Environmental Hazard in Guiyu:
World’s Largest E-waste Capital
Group #7: Eunice Shin, Gordon Chang, Xinmiao Lu
Location
The area most affected is the town of Guiyu in the province of Guangdong in China. Most areas have a subtropical monsoon climate with long summers and warm winters. The biome it is in is humid subtropical. Located on the coast with the South China Sea to the south with the Tropic of Cancer running across the center and separated from the north by mountain ranges, the province is the most populated which makes it ideal for it to become an electronic graveyard. In the 1990’s, there was an economic boom that coincided with and even stemmed from the start of the digital age. Foreign countries would ship and dump their electronic waste in this town, justifying their actions with the promise that the local people could earn more money which would in turn, help the economy and the standard of living. For 17 cents an hour, the native people work to burn and disassemble the e-waste. This made their land unsuitable for its former occupation of rice agriculture and their water undrinkable due to all the pollutants from the process. Not only that, some of the highest levels of dioxins were reached. According to the World Health Organization, “Dioxins are highly toxic and can cause reproductive and developmental problems, damage the immune system, interfere with hormones and also cause cancer” (WHO). Because of the e-waste, the natural environment is negatively affected.
Specifics of the problem
A Chinese child sitting among cables and e-waste, Guiyu (Image from http://www.greenpeace.org)
Guiyu, a town in Guangdong province, is well-known for its tremendous amount of electronic waste import. For sure, it is the largest electronic waste capital of the world. The global e-waste dumping in Guiyu began due to the developments in digital technologies. Since the very beginning of the 21st century, the digital era has arrived and lots of global citizens enjoy the benefits of digital revolution. Consequently, many electronic companies such as IBM, Apple, Microsoft, etc., produce millions of electronic devices including desktops, laptops, mobile phones, and so on to fulfill customers’ demands and needs. As time goes by, global citizens’ digital lives start early, in toddlerhood, and accelerate at the speed of light. However, it is hard to manage the tremendous amount of electronic waste. Because of harmful chemicals in devices like plastics, metals, etc., most developed countries such as the United States, and many other European nations, have strict policies on e-waste dumping. As a result, many electronic companies usually dump their e-waste in poor regions, such like Guiyu, China, to avoid their mother nations’ tough regulations. Sadly, people from poor regions do not have a choice to refuse imports of e-waste from other developed nations because they earn livings through dismantling electronic waste. As a result, Guiyu has been documented as an “e-waste hub” in 2001 by the Basel Action Network: a non-profit organization which fights against hazardous waste dumping in developing nations. To solve this issue, Chinese government has established several policies to prevent e-waste smuggle but still, the e-waste black market takes large positions which is worth $ 3.75 billion. To make matters worse, the global e-waste ratio is increasing by another 33% to 72 million tons by 2017,(Quartz: Why China is still the dumping ground for the world’s electronic refuse) so the e-waste issue in Guiyu is actually worsening.
The underlying cause of electronic waste dumping in Guiyu is environmental injustice and racism which put poor citizens from developing countries into environmentally hazardous situations. It is hypocritical that developed nations such as the United States or European nations are dumping their large amount of electronic waste in the third world countries. This issue is not only environmental injustice or racism, but also moral hazard of e-waste exporters. According to Quartz’s report; “Why China is still the dumping ground for the world’s electronic refuse”, over 8 million tons of e-waste flow into Guiyu area and people of all ages work for the disassembly of hazardous e-waste. Most plastics from old electronic wastes are burned during disassembly, so approximately 80 percent of children in Guiyu are poisoned by lead or copper; Guiyu citizens’ blood contains a lot of lead and copper, which is respectively 371 times and 115 times higher than average. Moreover, Guiyu is no longer available for agriculture since whole groundwater is tainted with heavy metal contamination even though the place was originally a rice village. Surprisingly, workers of Guiyu, including both adults and children, only make $1.50 per day in average. For just a little amount of valuable metals like gold, copper, aluminum and silver from the scrap products, people of Guiyu are risking their lives. Thus hypocritical e-waste exporting nations is responsible for this issue.
Larger consequences of the problem
Ghana is also a well-known e-waste dumping site like China. The Agbogbloshie Accra, in Ghana West Africa, stays the same situation as Guiyu. In Agbogbloshis, most e-waste comes from developed countries in Europe. Accordingly, residents can get profit through e-waste processing. When a mass of electronics and household appliances get conveyed to Agbogbloshis, workers will dismantle these electronic products to extract copper, aluminum, brass, and steel and then sell to industries. The remaining components, like electrical cables, will be burned in the open air. David Fedele, an independent documentary filmmaker, shows the real living condition in Agbogbloshie in his film E-wasteland, as show in Figure 1-4.
Figure 1: E-waste Dismantle in Ghana Figure 2: Open-air storage and burning
Figure 3: Agbogbloshie in black smoke Figure 4: Sick cows in contaminated area
The global e-waste consequences can be divided in two categories: human health effect and environmental damage. In China, most of the workers who are dealing with the e-waste are normally working in small family workshops without any professional processing procedures. The workers dismantle the electronic equipment manually; they use nitric acid and hydrochloric acids to the refining process in order to get high purity of metals. This process produces toxic substances. Since workers often expose themselves in the poisoned air due to the insufficient Personal Protection Equipment (PPE), their working environment leads to short-term or long-term harm on their bodies. Moreover, this kind of harm also influences the neighboring residents. The major chronic ailments are asthma, skin diseases, eye irritations and stomach disease. At the same time, “people suffer high incidences of birth defects, infant mortality, tuberculosis, blood diseases, anomalies in the immune system, malfunctioning of the kidneys and respiratory system, lung cancer, underdevelopment of the brain in children and damage to the nervous and blood systems” (Lundgren K, P20). In Guiyu, 70% of toxic children are poisoned by lead overdose.
