If you need camping gear......... check this out

[GTI_GRL]

Just thought this might help a few people out.

Here are a few cheap tent sets, shipping is $10, and free if picked up from a few select stores.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4366673
$59.97
Here's just what you need for your next camping trip. This convenient 6-piece set features a roomy, lightweight tent, two water-repellent sleeping bags, a fully-collapsible cooler and a powerful camping light with a krypton bulb for easy viewing of your campsite at night.

6-piece camping set
Tent sleeps four and measures 10' x 6.5'
EZ Glide System allows the zipper to glide smoothly without catching on fabric
Stay dry and comfortable with the exclusive GoBe Dry rain protection system

Two 3-lb, water-repellent, machine-washable sleeping bags rated to 40 degrees
One collapsible cooler bag holds 12 beverage cans
One camping light with powerful krypton bulb, rotates 360 degrees, requires four "AA" batteries (not included)




http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5493342
$99.84
Incredible Value! This 12-piece family combo from Ozark Trail comes with everything you need to enjoy the Great Outdoors in a complete set-up for campers. Includes a spacious 13' x 10' dome tent that sleeps 5, two 2.5 lbs. sleeping bags, a collapsible cooler, 2 quad chairs, 4 drink holders and a camping light.
Ozark Trail 12-Piece Camping Combo Includes:
13' x 10' dome tent
Two 2.5 lbs. sleeping bags (rated to +40 degrees F)
Collapsible cooler that holds 12 cans
4 beverage holders
2 quad chairs
Camping light
Rolling carry bag
Dome Tent Features:
Sleeps 5
Exclusive GoBeDry rain protection system
EZ Glider System lets the zipper glide smoothly without catching on fabric
Makes packing up a breeze with EZ Pack — an expandable wheeled carry bag
Accessories include 2 hanging cup holders

Air Mattress

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4694686
$15.47
Perfect for campers and travelers, Ozark Trail's queen vinyl airbed is made with a wave beam construction for comfort and support and a 2-in-1 valve for fast inflation and deflation. It then quickly rolls up and stores compactly away. Fits queen sheets.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4694687

$17.88
A velvety-soft plush flocking offers a luxurious sleep surface in this ultra-comfortable Double Fabric Airbed from Ozark Trail. Great for camping, visiting friends, dorm rooms and more, it easily inflates through a 2-in-1 valve, then quickly deflates, rolls up and stores compactly away. Fits standard sheets.
Pump inflates and deflates the bed in seconds with ease (not included)
Cozy, Rayon flocked-fabric mattress top
Exclusive PVC formula is more puncture resistant
Maximum user weight: 600 lbs.
Dimensions: 75" L x 54" W x 8.75" H


Other gear

air mattress pump
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4694688
$18.88
Perfect for blowing up inflatables at home or while traveling, Ozark Trail's rechargeable pump features 3 interconnecting nozzles to accommodate most valves. Also includes a detachable cigarette cord.


chair
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5223213
$14.98
Perfect for taking to picnics, BBQ's, camping and sporting events, the Quik chair instant chair opens and folds in seconds! Designed with an oversized seat and back for extra comfort and stability, its armrests feature cup holders for thirsty campers or when the game goes into overtime. Includes carry bag with shoulder strap for portability.
Oversized, heavy duty steel frame construction for a lifetime of use
Designed with an oversized seat and back for extra comfort and stability
Seat, backrests and armrests are made from extra-thick, 600 x 600 polyester for long lasting use
Each armrest has a cup holder
Includes carry bag with shoulder strap for portability


tent fan

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4767725
$20.97
Keep your tent cool and illuminated with Coleman's Zephyr Hanging LED Tent Light and Fan. Attaches to any tent ceiling using either the magnetic plate or carabiner hook and features four white LED lights, one amber LED night light and a quiet fan with soft-to-touch foam blades. Runs on 4 "D" batteries (not included).
Approximate run time is up to 24 hours on high and 48 hours on low
Fan and light are operated with independent controls


http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...uct_id=4744668
$9
Keep your tent cool while camping with Coleman's Cool Zephyr Tent Window Fan. It safely attaches to any Coleman Tent Cool Air Port or any tent screen window or door using a magnetic plate (included) that pulls fresh air in or draws stagnant air out when installed outside the tent.


Coolers

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4994240
$58.88
Guarantee your party will never go with out a cold one with the MaxCold 60-quart Wheeled Cooler. Holds up to 81 cans, keeps ice solid for up to 5 days and comes with a threaded drain plug and odor-resistant liner so your foods never get soggy and always stay fresh.
Includes swing-up handles with tie-down loops
Durable wheels and tow-style handle
Snap lock lid for added strength
Two drink holders in the lid
Swing-up handles and tie down loops
Threaded drain plug
Odor-resistant liner


http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5014194
$49.83
Everyone who loves to tailgate, camp or BBQ will love the Marine Roller 70-quart. Holds 111 cans and ultratherm insulation guarantees they'll stay cold. A stain and odor-resistant liner ensures consistent freshness. And its durable wheel/tow system lets you easily haul it to any event.

UV inhibitors protect against sun damage
70-quart/66-liter/111-can capacity
Ultratherm insulation keeps contents cold
Reinforced handles, hinges and latches
Recessed, drip-resistant drain plug
Fish measuring ruler moded into lid
Easy to clean, stain and odor-resistant liner
Removable food tray and gallon water jug
Elastic cord feature for extra carrying support


Shade!!!!!!!

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4664263
$36.67
An outdoor essential for hot summer months Ozark Trail's Polyester Dome Screen House is durable and lightweight and a quick, easy way to create shade for you and your guests. Perfect for backyard picnics, barbecues, camping, sporting events and more. Includes carry bag.


http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5493341
$48.73
Relax with family and friends outside under this spacious, well-ventilated 15' x 13' screen house. With mesh side panels that let the wind pass through but keep the bugs out. Plus two zippered mesh doors make it easy for everyone to come and go as they please.
Perfect shelter for backyard picnics, barbeques, or camping
Polyester canopy is durable and lightweight
Easy set-up and chain-corded steel pole construction
Roof vent allows for more air circulation
Includes carry bag

[DeltaSigChi4]

Why not cut the proverbial middleman out, find some impoverished Chinese with poor quality goods in their backyard/garage/attic, slit their throats, and steal their camping goods?



E

[Havocquarm]

I think I'm going to my fine Wal-mart right at this moment (Thats right, because walmarts are conviently open 24 hours around these parts) to purchase several, if not all!, of these finely priced items. I also look forward to bidding the door greeter a fine goodnight since they are there to put a smile on my face.

What a wonderful, wonderful world we live in.

[DeltaSigChi4]

Yep ...

oh so wonderful ...



E

[KarliCucumber]

REI-Outlet (http://www.rei-outlet.com) also has a bunch of camping accessories on sale as well. Just an option if you hate wal-mart!

[BeeII]

Why not cut the proverbial middleman out, find some impoverished Chinese with poor quality goods in their backyard/garage/attic, slit their throats, and steal their camping goods?



E

is not everything made in china nowadays?

[JClemy]

The Chinese in my area do pretty well for themselves. Unfortunately I don't really have any minorities to exploit unless I go to wal mart.

[DeltaSigChi4]

is not everything made in china nowadays?

I buy my things from Japon; thank you very much.

E

[amyzzz]

Oh yeah, GTI Girl works for Wal-Mart.

[gaypalmsprings]

Hecho En China

[DeltaSigChi4]

While I would normally say that Amy is pointing out the obvious, it seems to be an uphill battle to convey that fact to the masses, who either fail to realize it, or realize it and don't care, or realize it and support the madness that is GTI GRL in spite of me.

E

[amyzzz]

Well, it is tempting to get an all-in-one camping kit. Maybe I should check out Target or a sporting goods store for that.

[GTI_GRL]

I can't help it if the masses of un-educated, delta..., is unable to understand the easiest of things. As far as target, its the same stuff from the same place with a different name. The color may be different or a feature is in a different location, but it all comes from the same factory by the same workers. So be anti Wal-Mart, but that means you also have to be anti-target, anti-big-5, anti-sports chalet, anti-rei (it's imported), etc.....

Wake up and smell the coffee, nearly anything you buy is from the same place by the same people under the same conditions.

[DeltaSigChi4]

Wrong. No corporation allowed to sell goods in the United States of America has EVER violated so many laws, scorched the Earth so badly, or been so unapologetic in their doings than Wal-Mart. I mean, just take a look at what a corporation mouthpiece like you has to say, and that is just the beginning of their campaign to claim the "everyone else does it, everyone else is as bad as us" excuse. Pathetic, if that's the best you can do.

E

[GTI_GRL]

damn I guess you didn't learn anything from the other thread.

[GTI_GRL]

http://www.walmartfacts.com/articles/2259.aspx

Founded in 2005, Acres for America is a one-of-a-kind partnership between Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to conserve critical wildlife habitats for future generations.

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. has committed $35 million over 10 years to permanently conserve at least one acre of priority wildlife habitat for every developed acre of Wal-Mart Stores’ current footprint, as well as the company’s future development throughout the 10 year commitment, making this one of the largest public-private partnerships ever and the first time a company has tied its footprint to land conservation.

Since 2005, the Acres for America program has funded projects in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan and Oregon.

To date, the Acres for America program has permanently conserved 360,000 acres, helping connect conservation landscapes totaling more than 4.6 million acres.

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation will consider recommendations for projects that would generate the greatest impact to important fish, wildlife or plant resources. To apply, or for more information, log onto www.nfwf.org.

Site Profiles - A look at the sites in the Acres For America partnership:

• Michigan - Arcadia Dunes shoreline
• California - McCloud forestlands
• Arizona - North Rim of the Grand Canyon
• Arkansas - Newton County ( Click here for Arkansas site dedication photos )
• Louisiana - Catahoula and LaSalle Parishes
• Maine - Washington County
• Oregon - Deschutes Basin
• Idaho- St. Joe Basin


Information from the Acres For America launch announcement in 2005:




http://www.walmartfacts.com/articles/1868.aspx

Wal-Mart Opens 2nd Experimental Supercenter
Recycled Runway; Heat from Used Vegetable and Motor Oils; Tall Grass Prairie Mark Wal-Mart’s Continued Move Towards Being More Environmentally Friendly.

Click here to view details on the experiments in this store

Aurora, Colo., November 9, 2005 – There’s new life for an old airport runway and vegetable oil used to fry chicken at Wal-Mart’s new experimental store in Aurora, Colorado. More than 500 tons of Denver Stapleton Airport’s runway, crushed up and recycled, has been used in the store’s foundation. The used vegetable oil from the store’s Deli and used motor oil from the store’s Tire and Lube Express will be burned to help heat the store.

Learn more about the Aurora, Colo. store:

Read the story behind Wal-Mart’s experimental stores

This new supercenter has brought 300 new jobs to the Denver area, and it will offer a full line of groceries, bakery goods, deli foods, meat and dairy products, fresh produce, a Tire Lube and Express and a vision center just to name a few, and it will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “Our associates are excited to be able to serve our Denver neighbors and use this unique store to show how our company is working towards a more energy efficient building,” says Charlie Harris, Wal-Mart store manager.

