guys go looking for ewaste & theres people who dump container loads of it in 3rd world countries

theres people who recycle almost anything- why do companies have to do dump it in another part of the world?

wont it be better to sell their stuff to plastic recyclers?

they pay money to ship this stuff & they will earn money if they sell to recyclers- dont make sense.

or are there things that nobody recycles- so companies are looking for ways to get rid of it?

someone enlighten me..

It's a hard call. There may be more to this than meets the eye.

I believe we have had people of Asian decent seeking to buy e-waste here in the United States .

It's my understanding that there are entire villages in China that specialize in processing e-waste. The people there might only be making a few dollars a day but that amount is an improvement in their standard of living.

How does the American workforce compete with that ?

The article in Al Jazeera seemed more focused on the environmental impact and the health impact on the workers.

It's called they want to duck doing it right. We've all seen the video of the ewaste dump in India I think it was. For those of you that haven't you could likely google it for the youtube link if someone doesn't post it.

Here in the states, we got all those silly rules an regulations. Somewhere like India, will turn it's eye to the environmental an health damage that is being caused. The video shows how messed up it is. Plus they'll do it cheaper if their charging. I mean..what a buck in a 3rd world country is like a nice week or 3 paycheck. I had a buddy from Honduras who drove a tow truck here in the states. He'd work 6 months, go back home, live like a king for 3 or 4 months, then come back an stack his cash again till time to go home. He was telling me when he goes home, he can take out his family an friends for a night on the town an in US Dollars he's spending like 20 bucks.

Here I found a video talking about India an Africa. It's by Greenpeace so might be some drama added I dunno, but it makes the point I can't with words. First few seconds is a kid burning a whole monitor it looks like. That should tell you right there.



http://rt.com/news/e-waste-illegal-environment-uk-043/

An another from Greenpeace..



Second should have a video in the article.

Sucks whats being done to these people an countries. This is also why I take TV's an break them down as much as I can, an take care of the glass. I don't want this happening to somewhere here where I live, or ending up in Asia or Africa an screwing these folks even more. If that makes sense.

That's my .02 on it. No refunds.

Sirscrapalot - If the ebola doesn't get you all the toxic crap being put into the earth will. - Me, an likely some tree hugger somewhere.

My God, they aren't even doing it right.....
The guy with the hammer and crt board, he'd be better snipping the wire at the ends, that way when its burnt off, its all Copper Domestic.
Not a mix of Copper and Brass...

The guys burning the plastic off..
If the put it on a grate or something it'd burn better, also its still got the clips on it.
If its on a grate, air gets to it, it won't smolder, when its burnt off, the incomming air will cool the burnt Copper and that mrans kess oxides on it. It also heats the incomming air.
They should have some sort of 'afterburner', all that smoke will catch fire if its mixed with clean air and reignited, leaving less smoke and another source of heat.

Also, it looks like they are burning a crt degaussing cable...
If tgey used a knife and cut out the double layer of plastic tape off where the two external wires are.
They get the two plastic coated wires to burn off. And if they grab a few of the varnish coated wires inside, pull them out, and then use them to rip out the side of the plastic tape on the main cable, then do that the full length, they end up with nice clean shiney Copper #2....
And thats with no burning.....

Theres recycable stuff on the crt board too, its better to save the individual parts up, like the ferrite chokes etc, then do them all at the same time.
Not smash it up and then pick out the heatsinks.. Transisters have Copper in them, bitsa steel clips/screws etc.

But leaving the Brass clips on the Copper wire? Insane. Even with them clipped off they could burn the plastic off and end up with plain Brass.
Leaving the clips on makes the plastic harder to burn since they act as a heatsink and are covered with a blob of plastic too.

More burning equals more oxides equals less Copper and a lower grade too.

I have a take from this, and its probably unpopular. Africa, particularly where this was made...seems awfully **** lazy. It's a bunch of kids and teenagers. No adults, or very few. They burn it instead of cut it...also lazy, I'm sure it's universally true there as it is here, shiny=better price. You can't fix lazy, we didn't do this to them. Somewhere along the line their own governments took money from corporations, accepted the material and failed to produce a method to properly break it all down and dispose of it. Not like it would have cost money...they'd have made money accepting the material AND breaking it down. Frankly, no F**** given about that video. Y'all did it to yourselves I say.

yep some are getting paid less than 5cents a pound for copper