E-WASTE exporting harm

Electronic Waste is Toxic Waste

Over 1,000 materials, including chlorinated solvents, brominated flame retardants,PVC, heavy metals, plastics and gases, are used to make electronic products and their components—semiconductor chips, circuit boards, and disk drives.

A CRT monitor can contains between four and eight pounds of lead alone. Big screen TVs contain even more than that. Flat panel TVs and monitors contain less lead, but use mercury. About 40% of the heavy metals, including lead, mercury and cadmium, in landfills come from electronic equipment discards.

The Problem with Exporting Electronic Waste

Many recyclers can make more money by sending e-waste to developing countries for disassembly and processing. Most of it is sent to developing countries, like China, India, Pakistan, where workers make only pennies an hour.

Due to horrific working conditions and weak labor standards in many of the developing countries where e-waste is sent, women and children are often directly exposed to lead and other hazardous materials when dismantling the electronic products to recover valuable parts for resell. Workers in Guiyu, China - an area where a lot of e-waste "recycling" occurs, disassemble the products and throw the unwanted (but very hazardous) leaded glass into former irrigation ditches, and dump pure acids and dissolved heavy metals directly into their rivers. Piles of wires are burned in open fires, creating dioxins and furans.

In 2001, the Basel Action Network lead several groups in an investigation of e-waste processing in China, India, and Pakistan. The investigation uncovered an entire area known as Guiyu in Guangdong Province, surrounding the Lianjiang River just 4 hours drive northeast of Hong Kong where about 100,000 poor migrant workers are employed breaking apart and processing obsolete computers imported primarily from North America. The workers were found to be using 19th century technologies to clean up the wastes from the 21st century.

In San Francisco, the best place to take E-Waste is Green Citizen.
http://www.greencitizen.com/