“Wal-Mart wants to be a leader in corporate responsibility for the environment and our shareholders,” says Pat Curran, executive vice president of Wal-Mart Stores USA. “We want to continue our efforts and education about environmental sustainability and how it applies to our business. We believe that being a good steward of the environment and operating an efficient and profitable business are not mutually exclusive.”

The goals for both experimental stores, this store and another that opened this past summer in McKinney, TX, were to reduce the amount of energy and natural resources required to operate and maintain the stores, reduce the amount of raw materials needed to construct the facility, and substitute, when appropriate, renewable materials.

In Aurora, Wal-Mart is proud to have taken part in what has been labeled “The World’s Largest Recycling Project” in Colorado. “We worked with a local company, Recycled Materials Company, to recycle 518 tons of material and concrete from the old Stapleton runways to build the foundation for our Aurora supercenter,” says Don Moseley, director of experimental stores.

As Wal-Mart’s President and CEO, Lee Scott stated in a recent speech, Wal-Mart is committed to building a new prototype that will be 25-30 percent more efficient and produce 30% less greenhouse gas emissions than current stores within the next 4 years. “This store in Aurora will test over 50 different experiments to help us evaluate some technologies that will help us achieve that goal,” Moseley adds.

Some of the key experiments include solar and wind power, waste oil boilers, porous pavements, radiant floor heating that will help keep pedestrian areas clear of snow, and unique fabric duct air systems to heat and cool the building efficiently. There will even be a tall grass prairie on site and a place to welcome our RV visitors as they stop off I-70.

Wal-Mart has contracted with the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) of Golden, Col., to provide monitoring, testing, and analysis on store systems and materials, based on national scientific measurements and standards, for a period of three years. “We will share our lessons learned from this store with others in the industry so that we all can learn and the environment can benefit from these technologies becoming more mainstream,” says Moseley.

For a press kit, downloadable high resolution photos, and real-time information on how much energy is being generated from wind and solar power, visit www.walmartfacts.com or www.walmartstores.com

About Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. operates Wal-Mart Stores, Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets and SAM’S CLUB locations in the United States. The company operates in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, South Korea and the United Kingdom. The company’s securities are listed on the New York and Pacific stock exchanges under the symbol WMT. Online merchandise sales are available at www.walmart.com. Press releases and other Wal-Mart facts are available at www.walmartfacts.com.

- # # # -


FACT SHEET
Aurora Wal-Mart Supercenter

Store fast facts
• Location: 3301 N. Tower Road, Aurora, Colo.
• 206,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter
• Store grand opening 9:00 a.m., Wednesday, Nov. 9th, 2005.
• Store manager: Charlie Harris

Store features
• Full line of groceries, bakery goods, deli foods, frozen foods, meat and dairy products and fresh produce, liquor sales, apparel and accessories, fine jewelry, lawn and garden center, health and beauty aids, full line of electronics, Tire & Lube Express, vision center, Subway restaurant, Papa Murphy’s Take ‘N’ Bake Pizza, portrait studio, one-hour photo lab, pharmacy with two drive-up lanes, hair salon, Academy Bank branch and a Wal-Mart Connect Center.
• Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week
• 22 full-service, 10 express and eight self check-out lanes

Employment
• 300 new jobs; 3,000 applicants
• Majority of jobs are full-time
• The average wage at Wal-Mart for full-time hourly associates in the Denver area is $11.43 per hour.*
• Wal-Mart benefits – available to full- and part-time associates – include healthcare insurance with no lifetime maximum. Associate premiums begin at less than $40 per month for an individual and less than $155 per month for a family, no matter how large. Wal-Mart also offers a 401(k) plan and profit sharing contributions, whether an associate contributes or not, store discount cards, performance-based bonuses, discounted stock purchase program and life insurance.
• Store Manager Charlie Harris started as a part-time hourly associate 12 years ago in the hardware department at a store in Moscow, Idaho.
* Average wage taken October 2004.

See www.walmartfacts.com for details.

Charitable giving
• $13,500 in charitable contributions to nine area organizations
• City of Aurora
• City of Aurora Fire Department
• Community College of Aurora Foundation
• Habitat for Humanity of Metro Denver
• Hispanic Chamber Education Foundation
• Mile High United Way
• Ronald McDonald House of Denver
• Safe Haven Foundation
• Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation



http://www.walmartfacts.com/articles/2081.aspx

Click here to view McKinney’s Energy Usage

McKinney, TX, July 20, 2005 - Wal-Mart is proud to announce the opening of a new supercenter in McKinney, Texas, which will also serve as an experimental store.

The new supercenter, offering a full line of groceries, bakery goods, deli foods, meat and dairy products, fresh produce, a Tire Lube and Express and a vision center just to name a few services, will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The supercenter will employ about 450 people, including 178 new jobs from the relocation. (See fact sheet for additional details.)

Not only will the new supercenter provide quality products and every day low prices, the new experimental store could profoundly change the way the retail industry designs, constructs, and manages facilities as it relates to the environment.

“The 450 associates here at McKinney are excited that they have such a unique store and the opportunity to share with our customers everyday how Wal-Mart is learning new ways to become a better steward of the environment,” said Brent Allen, store manager.

“We see it as a next step in evaluating the impact we leave on the environment as we look toward smart growth and sustainability in the building of our new stores,” said Mike Duke, executive vice president and chief executive officer of Wal-Mart Stores – USA. “This store will contain many of the best resource conservation and sustainable design technologies currently available to minimize the use of energy and natural resources.”

The McKinney store will experiment with materials, technology, and processes, which include:
• Reducing the amounts of energy and natural resources required to operate and maintain the stores
• Reducing the amount of raw materials needed to construct the facility.
• Substituting, when appropriate the amount of renewable materials used to construct and maintain the facility.

“We want to make the best use of renewable and alternate sources like wind and solar energy to generate electricity to supplement the power needs of the store,” said Don Moseley, PE, Wal-Mart’s experimental projects manager. “The store at McKinney will draw its energy first from on-site resources and systems, and then from conventional utility sources as a secondary service. For example, the waste cooking oil which had been used to fry chicken will be recycled by mixing it with used automotive oil from the Tire and Lube Express to serve as fuel to heat the building.”

Wal-Mart has contracted with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to provide testing and analysis on store systems and materials, based on national scientific measurements and standards, for a period of three years.

Sharing the results of the store’s experiments with the rest of the retail and development industry could turn low-volume, rare technologies into industry standards. Wal-Mart hopes to learn new environmental conservation best management practices and benchmarks that will serve as future design standards in the retail industry when it comes to land development and building construction. (See press kit for details.)

“As the world’s largest retailer, we are excited that we can lead the way in promoting the use of sustainable building and business practices in retail and the real estate development process,” said Duke. “We will share our experiences with the industry, the general public and government agencies, and will apply best environmental practices to future Wal-Mart facilities.”

We are always striving to understand and impact, in a positive way, the global footprint Wal-Mart has on the environment. Wal-Mart is the only company in America that has committed to offset its footprint – past, present and future – for land conservation. Wal-Mart is preserving an acre of wildlife habitat for every developed acre of our footprint. Additionally, Wal-Mart has a special program in place to help find new uses for every store it leaves. Last year, Wal-Mart recycled 2.8 million tons of cardboard, 9,416 tons of plastic, 262 million aluminum cans, glass containers and plastic bottles and 49 million disposable cameras.

About Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. operates Wal-Mart Stores, Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets and SAM’S CLUB locations in the United States. Internationally, the company operates in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, South Korea and the United Kingdom. The company’s securities are listed on the New York and Pacific stock exchanges under the symbol WMT. More information about Wal-Mart can be found by visiting www.walmartfacts.com. Online merchandise sales are available at www.walmart.com.

- # # # -


FACT SHEET


Store fast facts
• New location: 2041 Red Bud Blvd., McKinney, Texas
• Originally opened in 1978 at 1670 West University.
• 206,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Supercenter, gaining an additional 86,000 square feet
• Store opening Wednesday, July 20, immediately following 8:30 a.m. grand opening ceremony
• Store manager: Brent Allen. Allen started his career at Wal-Mart as an hourly associate 14 years ago in Plano.

Store features
• Full line of groceries, bakery goods, deli foods, frozen foods, meat and dairy products and fresh produce, a Tire & Lube Express, a vision center, a portrait studio, a pharmacy, a one-hour photo lab, a family fun center, a branch of Woodforest National Bank, a Blimpie sandwich shop, a Smart Style hair salon, a Da Vi nail salon and a Wal-Mart Connection Center for cellular phone sales.
• Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week
• 17 full-service, six express and eight self check-out lanes

Employment
• Total employment is 450, including 178 new jobs created by the relocation
• Fifty-two associates at this store have worked with Wal-Mart more than 10 years.
• Majority of jobs are full-time
• As of October 2004, the average wage at Wal-Mart for full-time hourly associates in the Dallas area was $10.51 per hour.
• Wal-Mart benefits – available to full- and part-time associates – include healthcare insurance with no lifetime maximum. Associate premiums begin at less than $40 per month for an individual and less than $155 per month for a family, no matter how large. Wal-Mart also offers a 401(k) plan and profit sharing contributions, whether an associate contributes or not, store discount cards, performance-based bonuses, discounted stock purchase program and life insurance.

Community Giving
Wal-Mart’s community giving is based on the philosophy of operating globally and giving back locally. In our experience, we can make the greatest impact on communities by supporting issues and causes that are important to our customers and associates in their own neighborhoods.

Store manager, Brent Allen and his team of 450 associates are proud to announce the following grants to be given to their neighbors on July 20th totaling $18,250.

Heard Natural Science Museum $6,000.00
Anna High School-Athletic Booster Club $1,000.00
McKinney Education Foundation $1,000.00
Collin County Historical Society $1,000.00
City of McKinney Police Department $750.00
Collin County Committee on Aging $1,500.00
Boys and Girls Club of Collin County $2,000.00
City of McKinney Police Department $1,500.00
City of McKinney Fire Department $500.00
Webb Elementary School $1,000.00
Finch Elementary School $1,000.00
United Way $1,000.00
In 2004, Wal-Mart Stores and SAM’S CLUB gave $16,435,558 to local causes and organizations in the communities they serve in the state of Texas. In addition, many charities and organizations received in-kind donations and additional funds raised through stores, CLUBS and distribution centers in the amount of $9,358,344, for a grand total of $25,793,902 contributed through Wal-Mart’s presence across the state.
The store will also have a budget to give donations away throughout the year. Organizations interested in receiving funding can contact the store for details.

Visit www.walmartfoundation.org for more information about our giving programs.

[GTI_GRL]

Wrong. No corporation allowed to sell goods in the United States of America has EVER violated so many laws, scorched the Earth so badly, or been so unapologetic in their doings than Wal-Mart.
E

I don't think so,

Clear Cutting? Coal/oil indistry? Meatpackaging/slaughtering/raising? Iron mills? Leather tanneries dumping toxins into the river? Exxon dumping oil? Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane (DDT) in agriculture? Ford Pinto? Tobacco Industry? Computer recycling at Dell/Hp/IBM? Nike? Disney/Mc D's exploiting children? etc.................


http://news.com.com/When+PCs+pollute/2100-1041_3-5837134.html

Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: August 17, 2005, 2:09 PM PDT

Dust on the floor of workshops in India and China has a lot to say about the unintended afterlife of PCs and television sets cast off by consumers and businesses in the United States.

