Environmental watchdog group Basel Action Network wanted to find out what happens when discarded computers, televisions, and other electronic devices are sent to recycling centers in the United States.
So Jim Puckett, executive director of BAN, and his team planted GPS devices on 205 electronic products and dropped them off at recycling centers and charities. They tracked them and discovered that more than 40 percent of the products were shipped offshore, winding up in landfills in Hong Kong, mainland China, and elsewhere.
Their report, titled Scam Recycling: e-Dumping on Asia by U.S. Recyclers, used data collected from two years of following the journey of old electronics. BAN found that some 75 recycling companies—many of which claim that they do not export e-waste—did sell products overseas, and most of those went to developing countries. Puckett said he went to sites where the tracking devices ended up and found some of the old televisions, printers, and LCD screens the team had tagged.
“One of the spots we visited were some islands in an area called New Territories in Hong Kong,” Puckett said. “These junkyards used to be staging yards, where they kept the electronic products before they were sent to mainland China, but now they are doing the dismantling there, smashing products, and the workers seemed completely unaware of the health dangers such as mercury tubes in those old products.”
BAN worked with Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Senseable City Labs to map the export paths of the tracked electronics, determining that 74 of the 205 items ended up outside the U.S. An interactive online map shows that electronics traveled to Hong Kong (37 items), mainland China (11), Taiwan (5), Pakistan (4), Mexico (3), Thailand (2), Canada (2), and one time each to the United Arab Emirates, Togo, Kenya, Cambodia, and the Dominican Republic.
To read the full story, visit http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/10/04/e-waste-recycling-not-really-recycled.