Report is Critical of US For Dumping E-Waste Overseas 152
coondoggie writes "In what may be the least astonishing news of the day, some major US companies who say they are environmentally recycling electronic waste — aren't. Rather more startling — they are dumping everything from cell phones and old computers to televisions in countries such as China and India where disposal practices are unsafe to people and dangerous to the environment. Controlling the exportation of all of the e-waste plops on the doorstep of the US Environmental Protection Agency which is doing a woeful job, according to a scathing 67-page report issued by the Government Accountability Office today."
Re:Other countries to blame (Score:5, Insightful)
The I'm-not-the-only-one-who-does-it excuse is just a shame.
Made in China, dumped in China (Score:3, Insightful)
Made in China, dumped in China. What's the big deal?
Re:Other countries to blame (Score:5, Insightful)
Then again, we could have another Mattel-lead-paint situation, where they got it done for cheap overseas, without fully looking in to how bad the situation really was.
Re:Other countries to blame (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Other countries to blame (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice try.
Its the USA's waste, it is ultimately the USA's hands that are dirty. (metaphorically of course, the poor B'Stards that get trash dumped on their doorstep are obviously going to have dirty hands literally)
This is yet another example of green washing and corporates (in this case US ones) flushing our environment down the toilet for their own short term gain.
However, it is not just the US that engages in this crap. Lots of others do also! Even here in "green NZ", there are instances of "recycling" companies shipping recycling overseas to the more dodgy chinese outlets.
disclaimer: it appears that the majority of ours do the right thing however. (One retail chain even does it FOR FREE! Not to mention E-day www.eday.org.nz )
And these filthy buggers will moan and complain when regulation is forced upon them to stop being little piglets. Sheesh.
Makes one really feel sorry for mother nature to be honest.
Long term ramifications, even if you ignore morals (Score:4, Insightful)
So the US goes and allows (or perhaps worse, is complicit in allowing) it's corporations to keep up profits by dumping toxic products in other countries, where it kills and maims children (which is well proven) who struggle to live by supplying their lives to people who use them as slave labour to recover valuable materials from the dumped items through lethal practices, such as burning plastic from wire.
Then some people argue that if the countries allow it, why is that the US's problem?
And then twenty years later they whine like little babies that they can't understand why the survivors of this situation in those countries hate them so much and want to kill them and everyone else they see as a part of the "Western" world...
And they can't even blame the CIA this time. US corporations are doing a far more sinister job that the CIA ever did.
GrpA.
Re:Made in China, dumped in China (Score:5, Insightful)
Ruthless exploitation at both ends is the big deal.
Re:Other countries to blame (Score:2, Insightful)
Recycling pays back money, otherwise they'd dump the stuff in the middle of the ocean instead of going all the way to China.
Sure it pays back money. If you're recycling something that is rich enough in certain materials. Otherwise it isn't worth it in many cases.
Now of course if it isn't cost efficient for you to recycle something, then it may well be that someone in a country where people work for pennies an hour and there are no meddlesome regulators can make a profit off of the recycling process.
So you sell the junk to them and they recycle it. You make money, they make money, the workers even make some money. A win, win situation for all. Unless you want to get all picky and start complaining about the health of the workers and possible environmental damage.
pressure at both ends (Score:5, Insightful)
If party A is using a service provided by party B that you think is immoral, what's the right way to go about stopping it? Well, at both ends. You try to convince party A not to use the service, and you try to convince party B not to provide it.
In this case, you're right, these countries shouldn't allow unsafe waste-processing, and shouldn't allow importing of waste unless it can be safely processed. That's one place to put pressure. However it's also perfectly legitimate to put pressure at the other end: US companies shouldn't be exporting waste except to safe processing facilities.
Re:Long term ramifications, even if you ignore mor (Score:3, Insightful)
It's what has become the american way. A bit like when US government sends prisoners to countries that allows torture.
Re:Other countries to blame (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Other countries to blame (Score:3, Insightful)
On principle, I am with you. However, you may adopt the view that it is probably not a big problem for the planet to survive a couple of million years of bad influence from humanity.
CC.
Re:Made in China, dumped in China (Score:3, Insightful)
I see this claim a lot, but having looked at some of their factories, I'd have to say it's not really true.
The railcar fabrication workshop we looked at was more modern and mechanised than ours in Australia. They were able to produce the wagons at about 2/3rds the cost of our because they could do much larger production runs, not because they were working dangerously. Economies of scale matter.
Re:Made in China, dumped in China (Score:5, Insightful)
"Ruthless exploitation at both ends is the big deal."
Ruthless competition is how China moved into being an economic powerhouse. The pollution and body count for the US was pretty high too (and so long ago it is largely forgotten) but that was the price of "progress".
US is throwing away opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
This needs to be turned into an opportunity, not a problem.