A new report from Greenpeace International takes a close look at the presence of toxic metals such as lead and chemicals, including flame retardants, in places where obsolete electronic gear is disassembled and often scavenged for its pieces. Its conclusions: E-waste recycling work is dangerously unregulated and further evidence that electronics makers need to take more responsibility for the gear they produce.

"Both wastes and hazardous chemicals used in the processing (of spent electronics) are commonly handled with little regard for the health and safety of the work force or surrounding communities and with no regard for the environment," the report says. "Overall, the result is severe contamination."

In conjunction with the report's publication Wednesday, environmental activists in the U.S. are urging state legislators to take action through "producer takeback" programs instead of upfront consumer fees. Electronics makers, they say, need to be held responsible for managing their products even after they go out of service, and export of e-waste to developing countries should be banned.

"What we really need is an effective national and global system. If the producers have responsibility for their products at the end of their life, then they have an incentive to design them to be less toxic in the first place," said Ted Smith, the chair of the national Computer TakeBack Campaign and senior strategist for the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, which promotes responsible electronics recycling.

Producer takeback bills started in Maine in 2004 and are up for review in many states including Oregon, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Rhode Island and Washington. The takeback programs, which put the burden on manufacturers for handling end-of-life electronics, contrast with California's Electronic Waste Recycling Act, which requires consumers to pay recycling fees at the time of purchase. Smith said the takeback programs are preferable because they encourage companies to comply through a method of peer pressure and competitive advantage.

Despite the best efforts of legislators and environmental groups, however, Smith said there is still no guarantee that products purchased in North America and Europe would not end up in a pile of garbage somewhere in China or India.

Hewlett-Packard, which has long had recycling programs in place, says it vets its recycling partners for socially and environmentally responsible practices, but agrees with the notion that not all scrap electronics can be policed.


"There is a need for companies and governments to have a recycling infrastructure," said John Frey, who manages corporate environmental strategy for HP. "When these materials aren't appropriately handled at end of life, less-desirable outcomes occur like those being pointed out in Asia."

The European Union's Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive has been going into effect in a number of countries--not without a few bumps. In Ireland this month, for instance, the Labour Party charged that retailers have used the directive as an opportunity to hike up prices disproportionately. Market researcher Gartner has estimated that legal changes could add $60 to the price of PCs in Europe this year.

Doing the dirty work
Small dismantling units in the New Delhi region handle about 40 percent of electronic waste in India, and nearly half of this is illegally imported from the U.S. and Europe, according to Greenpeace India's Ramapati Kumar. Much of the waste is sent in by recyclers under the pretext of "reuse and charity" and sometimes in the form of "mixed metal scrap" that can be imported under Indian rules.

Kumar said products of all major gear makers like HP, IBM, Dell and Toshiba can be found in backyard recycling sites. This shows, he said, that products taken back by these corporations under their recycling programs eventually land in developing countries through traders and recyclers in the U.S. and Europe. The reason for that, he said, is cost--it costs $20 to recycle a PC in the U.S. while it costs $2 in India.

Those companies, though, generally take back PCs and other gear from a range of manufacturers, not just their own. Recycling services are also offered by large retailers and by private contractors.

The situation overseas is compounded in some regions where corruption is a factor. Smith recounted a story from a recent conference where a U.S. official with the Environmental Protection Agency noted a $100 bill on top of a shipping container full of computer waste, which would pass through the checkpoint with no questions asked.

To give a sense of the overall scale of the problem, Greenpeace cited a UN Environment Program report, which found that between 20 million and 50 million tons of e-waste is produced worldwide annually. In China alone, according to the UN report, 4 million PCs are discarded each year.

HP said it is on track to recycle 1 billion pounds of electronics by the end of 2007, with the count having started last year. Dell has said that during its fiscal 2004, it collected 35 million pounds of computer gear for recycling.

The Greenpeace study in March 2005 took more than 70 samples of dust, soil, river sediment and groundwater from sites in the area of Guiyu, in China's Guangdong province, and in the suburbs of New Delhi.

It found that the heavy metals most commonly found in elevated levels included lead and tin, used in solder; copper, from wires and cables; cadmium, from batteries and solder joints; and antimony, from flame retardants.

In the Chinese workshops, the dust collected was found to have "concentrations of lead (that) were hundreds of time higher than typical levels for indoor dusts in other parts of the world." In India, traces of metals such as lead, tin and copper were found in quantities five to 20 times higher than background levels.

Whether legislation in the U.S. and Europe is the answer to the problem is an open question. IBM says it is generally supportive of the California approach. HP's Frey said the main thing he's looking for is a "consistent," nationwide plan, rather than state-by-state mandates.

"We've really tried for a more national approach," Frey said. "That would be more effective for us, versus 50 different ways."

CNET News.com's Jonathan Skillings and Ingrid Marson of ZDNet UK contributed to this report.


http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2003-01-09-dirty-computers_x.htm

Activists: Computer makers pollute planet, harm workers
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — U.S. technology companies lag foreign rivals in reducing hazardous materials in electronic devices, exposing gadget-hungry Americans to toxins whenever they use computers, according to a new report. Computer TakeBack Campaign assigned poor or failing grades to Hewlett-Packard, Micron Technology and Gateway in its third annual report card. The study, published online (svtc.igc.org) Thursday from research by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, charged American companies have been slow to reduce "e-waste," including lead, polyvinyl chloride and other hazardous materials used to manufacture computers.


CTC blasted Round Rock, Texas-based Dell Computer for failing to send company representatives to shareholder meetings involving toxic materials policy. It also attacked the nation's top-selling computer manufacturer for dealing with a U.S. government contractor, UNICOR, which employs prison inmates to recycle outdated computers.

According to the CTC, "high-tech chain gangs" are not guaranteed the safety protections needed to ensure protection against e-waste.

"The Dell position on e-waste is a stain on the soul of Dell — the company and its founder," the report stated. "Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, make generous donations to children's health and environmental charities in the U.S., but ignore the health and environmental impacts of e-waste on children and adults."

Activists mocked Dell's use of inmate labor at a protest Thursday in Las Vegas, where company executives gathered for the Consumer Electronics Show.

Dell spokesperson Michele Glaze defended the contract with UNICOR. Dozens of companies hire UNICOR to get federal inmates to recycle electronics, wash laundry, make toner cartridges, stamp metal and perform dozens of other jobs for government agencies and private companies.

Glaze said the lower wage earned by federal inmates allows Dell to recycle computers at a fraction of the cost it would require using a private recycling program. Owners of obsolete Dell machines pay shipping costs to return their computers but do not have to pay any additional cost associated with recycling in the DellExchange program.

"We are as concerned about this issue as the Computer TakeBack Campaign is," Glaze said. "We don't want people to throw away their computers. We don't want computers in landfills."

Dell's failing grade mirrors lax environmental standards throughout the country, according to the CTC. Even the highest-ranking American company in the study, IBM, "disappointed" CTC scorers for shipping to American consumers computers containing brominated flame retardants, used to prevent fires in circuit boards. In countries that prohibit the suspected endocrine disrupters, IBM ships BFR-free machines.

The report praised the European Union, which in October adopted directives that put the burden of recycling on the manufacturer. Japan, home of CTC's highest-ranking electronics manufacturers, Fujitsu and Cannon, passed a law in 2001 requiring electronic manufacturers to recycle certain parts. Japan requires disclosure of chemical use in production plants.

Within the next five years, up to 680 million computers will become obsolete in the United States, producing more than 4 billion pounds of plastic, 1 billion pounds of lead and millions of pounds of other waste products, according to the National Safety Council. According to the CTC report, less than 10% of outdated computer products will be refurbished or recycled.


http://www.mindfully.org/WTO/Computers-Go-To-Die23nov02.htm


Where Computers Go to Die:
Poor Cities in China Become Dumping Ground for E-Waste
KARL SHOENBERGER San Jose Mercury News 23nov02


The Poisons and a PC

Advocates of responsible computer recycling one that PCs and monitors can be a threat to health and the environment when they are looking apart. The chemical toxins inside don't pose a danger when the PC is an normal use, but at the end of its life the PC becomes hazardous waste.*

Monitor—Cathode ray tubes contain 4 to 8 pounds of lead in the radiation shielding of the glass and in lead solder on wires and connections. Barium is also used in the glass shielding. There is phosphorus in the inside coating of the faceplate. Hexavalent chromium is applied on galvanized steel parts for corrosion protection.

PC Chassis—hexavalent chromium is used on steel plates to prevent corrosion.

Cables and Wires—the plastic covers of the wires inside and outside of a PC contain both PBDE and PVC.

Plastic Shell—Polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDE) are used as flame retardant in computer plastics. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) components, when burned, give off dioxin fumes.

Circuit Boards—Most manufacturers use lead solder to connect semiconductors and other components and wires to motherboards and integrated chip sets. Beryllium is commonly found on boards and connectors. Printing wiring boards contain mercury. Cadmium can be found in semiconductors and resistors.

HEALTH RISKS

Lead—Toxic to the kidneys, damages nervous and reproductive systems, inhibits mental development in infants and young children.

Barium—Exposure can cause brain swelling, muscle weakness and damage to the heart, liver and spleen.

Hexavalent Chromium—can cause DNA damage and asthmatic bronchitis.

Phosphorus—Health effects aren't fully understood, of the U.S. Navy brands it "extremely toxic."

Beryllium—Recently classified as a human carcinogen.

Mercury—High levels of exposure contribute to brain and kidney damage and cause birth defects.

PBDE—Can potentially harm a developing fetus.

Dioxin—Can cause cancer, damage the immune system and interfere with the regulatory hormones.

* mindfully.org note:
Computers are in fact a health problem from the time they are produced, throughout the time they are used, and well after they have been "recycled" or dumped. Even if they are recycled in what might be considered a proper way, what is being done should be named reuse rather than recycling, because recycling connotes a closed loop where something is produced, used, and reused a countless number of times. The plastic components of computers offgass many of the highly toxic and persistent chemicals that are in them. When you get a new computer and turn it on, in some you will notice a bad smell emanating from it. That is offgassing. Some do it more than others, but they all offgass throughout their useful life.

GUIYU, China - Here in southern China, where the gritty air stings your throat and circuit boards pile up like dry leaves in the gutter, a group of women squat on the sidewalk using their bare hands to pull apart the hazardous guts of a small mountain of PCs.

This is where many of America's computers go to die.

In the Pearl River Delta less than 180 miles away, in factories as immaculate as Guiyu is filthy, growing legions of young women work up to 18 hours a day, soldering chips and wires to motherboards, making the PC boxes that one day will bear the name of Hewlett-Packard or Dell or IBM.

This is where the world's personal computers are born.

A computer may spend its working days in a comfortable home in Boston or in a programmer's cubicle in San Jose. But at both ends, the dirty work behind a typical PC's life is done in China. This is the dark secret of a famously "clean industry.''

At the front end, the industry relies on cheap overseas labor working long hours to make a profit on computers even as they fall in price. At the back end, the industry downplays its responsibility for the toxic chemicals and metals used in its short-lived products.

In the Pearl River Delta and other regions, spotless new factories have made China the world's premier electronics workshop by drawing young women from the desperately poor countryside to work most of their waking hours for 30 cents an hour. These are the kind of labor practices made notorious by apparel factories used by Nike and the Gap in the 1990s.

