www射-国产免费一级-欧美福利-亚洲成人福利-成人一区在线观看-亚州成人

chinadaily.com.cn
left corner left corner
China Daily Website

Fortune squandered without recycling

Updated: 2012-08-06 09:40
By Zheng Xin ( China Daily)

Careless e-waste disposal pollutes environment

Fortune squandered without recycling

A worker at an e-waste disposal workshop in Shantou, Guangdong province, has a rest on May 31. [Photo/ Xinhua]

For most people, disposing of electronic waste is an afterthought, and used devices are often thrown into drawers and forgotten, sold at secondhand markets or dumped with other household trash.

Few people realize that the unwanted gadgets could be a gold mine - literally.

About 320 metric tons of gold and more than 7,500 tons of silver - together worth $21 billion - are used each year in manufacturing electronic devices.

Most of those valuable metals are lost - less than 15 percent are recovered through "urban mining" of e-waste, according to a report by the United Nations University in July.

China is the second-largest producer of e-waste, with an estimated 2.3 million tons of such waste generated annually, trailing only the United States, by 0.7 million tons, according to the report.

Experts estimate that by 2020, the amount of e-waste being disposed of will be four times that of 2007, and developing economies will be the largest receptacles.

"Precious metal 'deposits' in e-waste are 40 to 50 times richer than ore mined from the ground," said Lai Yun, director of the pollution control project at Greenpeace China. "The quantities of gold, silver and other precious metals available for recovery are increasing in tandem with fast-increasing sales of electronic and electrical goods."

Computers, for example, are 54 percent steel, 20 percent copper and aluminum, 17 percent plastic and 8 percent circuit board, all valuable when they are recycled.

This could be a very lucrative business, he said.

So what is preventing China from tapping into that potential? According to Lai, the problem lies purely with a lack of recycling channels and financial incentives.

A study by the E-waste Civil Action Network, a Beijing NGO, found that convenience is the first thing most people take into consideration when disposing of used electronic products.

Without convenient channels for the public to recycle e-waste, most people choose either to put the devices aside somewhere or dispose of them together with other household trash, the study found.

Up to 60 percent of Chinese consumers, however, choose to sell the devices to reclaimed waste collectors or secondhand markets, which are easily found in some neighborhoods.

Discarded computers and other high-end appliances are then sent by truck to unlicensed workshops for illegal processing, mainly in Zhejiang, Hebei or Guangdong provinces, all hubs for the underground disposal market.

"It's impossible for us to allocate personnel to all households to collect the e-waste - the cost would simply be too high for us," said Yuan Jie, manager of the Green Spring Environmental Co, one of the four qualified operations in Beijing that process e-waste and send recycled materials to manufacturers, such as Shougang Group, a steel company in Beijing.

The company gets the devices from the public, which can call a hotline to arrange for their collection. However, with an average of 100 devices collected each month, the supply is far from adequate for the company.

And many people say they have never heard of the hotline.

"I usually give e-waste away or sell it to local vendors, who are right in the community and come pick up the devices," said Wang Yu, 26, a Beijing resident. "Most of my neighbors do the same thing."

Yuan said Green Spring began to have a sufficient supply of e-waste starting in 2008, thanks to a home appliance trade-in policy that gave people a discount on purchases of new electronic equipment for handing in their used ones.

"Individuals were paid to encourage them to turn in used electronic appliances and worn-out goods," he said. "Most of those appliances ended up in our station, and were turned into useful material without polluting the environment."

Previous Page 1 2 3 Next Page

...

...
...
主站蜘蛛池模板: 99视频在线观看免费视频 | 特级毛片aaaa免费观看 | 亚洲综合日韩精品欧美综合区 | 欧美美女网站 | 亚洲国产精品久久日 | 国产的一级毛片完整 | 2021国产精品一区二区在线 | 福利岛国深夜在线 | 日韩美女视频一区 | 91免费国产精品 | 一级毛片私人影院免费 | 韩国黄色一级毛片 | 国产日韩精品一区在线不卡 | 国产精品午夜免费观看网站 | 亚洲人成综合在线播放 | 欧美精品久久久亚洲 | 成人欧美一区二区三区视频xxx | 欧美人在线一区二区三区 | 天堂8在线天堂资源bt | 色偷偷亚洲第一成人综合网址 | 久久国产精品久久精 | 制服丝袜在线视频香蕉 | 成年人毛片网站 | 免费观看a毛片一区二区不卡 | 新体操真 | 久久青草网站 | 九一精品国产 | 国产一级毛片夜一级毛片 | 欧美色爱综合 | 毛片图片 | 日本乱人伦片中文字幕三区 | 国产性自爱拍偷在在线播放 | 国产欧美在线播放 | 亚洲欧美日韩国产一区二区精品 | 国产精品v在线播放观看 | 日韩一区二区不卡 | 97在线视频免费观看费观看 | 91国偷自产一区二区三区 | 久久国产视频网 | 欧美亚洲国产精品 | 欧美午夜精品一区二区三区 |