Lei Xiangping

    lagon235@163.com

    AIR pollution in China has spurred many people to develop an environmental consciousness. But one type of pollution many people don’t consider is e-waste — scrapped computers, cell phones and other electronic products.

    Recently, I read the book “Junker Planet,” written by American Adam Minter, and was shocked by the scenes of e-waste pollution in Guiyu Township, Shantou City, Guangdong. Workers there use their bare hands to crack open electronics to collect parts that can be reused. They burn wires to liberate copper and use corrosive acid baths to extract gold from microchips. This type of salvage work does a lot of damage to the environment — many children in the township are suffering from lead poisoning.

    However, the book only offers one part of the whole story: As people are consuming more electronic products than before, millions of tons of e-waste is being produced.

    In China, the amount of e-waste is too enormous to be ignored. One statistic from the U.N. revealed that China produced about 2.3 million tons of e-waste domestically in 2010, second only to the United States, and the number keeps increasing. China’s Ministry of Commerce estimates that 50-80 million electronic products are being scrapped annually, at an average annual increase of 20 percent, and over 160 million pieces will be discarded by late 2015.

    China also remains a major e-waste dumping ground for developed countries. Two million tons of e-waste is smuggled into Chinese territories and disposed of illegally every year.

    With e-waste growing tremendously, the negative influence is becoming worrisome. Unlike air pollution, which can be supervised easily, e-waste pollution is classified by environmentalists as an “invisible and terrifying process.” For example, scrapped mobile phones, if simply tossed in a landfill, can leak cadmium, which can seep into underground and surface water and contaminate the food chain. A used button battery, if disposed of inappropriately, can pollute 600,000 liters of water, equivalent to the amount of one person’s lifetime drinking water.

    Despite the potential risks, China is still under-prepared, and there are three adverse factors bogging down China’s ability to tackle e-waste pollution effectively.

    So far, there are only 106 companies around the country qualified for e-waste disposal. Only these companies, which can afford high-end equipment and can dispose of e-waste with environmentally friendly techniques, have been licensed and subsidized. However, owing to the high operation costs and the failure to collect enough e-waste, many of them are not making a profit, let alone disposing of e-waste efficiently. Also, electronic product makers are playing a weak role in getting scrapped products back, apart from paying certain e-waste disposal fees. Under such circumstance, tons of e-waste is either left undisposed or sent to workshops like the ones in Guiyu.

    Meanwhile, people are not taking e-waste seriously. In most cities, few people have the habit of sorting e-waste into recyclable bins, so e-waste is being buried or incinerated as ordinary trash.

    The current law for regulating e-waste disposal, namely, the Law on the Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution by Solid Waste, has only general guidelines and lacks concrete policies for tackling e-waste. The European Union passed their e-waste disposal law 10 years ago, but in China it still has a long way to go, despite the fact that many members of the National People’s Congress have proposed to do so.

    As China pays more attention to improving the environment, tackling e-waste pollution should be prioritized. The government should expand the current recycling system, educate people about the dangers of e-waste and introduce an effective e-waste disposal law to tackle this problem properly.

    (The author is an editor with the News Desk at China Radio International.)