In Guiyu, as in similar dumping grounds in India, Pakistan and the Philippines, migrant workers are paid pennies to crack open and sort the parts of monitors and circuit boards, exposing themselves to toxic metals like lead, mercury and cadmium. They burn PVC cables to extract copper, poisoning the air. They dip circuit boards and chips in acid to recover small amounts of gold, inhaling the fumes and dumping the acid into a nearby river that is dying.

"Rather than having to face the e-waste problem squarely, the United States has made use of a convenient, and until now, hidden escape valve: exporting the crisis to developing countries in Asia,'' the environmental groups Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and Basel Action Network stated in a recent report.

This fall a Mercury News reporter and photographer set out to chronicle this complex cycle, from a computer's birth to its death, and document the little-known story behind Silicon Valley's celebrated success. Its sheer scale is formidable: This year, the global computer industry produced its billionth PC, and it is expected to make 1 billion more by 2008.

Our journey begins in Guiyu, on the banks of the Lianjiang River, its sluggish waters contaminated by shards of lead-shielded glass from computer monitors that crossed the Pacific in containers of electronic trash.

Could this be your old PC that Li Xiu Lan has in her hands?

Escaping poverty
From farm towns to industrial zone

Li traveled the breadth of China to escape destitution in Sichuan province. Here on a Guiyu sidewalk, she is pulling apart a PC carcass, earning about 17 cents an hour as she exposes herself to a witch's brew of chemicals without gloves, goggles or other protection.

"I don't know yet if I like this work,'' said Li, 30, who had been on the job about one month. "But back home there are no jobs. There is no money. There is nothing to do.''

Guiyu stands out as a relatively prosperous pocket of activity compared with Shantou, a coastal city that the economic boom left behind. But incoming electronic trash litters the town, from bales of plastic monitor shells in a back alley to heaps of cell phone casings on the sidewalk of a grubby street where people live in concrete-block houses above recycling workshops.

A decade ago, this was an idyllic cluster of farming villages nestled around the pristine Lianjiang River. Now the stale air in town is choked with fumes that burn the throat -- a condition that environmental investigators partly attribute to nighttime burning of cables to recover their copper.

Guiyu became a symbol of the global e-waste problem after environmentalists investigated conditions here a year ago. They released their findings in February in a report published by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and the Seattle-based Basel Action Network.

The report, "Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia,'' indicted the U.S. computer industry for not taking responsibility for the toxic substances that are built into its products. Instead of allowing the problem to be exported, it argued, brand-name PC makers should design products for easier recycling and should monitor the integrity of U.S. scrap recycling. The report also rebuked the U.S. government for failing to ratify the 1992 Basel Convention and an amendment to the accord that would ban exports of hazardous electronic waste. And it embarrassed China, which had ratified both the convention and the amendment yet allowed cities like Guiyu to subsist on imported scrap.

U.S. recycling companies were denounced for their "dirty little secret.'' Many of these companies were collecting monitors and PCs, but instead of recycling them under U.S. standards for hazardous-waste handling, they were shipping the scrap to Asia, where there is a ravenous, unregulated market and wages are dirt-cheap.

Tech export
Most of U.S. scrap is shipped overseas

An estimated 50 percent to 80 percent of the electronic waste collected for recycling in the Western United States ends up shipped to developing countries, and scrap brokers in China are the biggest buyers, industry sources say. Electronic-trash recycling is a lucrative niche in the waste industry.

"You get paid to pick it up, and you get paid by people who want to take it away,'' said the head of a major recycling company who asked not to be identified.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated in 1999 that only about 18 percent of all discarded computers were being recycled, the rest presumably left in storage or going into landfills. That would amount to about 12.8 million computers feeding the electronic-trash supply chains this year.

The tech industry has distanced itself from the problem of e-waste exports, but is grappling with the demand for domestic recycling solutions.

The Electronic Industries Alliance said recently that its members are "working hard to provide Californians with several immediate options to help with the creation of a recycling industry.''

In China, the central government has tried repeatedly to stop imports of hazardous material over the past decade, but has been stymied by the nation's poorly developed rule of law and the central government's limited ability to enforce its will in outlying provinces.

Beijing cracked down in Guiyu after the state-run broadcasting network documented the hazardous electronic-scrap recycling in 2000. Later that year, a Hong Kong magazine published an account of Guiyu's environmental blight, citing tests indicating alarming levels of lead in the Lianjiang River.

Then came "Exporting Harm'' and its international exposure.

Owners identified
Investigators find lead, other metals

HP, IBM and Kmart were among the brand names on the tags and labels fastened to the scrapped electronics products videotaped by the investigators. Former owners identified on the tags included San Francisco State University, the Los Angeles Unified School District and Xerox Corp. A 16-inch Sony color monitor previously owned by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency found its way to Guiyu.

The Basel Action Network and undercover investigators from Greenpeace China collected sediment and water samples from the Lianjiang for testing by an internationally accredited testing agency in Hong Kong. One water sample showed levels of lead to be 190 times higher than the threshold set by the World Health Organization for drinking water. The lab also found sky-high levels of lead, zinc and chromium in one of two sediment samples.

The water is so filthy that Guiyu residents now rely on a town 30 miles away for their drinking water, which rickety three-wheel trucks bring in orange plastic tanks.

No one is studying workers in places like Guiyu for the health effects of hazardous electronic waste, but there are anecdotal reports of respiratory, skin and stomach problems, and an increasing number of miscarriages in the area.

Embarrassed, Chinese officials rushed to Guiyu this year to try to clean up the mess and place it out of sight. Police detained and interrogated a correspondent for Japan's major economic daily, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 30 minutes after he arrived in April.

Authorities effectively made Guiyu off limits to foreign reporters and Western diplomats without an official invitation and a guided tour that did not permit sightseeing along the toxic river.

When the Mercury News explored Guiyu in late September to corroborate environmentalists' findings, there were no signs of a police presence on the streets. But there was considerable apprehension among the workers and scrap brokers who agreed to talk.

Workers unloading a truck full of computer chassis chased away the Mercury News team. "No pictures! No pictures!'' they shouted in Mandarin.

A rough-looking scrap broker interrupted an interview with his migrant laborers who were cooking motherboards over primitive charcoal stoves beneath a shade tarp near the river, melting the lead solder to retrieve chips and bits of wire.

Source of income
E-waste a measure of Guiyu's prosperity

"We don't mean to pollute the environment,'' said the broker, who appeared to be in his early 30s, as he beckoned the journalists into a crumbling brick warehouse.

A green plastic bin of semiconductors rested on the coffee table before him as the man held court, chain-smoking and surrounded by a ragtag gang of associates. He said he was a Guiyu native but would not give his name or allow photos.

"We're just peasants trying to make a decent living,'' he said. "We're afraid of the government coming here and giving us trouble, because our business is already suffering.'' The man suggested the journalists should leave town, "and don't come back tomorrow.''

Another Guiyu scrap dealer, Yang Xiong Hong, said he buys his electronic waste from dealers in Guangzhou, the provincial capital, and sells the salvaged material to specialized traders in town. He admitted he was burning remnants of cables and motherboards "at a suitable location,'' but expressed no regrets.

"I can't control what goes on here,'' said the 24-year-old Yang, who is saving money so he can move to Hong Kong and start a new life. "If I didn't do this work, someone else would.''

Guiyu's recycling entrepreneurs insist they process only domestically generated computer scrap, and worry that the ban on imported waste is harming the town's primary source of income.

Officials in Beijing issued a statement Sept. 21 saying the government had struck a blow to the inbound traffic in electronic waste. Customs officials seized 22 containers sent from the United States packed with electronic contraband in Wenzhou, about 400 miles up the coast from Shantou.

The statement did not mention the thousands of cargo containers unloaded at China's 45 major seaports daily, however. Nor were the underpaid customs and public-security officials who live off petty graft taken into account. The statement did not explain why trucks bearing oceangoing containers were still rumbling into Guiyu that very day.

"Things have been backed up for the past three months, and you can't export to China now without a special connection,'' said Mark Dallura, president of Chase Electronics, an electronic-scrap broker outside Philadelphia. The former computer programmer said he exports material though a Chinese agent in Los Angeles.

"We go through this about every year and a half,'' Dallura said. "Then the flap dies down and it's business as usual.''

[GTI_GRL]

http://www.tufts.edu/tuftsrecycles/computers.htm#article1

FACTS PAGES: ELECTRONICS RECYCLING

As newer and better technologies hit the market almost monthly, an increasing number of computers are rapidly becoming obsolete. Electronics, especially computers, are a quickly growing, problematic waste stream.

Computers pose an environmental threat because much of the material that makes them up is hazardous. A typical monitor contains 4-5 pounds of lead.

Computers also contain are mercury, cadmium, chromium, and a slew of other hazardous materials. Thus, these materials must be recovered and recycled or disposed of in safe manner. Some computers can be salvaged, refurbished and reused, either as whole or for parts.

Parts that cannot be reused, they must be recycled or landfilled. In monitors, material can be recycled and used in the manufacture of new monitors. Precious metals contained in circuit boards can also be recovered and the batteries in computers can also be recycled.

At Tufts, old computers are either reused or recycled.

Those computers that are unusable are picked up by a recycling company that will recycle plastics, metals and hazardous materials. Precious and/or hazardous metals, such as lead and gold, are smelted and recovered for reuse. The 'left-overs' which cannot be recycled, are then landfilled or incinerated.

Computers that are still usable are donated or sold informally. Tufts Recycles! is working on establishing a more formal program to reuse and donate computers.

back to top


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Look At Electronics Recycling
Two very interesting and disturbing articles about computer recycling:

'DIRTY LITTLE SECRET OF HIGH-TECH REVOLUTION'

US EPA URGES RECYCLING, NOT DUMPING, COMPUTERS


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'DIRTY LITTLE SECRET OF HIGH-TECH REVOLUTION'; BY RECYCLING 'E-WASTE,' U.S. HARMING PEOPLE OVERSEAS, REPORT SAYS
ROBERT McCLURE, THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, February 25, 2002

Toting his video camera down an earthen embankment, Seattle activist Jim Puckett trudged toward clouds of smoke at a computer "recycling" outfit in a Chinese village. But when he got there, he found the white plumes were not smoke at all.

Instead, clouds of acrid gas poofed skyward as workers swirled a mixture of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid in open vats, trying to dissolve the gold out of old computer parts. The workers, with nothing to protect their lungs, dumped the leftover gray-black sludge alongside the adjacent river.

For days, Puckett witnessed how little actual recycling went on, and how much waste from used electronic equipment was piling up in and alongside the waterways. A soil sample at one site revealed toxins at rates hundreds of times higher than what would prompt a special Superfund cleanup here. "It's quite devastating to the environment," Puckett said after his return to Seattle from the Guiyu region northeast of Hong Kong. "It was an eye-opener."

In a report released today based in part on Puckett's voyage, several environmental groups detail how Americans' efforts to do the right thing and recycle old electronic equipment have led to widespread pollution and dangerous working conditions in China, Pakistan and India. Puckett also has heard reports of similar conditions in Vietnam and the Philippines.

