'E-waste capital of the world' tries to clean up image
The southern Chinese city of Guiyu is where pc's, cellphones and Playstations go to die. The workers who recycle them are exposed to dangerous chemicals.
Chen Yinghong hasn't made tea with the water from the well or the little lake behind his workshop for years - not since the tea started foaming, and the women who work in the shop only drink bottled water.
During a recent visit, Yinghong's workshop was a mess of electronic waste: keyboards. motherboards, power cords and pc casings. Women were melting motherboards on cookers to recover the lead and copper in them. For years these acid baths and other chemicals have been dumped unceremoniously into rivers and streams in and around Guiyu.
5 euros a day
Six men wearing protective masks were pounding away at pc's, Playstations, TV's and mobile phones with screwdrivers and hammers. Lead and glass particles danced in the sunlight. The fans are too small and weak to keep the air in the room healthy, and the workers complain of headaches, watery eyes and soar throats - all that for 5 euros and ten hours a day.
Around 70 percent of the world's electronic waste ends up here in Guiyu. It is
brought here from the nearby ports of Hong Kong and the Pearl River delta.
There are around 7,000 e-waste processing workshops in Guiyu, where more
than 60,000 economic migrants from the poorest parts of southern China
remove the precious metals from electronic parts by hand. Their working
conditions resemble those of 19th century British factory workers.
Around 70 percent of the world's electronic waste ends up in Guiyu.
According to the World Health Organisation the river water in Guiyu contains 2,400 times more lead than normal.
According to figures from Shantou University 82 percent of children in Guiyu have too much lead, cadmium and other chemicals in their blood. There are no exact figures but doctors and hospitals in Guiyu are forbidden from publishing their findings by the communist party.
Tens of thousands of cases of lead poisoning have been reported in China in the past couple of weeks. The authorities were forced to reveal them after protests by parents. In one case violent protests led the authorities to decide to demolish a town of 15,000 inhabitants and rebuild it a safer distance from the factory
Most cases of lead poisoning occur through contamination of the drinking water supply. According to the Chinese press agency Xinhua one fifth of China's drinking water is unsuitable for consumption.
Environmental diaster
For this reason the authorities in Guiyu are not very fond of journalists. When discovered they are strongly advised to leave unless they want to be beaten up.
Crisis
Chen Yinghong had no problem talking to journalists. The e-waste trade has
made him a rich man, as the BMW parked out front and his three sons' new
scooters showed. Chen's workers, by contrast, have not gotten rich, or they
wouldn't be working here.
And yet Chen complained. There is no shortage of electronic waste, but the economic crisis has led to a severe drop in the price of copper and steel, he said. Worse, Chen is being made to move his workshop to a new industrial location with modern recycling facilities for which he will be charged rent. "First the crisis, now this. They're killing our business," he grumbled.
The working conditions in Guiyu were first exposed seven years ago by US environmental activists, but the Chinese authorities are only now getting around to doing something about them. After all, the e-waste business is good for a 100 million euros a year turnover.
A good time to reorganise
"There are two reasons why the authorities are taking action now," said professor Zhang Tianzhu of Beijing's Tsinghua University. First, lower prices for lead and copper have bankrupted around 40 percent of the recycling businesses in Guiyu – "a good time to reorganise the industry". Second, China is using money from the national stimulus package to modernise the recycling industry, in part because it is producing more and more electronic waste itself. "What's more, these kinds of abuses no longer have a place in our country," said Zhang Tianzhu.
The acting party secretary in Guiyu, Chen Xishi, said the building plans for the new recycling factories are almost completed. He pointed out that the air outside is no longer black but grey, the result of a ban on burning electronic waste. "By 2011 there will be no more pollution in Guiyu," he said.
Greenpeace China was somewhat less confident. The interests of the workshop owners and the local authorities are so intertwined that "what is decided in Beijing is not necessarily carried out in Guiyu," a spokesperson said.
Still, China’s most prominent environmental activist, Ma Jun, is optimistic. He has recently been documenting the pollution of soil, water and air in China with the help of the ministry for the environment.
"It took a long time for China to acknowledge the problem," Ma Jun said. "But the work is underway now and it will lead to results. That's just the way things work in China."