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Daily gadget


Pretend to Recycle? U.S. Ships E-Waste Overseas!!

And yes, the electronics are actually being re-used

By Roxana Deduleasa, Gadget News Editor

19th of November 2007, 10:26 GMT

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Warning: Toxic Materials!
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Here's a new one! While every single giant fish in the electronic industry is doing its best to fight against the monster pollution we're living in nowadays, the Americans are actually doing their best to do even more damage as usual, by shipping huge amounts of electronic waste overseas. They're cleaning their ground and sending waste to others.

The funniest thing of all is
that most Americans are so brain washed they actually believe they are doing the noble cause ever, helping Mother Earth breathe easier on their side, as their garbage is being shipped in third world countries. While they pretend to recycle old PCs, TVs, cell phones, and more, they're basically harming the environment even more, endangering people and pollution overseas.

Apparently, there is no official figure to reflect the huge impact these shipments have on the nature, there are activists that estimate that 50 to 80 percent of the 300.000 to 400.000 tons of electronics collected for recycling issues in the US each year end up overseas. This happens while others are trying reduce pollution.

Yahoo! Tech News emphasizes the risk is even bigger as poor people in China, India and Nigeria are risking their lives in dangerous attempts to steal toxic materials and chemical parts from where these electronics are being deposited.

Is this wise recycling?
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Jim Puckett of the Basel Action Network, the Seattle-based environmental group that tipped off Hong Kong authorities said for Yahoo!: "It is being recycled, but it's being recycled in the most horrific way you can imagine. We're preserving our own environment, but contaminating the rest of the world."

Activists are also concerned about the fact that the exporters don't even bother to test the units to make sure they're OK to use before actually sending them overseas. Even if they receive thousands of reports on the pollution matter, exporting second hand electronics is still not illegal in the U.S, at least for the time being.

Even if big players in the electronics industry have come up with some temporary solutions, such as using fewer toxic materials for an easier recycling process, that still doesn't mean they're not harming the environment.

TAGS:

environment | waste | overseas | US | electronics
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