"The export of e-waste remains a dirty little secret of the high-tech revolution," says the report by the Basel Action Network, Asia Pacific Environmental Exchange, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and two Asian organizations.


"A free trade in hazardous waste leaves the poorer peoples of the world with an untenable choice between poverty and poison - a choice that nobody should have to make," the report says.

With advances in technology making computers, televisions and other modern gadgets obsolete at an ever-faster pace, a major dilemma is shaping up: What to do with used electronics equipment? Often it is full of toxic materials, such as the several pounds of lead found in every television and computer screen.

Activists say the United States should follow an international treaty against exporting toxic waste to poor nations and embrace policies like those being adopted in Europe to reduce the amount of toxic material in electronics.

Cathode ray tubes in televisions and computers, as well as computer circuit boards, contain enough toxins to qualify as hazardous waste - but they are allowed under U.S. law to be exported if they are being "recycled."

At least some electronics recycling here and abroad is done properly. But Puckett and his fellow investigators present evidence in today's report that in at least three countries, the industry is endangering workers' health and the environment. "

The report is going to cause quite a stir," predicted David Stitzhal, a computer waste consultant who represents Seattle, King County, Portland and a number of other Northwest governments in a series of talks focusing on the issue.

With computers in over two-thirds of Seattle homes, this is a local issue as well as an international one.

"Recycling of this stuff is so difficult. And the markets are so immature as we try to deal with all this equipment that we only invented in the last 20 years," Stitzhal said, "that if all of a sudden all these overseas markets are gone, we've got an even more intractable problem than we thought."

Still, viewing the investigators' video "hit me in the gut," said Stitzhal, who wants to see changes made.

Some elements of the budding electronics recycling industry have banded together as the International Association of Electronics Recyclers. The group offers certification for companies that abide by certain worker-safety and environmental standards and that can ensure that most of the material they receive is truly recycled instead of being dumped.

While about 500 companies and organizations in the United States have a part in the electronics recycling industry, only about 100 are members of the group, said John Powers, an IAER consultant. "

They get paid by companies to do the right thing," Powers said. "They get paid, frankly, for keeping companies' products and names out of the news. They don't want stuff with their logos on it ending up in rivers."

But that's exactly what the environmental activists found when they visited Guiyu in December.

Among the ownership tags the activists saw on electronic equipment in Guiyu were those of a Chicago bank, the Kentucky education department, a Minnesota small-business development center, the city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Investigators documented children playing amid heaps of ash from burned electronic waste, unprotected workers brushing a suspected cancer-causing substance called carbon black from computer printer cartridges, laborers cracking open cathode ray tubes containing toxic lead and barium, and widespread burning of plastics that is almost certain to produce dioxins. They also found women whose work involved sitting by small fires, heating up computer circuit boards to melt the lead-and-tin solder, producing toxic fumes they could not help but inhale.

"Right now, we're creating Superfund sites in China, and they'll never have a Superfund to clean it up," Puckett said.

With the waterways of Giuyu polluted, the people there have taken to importing their water for drinking and cooking from more than 15 miles away, townspeople told the activists and Chinese journalists. Laborers make the equivalent of about $1.50 a day.

"For money, people have made a mess of this good farming village," a 60-year-old man told a Chinese journalist, according to a translation provided by the environmental groups. "Every day villagers inhale this dirty air, their bodies have become weak.

"Many people have developed respiratory and skin problems. Some people wash vegetables and dishes with the polluted water, and they get stomachache sickness."

In one image captured on the activists' videotape, a young boy kneels by a dark rivulet that flows past mounds of burned computer waste, clutching a partly eaten apple. In another, a barefoot child sits atop a pile of discarded printer cartridges, computer casings and other electronic junk.

And in Pakistan and India, a preliminary look by Asian environmental organizations turned up equally dangerous conditions, the groups reported.

In New Delhi, children are routinely employed to burn circuit boards, while in Karachi "circuit boards are desoldered with blow-torches with no ventilation fans. And acid operations take place indoors with less ventilation," the activists reported. Primitive smelting and acid-stripping operations take place in those countries, too, today's report says.

What are consumers to do?

"Right now we are left with very few moral, sustainable choices as to what to do with e-waste other than store it indefinitely" in the attic or basement, Puckett said.

Cullen Stephenson, who manages the Washington Department of Ecology's solid-waste program and represents the state on a national committee struggling with the question, agreed.

"There are several programs emerging, so unless it's doing some harm, let it stay in your basement for now," he said.

That is by and large what consumers have been doing. And because of that, industry officials said, the problem seems likely to mushroom in the next few years as consumers begin to dispose of their old computers, printers and so forth.

By one estimate, the number of electronics items to be recycled in the United States is projected to grow from about 12 million in 2000 to more than 25 million in 2005. Another estimated projected that 500 million pieces of electronic equipment would be discarded between 1997 and 2007 - containing about 1.5 billion pounds of lead, 3 million pounds of cadmium and 632,000 pounds of mercury, according to today's report.

There are no current, reliable estimates about how much is exported for recycling, Stephenson said.

According to the activists, none should be. They point to the Basel convention, a 1989 international treaty that bans the export of hazardous waste from rich nations to poor nations. The United States signed the pact, but Congress' failure to ratify it left the United States the only developed country in that position. The only other signatories that have failed to ratify the treaty are Haiti and Afghanistan.

The U.S. government actually encourages exportation of electronics waste, although it does not condone the improper disposal documented in today's report.

"Clearly they're dumping a lot of crap into the land and air and water and probably people's lungs," said Bob Tonetti, a scientist in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Solid Waste. "It's somewhat disconcerting to hear this, and it needs to be changed. And it needs to be changed through international activities and agreements and education."

If the United States were to unilaterally stop exporting electronic waste, other nations still would send waste to China and other Asian countries from other nations, Tonetti said. Plus, the United States could not handle all of its own e-waste.

"If we didn't have export markets, we wouldn't be able to do what we're doing here in terms of recycling," Tonetti said. "We need those export products."

Mark Small, vice president for environment, safety and health at Sony Electronics Inc., said electronics recycling produces only a small amount of the waste in Asia. Much more comes from the manufacturing of toys, clothing and other items, he said. "To be blunt, we need those low labor rates to get value out of products, so that you can go to Wal-Mart and buy a boombox for $30,"

Small said. Similarly, he said, electronics recycling relies on low Asian wages. Small said considering that many electronics are produced in Asia, it's only fair that some of the recycling go on there, too.

"If we want a truly closed-loop system, we have to send them back to where they are manufactured," he said.

But Stitzhal, the local government consultant for Seattle and other cities, advocates expanding the recycling industry in the United States to provide jobs. Unemployed timber workers and others could benefit, he said.

One person trying to beef up the domestic industry is Seattle recycler Craig Lorch, co-owner of Total Reclaim in the South Park area. Lorch sends glass from cathode ray tubes to Pennsylvania for recycling. He explained that he could make more by sending them overseas; he would save a bundle on labor costs here, plus he would get paid for each tube.

Some materials don't have ready markets here, Lorch said. He sells them to brokers, who may well be sending the material overseas.

"We're trying to do the right thing by recycling the stuff," Lorch said. "But if the result of us keeping that stuff out of our landfills is that it goes to another country where it's improperly managed, what are we gaining?

"We're just poisoning someone else to benefit ourselves."

Top of Page


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

USEPA urges recycling, not dumping, computers, May 30, 2002
Chris Baltimore, REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON -Where do worn-out computer monitors and televisions go when they die? Under a new recycling program proposed yesterday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), fewer of the lead-contaminated relics would be buried in local landfills.

As American consumers and businesses update to newer models, they will retire 250 million computers over the next five years, the EPA estimates.

The cathode-ray tube in many a computer monitor holds about eight pounds of lead, which is used to shield the viewer from harmful X-rays generated by the screen. Lead has been linked to many harmful physical and mental health effects, especially in children.

The EPA said it will soon publish proposed rules that would change the classification of cathode-ray tubes to reusable products, rather than waste. The new definitions are designed to encourage more reuse and recycling by companies that salvage industrial materials.

In a report issued in February, two environmental groups estimated that the 500 million computers in use worldwide contain 1.58 billion pounds (716.7 million kg) of lead and 632,000 pounds (286,700 kg) of mercury. About 70 percent of the heavy metals found in U.S. landfills is from such so-called "e-waste" as discarded circuit boards, wires and steel casings, according to the groups, Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.

Mercury has been linked to neurological disorders and birth defects, and is especially dangerous because its effect on the human body worsens cumulatively with prolonged exposure.

The EPA also wants to discontinue its designation of the glass screens in televisions and monitors as waste to encourage more recycling.

In addition, the EPA wants to bolster regulations of household items that contain mercury, such as thermometers and many components of switches and sprinkler systems.

Under its proposal, the EPA would treat mercury-containing computer screens and televisions as "universal waste," requiring handlers to follow regulations to keep them out of landfills.

The EPA has similar regulations for household items like batteries, lamps and pesticides.

[krunchy]

You really can't deny that wal mart is a fucked company...It's pretty funny to be defending them. I'm sure you both have good points, but wal mart isn't the root of all evil and it's not a lovely progressive company. They're fuckers for small business and union, they're good for youth employment and they are fuckers for business practices to suppliers but they are great for families on a budget but they also put those families on a budget by paying them low wages yayayayayayayayayayayaya

[boarderwoozel3]

Yeah, why are you defending wal-mart? I could care less about the money they give to protect wildlife (tax write-off). The problem is the fact they fuck their employees. Less money to wild life, more money to the people.

[GTI_GRL]

Yeah, why are you defending wal-mart? I could care less about the money they give to protect wildlife (tax write-off). The problem is the fact they fuck their employees. Less money to wild life, more money to the people.

I have wrote this before.

How is it fucking there employees if................

I make $17 an hour?

401k? WM puts in 4% of your income out of their pocket.

Profit Sharing? They share their profits with their associates. Between what they put into my 401k and profit sharing, when I leave in 6 month I will get a check for $8,000+

Sick time? 1.5 hours

Personal time? If you bank your sick time, it rolls over to personal time.

Vacation time? I will be getting 3 weeks this year.

Incentive checks? $250-500 a qtr

low cost health ins? some plans only $15 a check

cook outs? Chicken, burgers, hot dogs, steak and shrimp, etc... based on the numbers of days safe

drawings? $50 given away per day safe, after either 14 or 21 days safe it goes up to $100 a day. Before the smaller gifts ($50/$100) they gave out dvd players/tvs/stereos/bbq/days off w/pay/etc.... based on levels of days safe. Before this one year they gave away $35,000 plus in prizes including vacations to the coast/hawaii/las vegas w/paid leave from work, a motorcycle, 4 wheeler, jetski, big screen, etc...... Another year they started with $35,000 and every accident took off $1,000, but every month safe added $1,000. At the end of the year someone won a car.


etc.............

etc.................

etc..........................

[gaypalmsprings]

I don't think so,

Clear Cutting? Coal/oil indistry? Meatpackaging/slaughtering/raising? Iron mills? Leather tanneries dumping toxins into the river? Exxon dumping oil? Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane (DDT) in agriculture? Ford Pinto? Tobacco Industry? Computer recycling at Dell/Hp/IBM? Nike? Disney/Mc D's exploiting children? etc.................


http://news.com.com/When+PCs+pollute/2100-1041_3-5837134.html

Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: August 17, 2005, 2:09 PM PDT

Dust on the floor of workshops in India and China has a lot to say about the unintended afterlife of PCs and television sets cast off by consumers and businesses in the United States.