Figure 5: Mother feeds her daughter between piles of e-waste.
In most developing countries, e-waste is stored in open air. Karin Lundgren found “open fires burn in relatively low temperatures in comparison with incinerators and the release of pollutants is significantly higher” (P19). Lead, mercury, cyanide, dioxins, and tin, which are formed by burning and dismantling, will influence contaminated soil, surface water and air quality. For instance, it is a common practice in Guiyu to throw most of the rubbish, especially burned coal ashes, into the river and channels there. As a result of the wastes from massively dumped disassembled e-waste, the content of lead in surface water and shallow groundwater in most places of Guiyu has soared, twice the EU safety standards. Consequently, the water is no longer suitable for drinking and the residents have to purchase domestic water. Furthermore, informal sector e-waste activities lead environment-to-food-chain contamination. We can see obviously from the picture (figure 4) that the cattle in Ghana are much thinner than their normal counterparts in other places, which should be attributed to the toxic substance coming along with the daily foods they feed on and the air they are exposed to. Therefore, most animals contain slow metabolic rate live in Guiyu and Ghana. Slower metabolic rate also influences the quality of animals’ edible products, such as eggs and milk. After people consume these toxic foods, the poisonous compounds finally hurt humans.
Solutions
One solution would be to call for reform laws in electronic firms to create products that are easily dismantled. This would cause less pollutant to get in the ground and air. It would also take care of the water issue to a degree. However, in 2011, China implemented a set of rules that “delineate agency responsibilities and coordination, outline recycling and disposal requirements, add new labeling requirements, create a company contributed disposal and recycling subsidy fund, and specify noncompliance penalties for WEEE” with WEEE being waste electrical and electronic equipment (Electronic). The downside to this is that it does not address other nations’ or effectively stop the illegal means of dumping their electronic waste. Not much has been changed since those laws came out.
Another solution would be to directly invent technology that dismantles the waste without such extreme environmental hazards. The downside to this proposition is that creating new technology takes time and money and a developing, industrial nation such as China will want to be more industrialized and economically stable before investing into such projects.
A third solution would be to raise consumer awareness. This seems the most likely out of the three solutions. Already activist groups are spreading the word around about the negative impacts of e-waste dumping. There is even a foundation called the E-Waste Foundation that claims that their mission is to decrease and neutralize the e-waste problem in developing countries. Greenpeace also lobbies for manufacturers to use fewer toxic chemicals. It seems to have helped to some degree as there is less foreign waste and a lower amount of toxic chemicals in the air.
Conclusion
Guiyu of Guangdong Province is populated by 150,000 people, of whom 120,000 residents are engaged in e-waste industry. This industry has seen a trading volume of $ 75 million, with millions of e-waste to dispose each year. About 80% of the e-waste in Guiyu Town sources from foreign countries, the USA included. China is ranked as the world’s number one e-waste importer, and has imported 70% of the world’s 20 to 50 million or so e-wastes each year.
According to the statistics made in 2014, the Chinese owned 0.8 billion mobile phones, 0.5 billion televisions, 0.23 billion computers and 0.34 billion refrigerators, with the discarded e-waste coming to more than 1 million tons. Although some measures can be taken to minimize the side effects of e-waste, the constant and rapid growth of e-waste makes it hard to dissolve the issue of e-waste once and for all.
Currently e-waste is one of the major challenges for China. With the flourish of e-waste, dirty rivers, and stifling haze everywhere, more and more people are being exposed to this terrible environment. The constant expansion of toxic gases will harm not only to the health of the current generation of Chinese, but also to the next generation.
References
Akormedi, M., Asampong, E., Fobil, J.N. (2013) Working conditions and environmental
exposures among electronic waste workers in Ghana. Retrieved form
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24588034>
Band Action Network, Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, Toxics Link India, SCOPE (Pakistan),
Greenpeace China, 2002
Chien-min Ch. (2009) E-waste in Guiyu. Retrieved form
<http://m.sohu.com/n/261751074/?page=2&show_rest_pages=1&image_mode=f>
Chung, Chien-ming. “China’s E-Waste City.” China’s E-Waste City. VQR, 15 Apr. 2011. Web.
08 Mar. 2015. <http://www.vqronline.org/vqr-gallery/china%E2%80%99s-e-waste-city>.
“Dioxins and Their Effects on Human Health.” WHO. WHO Media Centre, June 2014. Web. 05
Mar. 2015. <http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs225/en/>.
“Electronic Waste Rules.” China Business Review. The US-China Business Council, 1 May
2009. Web. 08 Mar. 2015. <http://www.chinabusinessreview.com/china-recently-approved-long-awaited-electronic-waste-rules-but-a-product-catalogue-is-pending/>.
Fedele, D. (2012) E-wasteland: Where do our electronics go at the end of their life? Retrieved
from
< http://www.e-wastelandfilm.com/>
Lily, Kuo. “Quartz: Why China is still the dumping ground for the world’s electronic refuse”
Quartz, One Man’s Trash, 27 Feb 2014.
< http://qz.com/181957/why-china-is-still-the-dumping-ground-for-the-worlds-electronic-refuse/>
Lundgren, K. (2012). The global impact of e-waste: addressing the challenge. Switzerland:
International Labour Organization 18-20.
Song, X. (2011) Disaster of Chinese e-waste. Retrieved form
<http://news.163.com/photoview/3R710001/14672.html#p=74GDSBU93R710001>
Watson, Ivan. “China: The Electronic Wastebasket of the World – CNN.com.”CNN. Cable News
Network, 30 May 2013. Web. 06 Mar. 2015. <http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/30/world/asia/china-electronic-waste-e-waste/>.
Gordon's Geography Blog 