Re:Other countries to blame (Score:3, Insightful)
"isn't the current capitalist dogma that corporations must behave unethically if that improves the short term stock price?"
I believe this is more the domain of the misinformed. Maybe you should go back to ideology school, and listen to a lecturer who actually is a capitalist, rather than go to the "Capitalism As Interpreted By Marxists" ones?
"Capitalism" as an ideology is quite like "socialism" as an ideology - it is immensely broad. Socialism does in my view not provide a clear answer to e.g. "Should we have a United Nations", and neither does Capitalism. You will naturally find people who profess to be either Capitalists or Socialists (without being strongly challenged as being something else) and who profess views on that, in either direction.
To take it to the extreme you take it is like saying "Patriotism involves placing a high value on your country, ipso facto patriots say that you should kill and dissect ten million children in poor countries and make the organs into an organ bank for the leaders of your own country. Not to do so is not patriotic." Exaggeration and hyperbole does not make for a good discussion.
On the specific subject - like Patriotism does not say anything about dissecting babies, Capitalism does not say anything about behaving unethically. Google is not behaving "uncapitalistically" for failing to sell person tracking services in every country where the law allows them to - they have simply chosen not to do it. Another element which the discussion here has failed to touch on - if people work in hazardous ways to dismantle electronics and ships, it's probably because they would not afford food or clothing for themself and their families otherwise. Which has to do with a lot of issues again, population size being one of them.
Re:Other countries to blame (Score:3, Insightful)
No freaking way.
There is no obligation to shareholders whatsoever apart from the "you can get voted of the board" one.
Many companies have made decisions to not go for pure maximum cash, but take other things into concideration as well.
Re:pressure at both ends (Score:1, Insightful)
Atually the magic word is 'externality'. Price should be put on everything that is used up in producing products and services, these are externalities.
Companies are selling you a product, but are paying only partly for the raw materials and services needed to produce it. If polluting is free, companies are in effect extracting profit from health of future generations.
We should expand international trade and environmental laws so that the full price of destroyed environment is included in the price of the product.
Re:Made in China, dumped in China (Score:5, Insightful)
Ruthless competition is how China moved into being an economic powerhouse. The pollution and body count for the US was pretty high too (and so long ago it is largely forgotten) but that was the price of "progress".
That's the kind of argument that sounds attractive if you don't look too close. But it can be stood on its head with equal justification -- if not more.
Ruthless exploitation has been a permanent fixture of human civilization, and progress has not been its reliable result. I would argue then that ruthless exploiters are not creators of progress. They're parasites on progress. Exploitation in the time of progress is not something new, it's jut the old exploitation robbing a richer bank.
The dire predictions of economic disaster and stagnating innovation have not for the most part come true when society has stepped in to regulate abuses like child labor, food adulteration, inhumane treatment of workers. Rather, progress has on the whole accelerated.
Of course, progressive policies do hurt many exploitative enterprises, but they don't harm innovation. Businesses that require the ability to exploit people or the environment to thrive are fundamentally non-innovative. It's making money the old -- very, very old -- way. First you get some power (in this case capital), and then you look for somebody weaker than you to exploit, either directly or by leaving them holding a very expensive bag.
You can see the architectural proof of the antiquity of this business model in Europe. You find yourself a nice river valley on a trading route and you build yourself a castle to shake down everybody who wants to pass.
Re:Other countries to blame (Score:3, Insightful)
So come on and hit me without hiding behind an anonymous troll, who thinks enviromentalists are the scum of the earth and why?
People think that way because everyone has their own definition of "environmentalist." I consider myself an environmentalist. But, others don't consider conservationists as environmentalists, or think only Greenpeace terrorists are environmentalists, or maintain any number of skewed and biased misconceptions.
The problem is that environmentalism of all stripes is largely political and has its share of hypocrisy. The Sierra club has oil wells on their nature preserves, Al Gore has a $4k/month electric bill, and everybody flies and drives. It's easy to scorn hypocrisy and disregard any of the larger ideals.
I would personally stop short at "scum of the earth," but some people who label themselves environmentalists are misguided. You say you know where food comes from - I do, too. Both of my parents, and their parents, and their parents unto the time when Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church on Sundays, were farmers.
But, food comes from a store. You'll say, "Wait, you idiot! Someone has to grow it!" But, if the store has food, somebody somewhere is growing it. If the food is inexpensive, it's an indicator that a lot of somebodies somewhere are growing it. The miracle of the modern era is that farms are more productive - less land feeds more people - and that food can be shipped almost anywhere.
The lack of green space is simply a side effect of A) existing land being used more efficiently and B) food being grown elsewhere, where it's more productive to do so. No pillaging and plundering involved, unless you count the misguided who label themselves as protectionists/intellectuals/whatever who lock the third world out of our marekts with tariffs.