A new report from Greenpeace International takes a close look at the presence of toxic metals such as lead and chemicals, including flame retardants, in places where obsolete electronic gear is disassembled and often scavenged for its pieces. Its conclusions: E-waste recycling work is dangerously unregulated and further evidence that electronics makers need to take more responsibility for the gear they produce.

"Both wastes and hazardous chemicals used in the processing (of spent electronics) are commonly handled with little regard for the health and safety of the work force or surrounding communities and with no regard for the environment," the report says. "Overall, the result is severe contamination."

In conjunction with the report's publication Wednesday, environmental activists in the U.S. are urging state legislators to take action through "producer takeback" programs instead of upfront consumer fees. Electronics makers, they say, need to be held responsible for managing their products even after they go out of service, and export of e-waste to developing countries should be banned.

"What we really need is an effective national and global system. If the producers have responsibility for their products at the end of their life, then they have an incentive to design them to be less toxic in the first place," said Ted Smith, the chair of the national Computer TakeBack Campaign and senior strategist for the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, which promotes responsible electronics recycling.

Producer takeback bills started in Maine in 2004 and are up for review in many states including Oregon, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Rhode Island and Washington. The takeback programs, which put the burden on manufacturers for handling end-of-life electronics, contrast with California's Electronic Waste Recycling Act, which requires consumers to pay recycling fees at the time of purchase. Smith said the takeback programs are preferable because they encourage companies to comply through a method of peer pressure and competitive advantage.

Despite the best efforts of legislators and environmental groups, however, Smith said there is still no guarantee that products purchased in North America and Europe would not end up in a pile of garbage somewhere in China or India.

Hewlett-Packard, which has long had recycling programs in place, says it vets its recycling partners for socially and environmentally responsible practices, but agrees with the notion that not all scrap electronics can be policed.


"There is a need for companies and governments to have a recycling infrastructure," said John Frey, who manages corporate environmental strategy for HP. "When these materials aren't appropriately handled at end of life, less-desirable outcomes occur like those being pointed out in Asia."

The European Union's Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive has been going into effect in a number of countries--not without a few bumps. In Ireland this month, for instance, the Labour Party charged that retailers have used the directive as an opportunity to hike up prices disproportionately. Market researcher Gartner has estimated that legal changes could add $60 to the price of PCs in Europe this year.

Doing the dirty work
Small dismantling units in the New Delhi region handle about 40 percent of electronic waste in India, and nearly half of this is illegally imported from the U.S. and Europe, according to Greenpeace India's Ramapati Kumar. Much of the waste is sent in by recyclers under the pretext of "reuse and charity" and sometimes in the form of "mixed metal scrap" that can be imported under Indian rules.

Kumar said products of all major gear makers like HP, IBM, Dell and Toshiba can be found in backyard recycling sites. This shows, he said, that products taken back by these corporations under their recycling programs eventually land in developing countries through traders and recyclers in the U.S. and Europe. The reason for that, he said, is cost--it costs $20 to recycle a PC in the U.S. while it costs $2 in India.

Those companies, though, generally take back PCs and other gear from a range of manufacturers, not just their own. Recycling services are also offered by large retailers and by private contractors.

The situation overseas is compounded in some regions where corruption is a factor. Smith recounted a story from a recent conference where a U.S. official with the Environmental Protection Agency noted a $100 bill on top of a shipping container full of computer waste, which would pass through the checkpoint with no questions asked.

To give a sense of the overall scale of the problem, Greenpeace cited a UN Environment Program report, which found that between 20 million and 50 million tons of e-waste is produced worldwide annually. In China alone, according to the UN report, 4 million PCs are discarded each year.

HP said it is on track to recycle 1 billion pounds of electronics by the end of 2007, with the count having started last year. Dell has said that during its fiscal 2004, it collected 35 million pounds of computer gear for recycling.

The Greenpeace study in March 2005 took more than 70 samples of dust, soil, river sediment and groundwater from sites in the area of Guiyu, in China's Guangdong province, and in the suburbs of New Delhi.

It found that the heavy metals most commonly found in elevated levels included lead and tin, used in solder; copper, from wires and cables; cadmium, from batteries and solder joints; and antimony, from flame retardants.

In the Chinese workshops, the dust collected was found to have "concentrations of lead (that) were hundreds of time higher than typical levels for indoor dusts in other parts of the world." In India, traces of metals such as lead, tin and copper were found in quantities five to 20 times higher than background levels.

Whether legislation in the U.S. and Europe is the answer to the problem is an open question. IBM says it is generally supportive of the California approach. HP's Frey said the main thing he's looking for is a "consistent," nationwide plan, rather than state-by-state mandates.

"We've really tried for a more national approach," Frey said. "That would be more effective for us, versus 50 different ways."

CNET News.com's Jonathan Skillings and Ingrid Marson of ZDNet UK contributed to this report.


http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2003-01-09-dirty-computers_x.htm

Activists: Computer makers pollute planet, harm workers
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — U.S. technology companies lag foreign rivals in reducing hazardous materials in electronic devices, exposing gadget-hungry Americans to toxins whenever they use computers, according to a new report. Computer TakeBack Campaign assigned poor or failing grades to Hewlett-Packard, Micron Technology and Gateway in its third annual report card. The study, published online (svtc.igc.org) Thursday from research by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, charged American companies have been slow to reduce "e-waste," including lead, polyvinyl chloride and other hazardous materials used to manufacture computers.


CTC blasted Round Rock, Texas-based Dell Computer for failing to send company representatives to shareholder meetings involving toxic materials policy. It also attacked the nation's top-selling computer manufacturer for dealing with a U.S. government contractor, UNICOR, which employs prison inmates to recycle outdated computers.

According to the CTC, "high-tech chain gangs" are not guaranteed the safety protections needed to ensure protection against e-waste.

"The Dell position on e-waste is a stain on the soul of Dell — the company and its founder," the report stated. "Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, make generous donations to children's health and environmental charities in the U.S., but ignore the health and environmental impacts of e-waste on children and adults."

Activists mocked Dell's use of inmate labor at a protest Thursday in Las Vegas, where company executives gathered for the Consumer Electronics Show.

Dell spokesperson Michele Glaze defended the contract with UNICOR. Dozens of companies hire UNICOR to get federal inmates to recycle electronics, wash laundry, make toner cartridges, stamp metal and perform dozens of other jobs for government agencies and private companies.

Glaze said the lower wage earned by federal inmates allows Dell to recycle computers at a fraction of the cost it would require using a private recycling program. Owners of obsolete Dell machines pay shipping costs to return their computers but do not have to pay any additional cost associated with recycling in the DellExchange program.

"We are as concerned about this issue as the Computer TakeBack Campaign is," Glaze said. "We don't want people to throw away their computers. We don't want computers in landfills."

Dell's failing grade mirrors lax environmental standards throughout the country, according to the CTC. Even the highest-ranking American company in the study, IBM, "disappointed" CTC scorers for shipping to American consumers computers containing brominated flame retardants, used to prevent fires in circuit boards. In countries that prohibit the suspected endocrine disrupters, IBM ships BFR-free machines.

The report praised the European Union, which in October adopted directives that put the burden of recycling on the manufacturer. Japan, home of CTC's highest-ranking electronics manufacturers, Fujitsu and Cannon, passed a law in 2001 requiring electronic manufacturers to recycle certain parts. Japan requires disclosure of chemical use in production plants.

Within the next five years, up to 680 million computers will become obsolete in the United States, producing more than 4 billion pounds of plastic, 1 billion pounds of lead and millions of pounds of other waste products, according to the National Safety Council. According to the CTC report, less than 10% of outdated computer products will be refurbished or recycled.


http://www.mindfully.org/WTO/Computers-Go-To-Die23nov02.htm


Where Computers Go to Die:
Poor Cities in China Become Dumping Ground for E-Waste
KARL SHOENBERGER San Jose Mercury News 23nov02


The Poisons and a PC

Advocates of responsible computer recycling one that PCs and monitors can be a threat to health and the environment when they are looking apart. The chemical toxins inside don't pose a danger when the PC is an normal use, but at the end of its life the PC becomes hazardous waste.*

Monitor—Cathode ray tubes contain 4 to 8 pounds of lead in the radiation shielding of the glass and in lead solder on wires and connections. Barium is also used in the glass shielding. There is phosphorus in the inside coating of the faceplate. Hexavalent chromium is applied on galvanized steel parts for corrosion protection.

PC Chassis—hexavalent chromium is used on steel plates to prevent corrosion.

Cables and Wires—the plastic covers of the wires inside and outside of a PC contain both PBDE and PVC.

Plastic Shell—Polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDE) are used as flame retardant in computer plastics. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) components, when burned, give off dioxin fumes.

Circuit Boards—Most manufacturers use lead solder to connect semiconductors and other components and wires to motherboards and integrated chip sets. Beryllium is commonly found on boards and connectors. Printing wiring boards contain mercury. Cadmium can be found in semiconductors and resistors.

HEALTH RISKS

Lead—Toxic to the kidneys, damages nervous and reproductive systems, inhibits mental development in infants and young children.

Barium—Exposure can cause brain swelling, muscle weakness and damage to the heart, liver and spleen.

Hexavalent Chromium—can cause DNA damage and asthmatic bronchitis.

Phosphorus—Health effects aren't fully understood, of the U.S. Navy brands it "extremely toxic."

Beryllium—Recently classified as a human carcinogen.

Mercury—High levels of exposure contribute to brain and kidney damage and cause birth defects.

PBDE—Can potentially harm a developing fetus.

Dioxin—Can cause cancer, damage the immune system and interfere with the regulatory hormones.

* mindfully.org note:
Computers are in fact a health problem from the time they are produced, throughout the time they are used, and well after they have been "recycled" or dumped. Even if they are recycled in what might be considered a proper way, what is being done should be named reuse rather than recycling, because recycling connotes a closed loop where something is produced, used, and reused a countless number of times. The plastic components of computers offgass many of the highly toxic and persistent chemicals that are in them. When you get a new computer and turn it on, in some you will notice a bad smell emanating from it. That is offgassing. Some do it more than others, but they all offgass throughout their useful life.

GUIYU, China - Here in southern China, where the gritty air stings your throat and circuit boards pile up like dry leaves in the gutter, a group of women squat on the sidewalk using their bare hands to pull apart the hazardous guts of a small mountain of PCs.

This is where many of America's computers go to die.

In the Pearl River Delta less than 180 miles away, in factories as immaculate as Guiyu is filthy, growing legions of young women work up to 18 hours a day, soldering chips and wires to motherboards, making the PC boxes that one day will bear the name of Hewlett-Packard or Dell or IBM.

This is where the world's personal computers are born.

A computer may spend its working days in a comfortable home in Boston or in a programmer's cubicle in San Jose. But at both ends, the dirty work behind a typical PC's life is done in China. This is the dark secret of a famously "clean industry.''

At the front end, the industry relies on cheap overseas labor working long hours to make a profit on computers even as they fall in price. At the back end, the industry downplays its responsibility for the toxic chemicals and metals used in its short-lived products.

