Where Does America’s E-waste End Up
High above the Pacific Ocean in a plane headed for Hong Kong, most of the passengers are fast asleep. But not Jim Puckett. His eyes are fixed on the glowing display screen of his laptop. Little orange markers dot a satellite picture. He squints at the pixelated terrain making an attempt to make out telltale indicators. He’s looking for America’s electronic waste. "People have the precise to know the place their stuff goes," he says. Dead electronics make up the world’s fastest-growing supply of waste. The United States produces more e-waste than any nation on the planet. Electronics contain toxic supplies like lead and mercury, which can harm the surroundings and folks. Americans send about 50,000 dump trucks worth of electronics to recyclers each year. But a two-yr investigation by the Basel Action Network, a Seattle-based e-waste watchdog group, concluded that generally companies are exporting electronics rather than recycling them. Puckett’s organization partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to put 200 geolocating tracking gadgets inside old computers, TVs and printers.
A Basel Action Network worker locations a GPS tracker inside a damaged printer. "The trackers are like miniature cell phones," he mentioned. About a 3rd of the tracked electronics went overseas - some so far as 12,000 miles. That features six of the 14 tracker-geared up electronics that Puckett’s group dropped off to be recycled in Washington and Oregon. The tracked electronics ended up in Mexico, Taiwan, China, Pakistan, Thailand, Dominican Republic, Canada and Kenya. Most often, they traveled across the Pacific to rural Hong Kong. It’s the same route Puckett is taking now. The following morning Puckett follows the little orange markers to a region of Hong Kong known as the new Territories, an extended-time agricultural area along the border with mainland key finder device China that’s shifted towards industry in recent many years. He teams up with a Chinese journalist and translator, Dongxia Su, and a neighborhood driver, who will assist navigate the region.
They observe a set of GPS coordinates for one of the tracked electronics. Paved streets turn into rutted dirt roads. They cross a gradual stream of trucks carrying shipping containers from the port. Dongxia Su and Jim Puckett peek over the fence of an e-waste scrapyard in the brand new Territories of Hong Kong. As they strategy their first destination - "One-hundred ft away. Eighty ft. Seventy-seven ft," Puckett says - they hear sounds of energy drills and shattering glass. It’s coming from the other aspect of a excessive metallic wall made from old delivery containers. "It needs to be in this yard here," Puckett says, key finder device pointing towards the fence. Su pounds on the front gate, and the drilling stops. A worker shouts from beyond the fence and Su tells him the group is looking for used electronics.