In the Pearl River Delta and other regions, spotless new factories have made China the world's premier electronics workshop by drawing young women from the desperately poor countryside to work most of their waking hours for 30 cents an hour. These are the kind of labor practices made notorious by apparel factories used by Nike and the Gap in the 1990s.

In Guiyu, as in similar dumping grounds in India, Pakistan and the Philippines, migrant workers are paid pennies to crack open and sort the parts of monitors and circuit boards, exposing themselves to toxic metals like lead, mercury and cadmium. They burn PVC cables to extract copper, poisoning the air. They dip circuit boards and chips in acid to recover small amounts of gold, inhaling the fumes and dumping the acid into a nearby river that is dying.

"Rather than having to face the e-waste problem squarely, the United States has made use of a convenient, and until now, hidden escape valve: exporting the crisis to developing countries in Asia,'' the environmental groups Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and Basel Action Network stated in a recent report.

This fall a Mercury News reporter and photographer set out to chronicle this complex cycle, from a computer's birth to its death, and document the little-known story behind Silicon Valley's celebrated success. Its sheer scale is formidable: This year, the global computer industry produced its billionth PC, and it is expected to make 1 billion more by 2008.

Our journey begins in Guiyu, on the banks of the Lianjiang River, its sluggish waters contaminated by shards of lead-shielded glass from computer monitors that crossed the Pacific in containers of electronic trash.

Could this be your old PC that Li Xiu Lan has in her hands?

Escaping poverty
From farm towns to industrial zone

Li traveled the breadth of China to escape destitution in Sichuan province. Here on a Guiyu sidewalk, she is pulling apart a PC carcass, earning about 17 cents an hour as she exposes herself to a witch's brew of chemicals without gloves, goggles or other protection.

"I don't know yet if I like this work,'' said Li, 30, who had been on the job about one month. "But back home there are no jobs. There is no money. There is nothing to do.''

Guiyu stands out as a relatively prosperous pocket of activity compared with Shantou, a coastal city that the economic boom left behind. But incoming electronic trash litters the town, from bales of plastic monitor shells in a back alley to heaps of cell phone casings on the sidewalk of a grubby street where people live in concrete-block houses above recycling workshops.

A decade ago, this was an idyllic cluster of farming villages nestled around the pristine Lianjiang River. Now the stale air in town is choked with fumes that burn the throat -- a condition that environmental investigators partly attribute to nighttime burning of cables to recover their copper.

Guiyu became a symbol of the global e-waste problem after environmentalists investigated conditions here a year ago. They released their findings in February in a report published by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and the Seattle-based Basel Action Network.

The report, "Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia,'' indicted the U.S. computer industry for not taking responsibility for the toxic substances that are built into its products. Instead of allowing the problem to be exported, it argued, brand-name PC makers should design products for easier recycling and should monitor the integrity of U.S. scrap recycling. The report also rebuked the U.S. government for failing to ratify the 1992 Basel Convention and an amendment to the accord that would ban exports of hazardous electronic waste. And it embarrassed China, which had ratified both the convention and the amendment yet allowed cities like Guiyu to subsist on imported scrap.

U.S. recycling companies were denounced for their "dirty little secret.'' Many of these companies were collecting monitors and PCs, but instead of recycling them under U.S. standards for hazardous-waste handling, they were shipping the scrap to Asia, where there is a ravenous, unregulated market and wages are dirt-cheap.

Tech export
Most of U.S. scrap is shipped overseas

An estimated 50 percent to 80 percent of the electronic waste collected for recycling in the Western United States ends up shipped to developing countries, and scrap brokers in China are the biggest buyers, industry sources say. Electronic-trash recycling is a lucrative niche in the waste industry.

"You get paid to pick it up, and you get paid by people who want to take it away,'' said the head of a major recycling company who asked not to be identified.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated in 1999 that only about 18 percent of all discarded computers were being recycled, the rest presumably left in storage or going into landfills. That would amount to about 12.8 million computers feeding the electronic-trash supply chains this year.

The tech industry has distanced itself from the problem of e-waste exports, but is grappling with the demand for domestic recycling solutions.

The Electronic Industries Alliance said recently that its members are "working hard to provide Californians with several immediate options to help with the creation of a recycling industry.''

In China, the central government has tried repeatedly to stop imports of hazardous material over the past decade, but has been stymied by the nation's poorly developed rule of law and the central government's limited ability to enforce its will in outlying provinces.

Beijing cracked down in Guiyu after the state-run broadcasting network documented the hazardous electronic-scrap recycling in 2000. Later that year, a Hong Kong magazine published an account of Guiyu's environmental blight, citing tests indicating alarming levels of lead in the Lianjiang River.

Then came "Exporting Harm'' and its international exposure.

Owners identified
Investigators find lead, other metals

HP, IBM and Kmart were among the brand names on the tags and labels fastened to the scrapped electronics products videotaped by the investigators. Former owners identified on the tags included San Francisco State University, the Los Angeles Unified School District and Xerox Corp. A 16-inch Sony color monitor previously owned by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency found its way to Guiyu.

The Basel Action Network and undercover investigators from Greenpeace China collected sediment and water samples from the Lianjiang for testing by an internationally accredited testing agency in Hong Kong. One water sample showed levels of lead to be 190 times higher than the threshold set by the World Health Organization for drinking water. The lab also found sky-high levels of lead, zinc and chromium in one of two sediment samples.

The water is so filthy that Guiyu residents now rely on a town 30 miles away for their drinking water, which rickety three-wheel trucks bring in orange plastic tanks.

No one is studying workers in places like Guiyu for the health effects of hazardous electronic waste, but there are anecdotal reports of respiratory, skin and stomach problems, and an increasing number of miscarriages in the area.

Embarrassed, Chinese officials rushed to Guiyu this year to try to clean up the mess and place it out of sight. Police detained and interrogated a correspondent for Japan's major economic daily, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 30 minutes after he arrived in April.

Authorities effectively made Guiyu off limits to foreign reporters and Western diplomats without an official invitation and a guided tour that did not permit sightseeing along the toxic river.

When the Mercury News explored Guiyu in late September to corroborate environmentalists' findings, there were no signs of a police presence on the streets. But there was considerable apprehension among the workers and scrap brokers who agreed to talk.

Workers unloading a truck full of computer chassis chased away the Mercury News team. "No pictures! No pictures!'' they shouted in Mandarin.

A rough-looking scrap broker interrupted an interview with his migrant laborers who were cooking motherboards over primitive charcoal stoves beneath a shade tarp near the river, melting the lead solder to retrieve chips and bits of wire.

Source of income
E-waste a measure of Guiyu's prosperity

"We don't mean to pollute the environment,'' said the broker, who appeared to be in his early 30s, as he beckoned the journalists into a crumbling brick warehouse.

A green plastic bin of semiconductors rested on the coffee table before him as the man held court, chain-smoking and surrounded by a ragtag gang of associates. He said he was a Guiyu native but would not give his name or allow photos.

"We're just peasants trying to make a decent living,'' he said. "We're afraid of the government coming here and giving us trouble, because our business is already suffering.'' The man suggested the journalists should leave town, "and don't come back tomorrow.''

Another Guiyu scrap dealer, Yang Xiong Hong, said he buys his electronic waste from dealers in Guangzhou, the provincial capital, and sells the salvaged material to specialized traders in town. He admitted he was burning remnants of cables and motherboards "at a suitable location,'' but expressed no regrets.

"I can't control what goes on here,'' said the 24-year-old Yang, who is saving money so he can move to Hong Kong and start a new life. "If I didn't do this work, someone else would.''

Guiyu's recycling entrepreneurs insist they process only domestically generated computer scrap, and worry that the ban on imported waste is harming the town's primary source of income.

Officials in Beijing issued a statement Sept. 21 saying the government had struck a blow to the inbound traffic in electronic waste. Customs officials seized 22 containers sent from the United States packed with electronic contraband in Wenzhou, about 400 miles up the coast from Shantou.

The statement did not mention the thousands of cargo containers unloaded at China's 45 major seaports daily, however. Nor were the underpaid customs and public-security officials who live off petty graft taken into account. The statement did not explain why trucks bearing oceangoing containers were still rumbling into Guiyu that very day.

"Things have been backed up for the past three months, and you can't export to China now without a special connection,'' said Mark Dallura, president of Chase Electronics, an electronic-scrap broker outside Philadelphia. The former computer programmer said he exports material though a Chinese agent in Los Angeles.

"We go through this about every year and a half,'' Dallura said. "Then the flap dies down and it's business as usual.''

huh?

[gaypalmsprings]

http://www.tufts.edu/tuftsrecycles/computers.htm#article1

FACTS PAGES: ELECTRONICS RECYCLING

As newer and better technologies hit the market almost monthly, an increasing number of computers are rapidly becoming obsolete. Electronics, especially computers, are a quickly growing, problematic waste stream.

Computers pose an environmental threat because much of the material that makes them up is hazardous. A typical monitor contains 4-5 pounds of lead.

Computers also contain are mercury, cadmium, chromium, and a slew of other hazardous materials. Thus, these materials must be recovered and recycled or disposed of in safe manner. Some computers can be salvaged, refurbished and reused, either as whole or for parts.

Parts that cannot be reused, they must be recycled or landfilled. In monitors, material can be recycled and used in the manufacture of new monitors. Precious metals contained in circuit boards can also be recovered and the batteries in computers can also be recycled.

At Tufts, old computers are either reused or recycled.

Those computers that are unusable are picked up by a recycling company that will recycle plastics, metals and hazardous materials. Precious and/or hazardous metals, such as lead and gold, are smelted and recovered for reuse. The 'left-overs' which cannot be recycled, are then landfilled or incinerated.

Computers that are still usable are donated or sold informally. Tufts Recycles! is working on establishing a more formal program to reuse and donate computers.

back to top


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Look At Electronics Recycling
Two very interesting and disturbing articles about computer recycling:

'DIRTY LITTLE SECRET OF HIGH-TECH REVOLUTION'

US EPA URGES RECYCLING, NOT DUMPING, COMPUTERS


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'DIRTY LITTLE SECRET OF HIGH-TECH REVOLUTION'; BY RECYCLING 'E-WASTE,' U.S. HARMING PEOPLE OVERSEAS, REPORT SAYS
ROBERT McCLURE, THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, February 25, 2002

Toting his video camera down an earthen embankment, Seattle activist Jim Puckett trudged toward clouds of smoke at a computer "recycling" outfit in a Chinese village. But when he got there, he found the white plumes were not smoke at all.

Instead, clouds of acrid gas poofed skyward as workers swirled a mixture of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid in open vats, trying to dissolve the gold out of old computer parts. The workers, with nothing to protect their lungs, dumped the leftover gray-black sludge alongside the adjacent river.

For days, Puckett witnessed how little actual recycling went on, and how much waste from used electronic equipment was piling up in and alongside the waterways. A soil sample at one site revealed toxins at rates hundreds of times higher than what would prompt a special Superfund cleanup here. "It's quite devastating to the environment," Puckett said after his return to Seattle from the Guiyu region northeast of Hong Kong. "It was an eye-opener."

In a report released today based in part on Puckett's voyage, several environmental groups detail how Americans' efforts to do the right thing and recycle old electronic equipment have led to widespread pollution and dangerous working conditions in China, Pakistan and India. Puckett also has heard reports of similar conditions in Vietnam and the Philippines.

"The export of e-waste remains a dirty little secret of the high-tech revolution," says the report by the Basel Action Network, Asia Pacific Environmental Exchange, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and two Asian organizations.


"A free trade in hazardous waste leaves the poorer peoples of the world with an untenable choice between poverty and poison - a choice that nobody should have to make," the report says.

With advances in technology making computers, televisions and other modern gadgets obsolete at an ever-faster pace, a major dilemma is shaping up: What to do with used electronics equipment? Often it is full of toxic materials, such as the several pounds of lead found in every television and computer screen.

Activists say the United States should follow an international treaty against exporting toxic waste to poor nations and embrace policies like those being adopted in Europe to reduce the amount of toxic material in electronics.

Cathode ray tubes in televisions and computers, as well as computer circuit boards, contain enough toxins to qualify as hazardous waste - but they are allowed under U.S. law to be exported if they are being "recycled."

At least some electronics recycling here and abroad is done properly. But Puckett and his fellow investigators present evidence in today's report that in at least three countries, the industry is endangering workers' health and the environment. "

The report is going to cause quite a stir," predicted David Stitzhal, a computer waste consultant who represents Seattle, King County, Portland and a number of other Northwest governments in a series of talks focusing on the issue.

With computers in over two-thirds of Seattle homes, this is a local issue as well as an international one.

"Recycling of this stuff is so difficult. And the markets are so immature as we try to deal with all this equipment that we only invented in the last 20 years," Stitzhal said, "that if all of a sudden all these overseas markets are gone, we've got an even more intractable problem than we thought."

Still, viewing the investigators' video "hit me in the gut," said Stitzhal, who wants to see changes made.

Some elements of the budding electronics recycling industry have banded together as the International Association of Electronics Recyclers. The group offers certification for companies that abide by certain worker-safety and environmental standards and that can ensure that most of the material they receive is truly recycled instead of being dumped.

While about 500 companies and organizations in the United States have a part in the electronics recycling industry, only about 100 are members of the group, said John Powers, an IAER consultant. "

They get paid by companies to do the right thing," Powers said. "They get paid, frankly, for keeping companies' products and names out of the news. They don't want stuff with their logos on it ending up in rivers."

But that's exactly what the environmental activists found when they visited Guiyu in December.

Among the ownership tags the activists saw on electronic equipment in Guiyu were those of a Chicago bank, the Kentucky education department, a Minnesota small-business development center, the city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Investigators documented children playing amid heaps of ash from burned electronic waste, unprotected workers brushing a suspected cancer-causing substance called carbon black from computer printer cartridges, laborers cracking open cathode ray tubes containing toxic lead and barium, and widespread burning of plastics that is almost certain to produce dioxins. They also found women whose work involved sitting by small fires, heating up computer circuit boards to melt the lead-and-tin solder, producing toxic fumes they could not help but inhale.

"Right now, we're creating Superfund sites in China, and they'll never have a Superfund to clean it up," Puckett said.

With the waterways of Giuyu polluted, the people there have taken to importing their water for drinking and cooking from more than 15 miles away, townspeople told the activists and Chinese journalists. Laborers make the equivalent of about $1.50 a day.

"For money, people have made a mess of this good farming village," a 60-year-old man told a Chinese journalist, according to a translation provided by the environmental groups. "Every day villagers inhale this dirty air, their bodies have become weak.

"Many people have developed respiratory and skin problems. Some people wash vegetables and dishes with the polluted water, and they get stomachache sickness."

In one image captured on the activists' videotape, a young boy kneels by a dark rivulet that flows past mounds of burned computer waste, clutching a partly eaten apple. In another, a barefoot child sits atop a pile of discarded printer cartridges, computer casings and other electronic junk.

And in Pakistan and India, a preliminary look by Asian environmental organizations turned up equally dangerous conditions, the groups reported.

In New Delhi, children are routinely employed to burn circuit boards, while in Karachi "circuit boards are desoldered with blow-torches with no ventilation fans. And acid operations take place indoors with less ventilation," the activists reported. Primitive smelting and acid-stripping operations take place in those countries, too, today's report says.

What are consumers to do?

"Right now we are left with very few moral, sustainable choices as to what to do with e-waste other than store it indefinitely" in the attic or basement, Puckett said.

Cullen Stephenson, who manages the Washington Department of Ecology's solid-waste program and represents the state on a national committee struggling with the question, agreed.

"There are several programs emerging, so unless it's doing some harm, let it stay in your basement for now," he said.

That is by and large what consumers have been doing. And because of that, industry officials said, the problem seems likely to mushroom in the next few years as consumers begin to dispose of their old computers, printers and so forth.

By one estimate, the number of electronics items to be recycled in the United States is projected to grow from about 12 million in 2000 to more than 25 million in 2005. Another estimated projected that 500 million pieces of electronic equipment would be discarded between 1997 and 2007 - containing about 1.5 billion pounds of lead, 3 million pounds of cadmium and 632,000 pounds of mercury, according to today's report.

There are no current, reliable estimates about how much is exported for recycling, Stephenson said.

According to the activists, none should be. They point to the Basel convention, a 1989 international treaty that bans the export of hazardous waste from rich nations to poor nations. The United States signed the pact, but Congress' failure to ratify it left the United States the only developed country in that position. The only other signatories that have failed to ratify the treaty are Haiti and Afghanistan.

The U.S. government actually encourages exportation of electronics waste, although it does not condone the improper disposal documented in today's report.

"Clearly they're dumping a lot of crap into the land and air and water and probably people's lungs," said Bob Tonetti, a scientist in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Solid Waste. "It's somewhat disconcerting to hear this, and it needs to be changed. And it needs to be changed through international activities and agreements and education."

If the United States were to unilaterally stop exporting electronic waste, other nations still would send waste to China and other Asian countries from other nations, Tonetti said. Plus, the United States could not handle all of its own e-waste.

"If we didn't have export markets, we wouldn't be able to do what we're doing here in terms of recycling," Tonetti said. "We need those export products."

Mark Small, vice president for environment, safety and health at Sony Electronics Inc., said electronics recycling produces only a small amount of the waste in Asia. Much more comes from the manufacturing of toys, clothing and other items, he said. "To be blunt, we need those low labor rates to get value out of products, so that you can go to Wal-Mart and buy a boombox for $30,"

Small said. Similarly, he said, electronics recycling relies on low Asian wages. Small said considering that many electronics are produced in Asia, it's only fair that some of the recycling go on there, too.

"If we want a truly closed-loop system, we have to send them back to where they are manufactured," he said.

But Stitzhal, the local government consultant for Seattle and other cities, advocates expanding the recycling industry in the United States to provide jobs. Unemployed timber workers and others could benefit, he said.

One person trying to beef up the domestic industry is Seattle recycler Craig Lorch, co-owner of Total Reclaim in the South Park area. Lorch sends glass from cathode ray tubes to Pennsylvania for recycling. He explained that he could make more by sending them overseas; he would save a bundle on labor costs here, plus he would get paid for each tube.

Some materials don't have ready markets here, Lorch said. He sells them to brokers, who may well be sending the material overseas.

"We're trying to do the right thing by recycling the stuff," Lorch said. "But if the result of us keeping that stuff out of our landfills is that it goes to another country where it's improperly managed, what are we gaining?

"We're just poisoning someone else to benefit ourselves."

Top of Page


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

USEPA urges recycling, not dumping, computers, May 30, 2002
Chris Baltimore, REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON -Where do worn-out computer monitors and televisions go when they die? Under a new recycling program proposed yesterday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), fewer of the lead-contaminated relics would be buried in local landfills.

As American consumers and businesses update to newer models, they will retire 250 million computers over the next five years, the EPA estimates.

The cathode-ray tube in many a computer monitor holds about eight pounds of lead, which is used to shield the viewer from harmful X-rays generated by the screen. Lead has been linked to many harmful physical and mental health effects, especially in children.

The EPA said it will soon publish proposed rules that would change the classification of cathode-ray tubes to reusable products, rather than waste. The new definitions are designed to encourage more reuse and recycling by companies that salvage industrial materials.

In a report issued in February, two environmental groups estimated that the 500 million computers in use worldwide contain 1.58 billion pounds (716.7 million kg) of lead and 632,000 pounds (286,700 kg) of mercury. About 70 percent of the heavy metals found in U.S. landfills is from such so-called "e-waste" as discarded circuit boards, wires and steel casings, according to the groups, Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.

Mercury has been linked to neurological disorders and birth defects, and is especially dangerous because its effect on the human body worsens cumulatively with prolonged exposure.

The EPA also wants to discontinue its designation of the glass screens in televisions and monitors as waste to encourage more recycling.

In addition, the EPA wants to bolster regulations of household items that contain mercury, such as thermometers and many components of switches and sprinkler systems.

Under its proposal, the EPA would treat mercury-containing computer screens and televisions as "universal waste," requiring handlers to follow regulations to keep them out of landfills.

The EPA has similar regulations for household items like batteries, lamps and pesticides.

um, huh?

[GTI_GRL]

yeah ok bye

[JClemy]

I like Wal mart. Cheap and easy sometimes.

[Carlitos]

I don't care about the walmart debate. I care about the camping gear. Go and open a thread about the walmart debate.

[DeltaSigChi4]

Fuck you Carlito.

This was never about camping gear to begin with, but clearly marketing for Wal-Mart. Do you see anything besides useless Wal-Mart products being advertised in the initial post? Or in any of the others?

Shut your mouth [proverbially] and make a thread about camping, because this one is about Wal-Mart.

Imbecile.

E

[GTI_GRL]

Fuck you Carlito.

This was never about camping gear to begin with, but clearly marketing for Wal-Mart. Do you see anything besides useless Wal-Mart products being advertised in the initial post? Or in any of the others?

Shut your mouth [proverbially] and make a thread about camping, because this one is about Wal-Mart.

Imbecile.

E

Dont worry about Delt............. he hasn't taken his meds in a month.

[JClemy]

I looked at wal mart first to find camping stuff too. I don't work there

[bodydown]

Just to quickly rebut your claims about the greatness of walmart

A. Their employees never know about anything they are selling
B. Costco is in the same business but almost all of their employees have healthcare, they work on average years longer at their jobs that the same class workers do at walmart, they pay much better
C. REI is a CO-op meaning members get a portion of the money they spend there per year back, they offer health care (even to part time and temporary employees, and have been voted in the top 100 best places to work for 9 straight years. Their employees are knowledgeable and helpful. They have test tracks to allow you to try their shoes, bikes they have rock climbing walls in some of their stores, they offer profit sharing to their employees, they sponsor outdoor stewardship projects, give out community grants and work for environmental issues. They give out millions of dollars to community parks, grants and have youth programs that work to educate people about environmental issues. All of which they do because they want to. Not because of public pressure.

These are just of few of the reasons that WalMart sucks. It is also a lie to say that all of the products are the same. Many retailers focus on made in USA products. WalMart is not one of them (of course they pay lip service to the topic but really they don't give a shit about anything other than enriching the Walton Family.

I don't work for any retailer. I'm glad you have a decent job at WalMart consider yourself lucky because you are in the minority.