(Don't get me wrong, responsible e-waste recycling is to be lauded and encouraged - it's all the more important because of places like Guiyu. I'm not too surprised Nokia choose to focus on one angle while not really mentioning the other one, though.)
most e-waste recycling in China is not as clean and neat as this
Now I come to think about it, the original blog post shows 3 people working hot air desoldering stations without any visible ventilation, and with only one wearing a thin respirator. So it's probably not all that healthy for the workers even there. At least in the photos I've seen of Chinese electronics assembly factories, the workers have extraction units for their soldering stations.
Going over the comments on the Nokia post again, it seems like the situation is yet more complex, maybe the Guiyu stories are not the majority case that it's been made out to be:
Garbage sorters in HK isn't a sight I've 100% gotten used to. It is extremely common (somewhere around 1 every 2KM you walk - and those are just the ones you catch actually at a garbage). They are mostly after cardboard from what I've seen - or maybe that's just what they find the most of.
As a general rule, they are all old and don't look particularly healthy. But they are hard working. I feel equal measures of shame and pride in humanity when I see one. It's actually an emotional experience for me for some weird reason.
I wish I knew more about them. What they earn, how long they work, how the system works (they seem to have local drop off centers which all have floor scales - so it must be paid by weight, and then it gets shipped off from there by god knows who).
I saw these people too. Some times I used to pre-sort my garbage so they could easily pick up the stuff they wanted -cardboard and containers from the building dumpster.
An observation was that they seemed dedicated and hard working. It kind of changed my way of looking at how people deal with limited opportunities. In TW destitute people are just hard working. I was very impressed by that. They find something to do --just something. I didn't see alcohol or drug abuse. I didn't see resentment toward people who were better off.
It seemed like a more practical approach without psychological overlays. I don't think it was accepted as fate, rather it seemed like a calculus of "this is what I can do, it's hard, but I can eke out a living without depending on someone/something"
Beside that, it was kind of weird coming up on them in the middle of the night pushing their carts in the middle of traffic. That part seemed really dangerous.
When I came back to the States, this experience skewed my view of how I perceive people at the fringes in the US who seem more likely to give up on their circumstance. It just seems more self-destructive without having to be.
I've seen them too... on the one hand maybe they don't look as "healthy" as a Calvin Klein model. On the other hand, especially when watching the older ones -- they sure have kept their mobility and muscles in a working condition throughout the years doing what they do and they make me think of the majority of old folks back home whose bodies are often deteriorating and falling apart from NOT getting any physical exercise, from spending hours in front of the telly for years and from feeding themselves pure toxic junk food for decades. Well... it's a big world out there.
The suicide rate amongst Foxconn workers is dramatically lower than that of China overall.
Most of the population of China are peasant farmers, living in huts with no running water or electricity. A factory dormitory looks pretty unpleasant to us, but for most of the people living in them it's a big step up.
Do you have a better idea for how to lift 800,000,000 people out of poverty?
This is fantastic. Disassembled all the way down to the capacitors... If these parts are resold and reused, I don't think anyone could hope for better, short of a way to decompose and reuse PCB, or at the very least harvest the copper.
Tbe only thing that worries me if that if these components are sold as new, that would be a bit unpleasant. Sure it's recycling, but it's dishonest. Of course, I'm not saying that the pictured establishments in particular should be suspected of any such deviousness (I don't know them at all).
Also, I really don't want to sound prejudiced, I've just read about fake components coming out of China sometimes, and it seems the step to fake "new" components isn't very far-fetched.
Arm cpus and flash memory chips are worth a bunch more than 0.02 and they are easy to reuse. I've desoldered a few myself for projects. I've even rescued the data on a flash chip by pulling it from the phone.
Its easy and well worth it even for me the rich westerner. I'm not sure how valuable a mixed bin of SM capacitors are, but I assure you, if they weren't making something from them, they wouldn't do it.
Sounds like Nokia palming off its RoHS obligations to a cottage economy which luckily for them seems to be thriving. You couldn't do this in Europe or America.
[+] [-] angusgr|15 years ago|reply
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1870162_182214... http://www.viceland.com/int/v14n9/htdocs/ctrl.php#
(Don't get me wrong, responsible e-waste recycling is to be lauded and encouraged - it's all the more important because of places like Guiyu. I'm not too surprised Nokia choose to focus on one angle while not really mentioning the other one, though.)
[+] [-] angusgr|15 years ago|reply
Now I come to think about it, the original blog post shows 3 people working hot air desoldering stations without any visible ventilation, and with only one wearing a thin respirator. So it's probably not all that healthy for the workers even there. At least in the photos I've seen of Chinese electronics assembly factories, the workers have extraction units for their soldering stations.
[+] [-] angusgr|15 years ago|reply
http://www.motherboard.tv/2011/3/26/e-waste-recycling-export...
http://shanghaiscrap.com/?p=6448
Either way, this makes for really interesting reading.
[+] [-] latch|15 years ago|reply
As a general rule, they are all old and don't look particularly healthy. But they are hard working. I feel equal measures of shame and pride in humanity when I see one. It's actually an emotional experience for me for some weird reason.
I wish I knew more about them. What they earn, how long they work, how the system works (they seem to have local drop off centers which all have floor scales - so it must be paid by weight, and then it gets shipped off from there by god knows who).
[+] [-] mc32|15 years ago|reply
An observation was that they seemed dedicated and hard working. It kind of changed my way of looking at how people deal with limited opportunities. In TW destitute people are just hard working. I was very impressed by that. They find something to do --just something. I didn't see alcohol or drug abuse. I didn't see resentment toward people who were better off.
It seemed like a more practical approach without psychological overlays. I don't think it was accepted as fate, rather it seemed like a calculus of "this is what I can do, it's hard, but I can eke out a living without depending on someone/something"
Beside that, it was kind of weird coming up on them in the middle of the night pushing their carts in the middle of traffic. That part seemed really dangerous.
When I came back to the States, this experience skewed my view of how I perceive people at the fringes in the US who seem more likely to give up on their circumstance. It just seems more self-destructive without having to be.
[+] [-] dualogy|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ck2|15 years ago|reply
They'll have to double the size of their prisons and use prison labor, and yet we'll keep buying.
[+] [-] known|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdietrich|15 years ago|reply
Most of the population of China are peasant farmers, living in huts with no running water or electricity. A factory dormitory looks pretty unpleasant to us, but for most of the people living in them it's a big step up.
Do you have a better idea for how to lift 800,000,000 people out of poverty?
[+] [-] sliverstorm|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unwind|15 years ago|reply
Also, I really don't want to sound prejudiced, I've just read about fake components coming out of China sometimes, and it seems the step to fake "new" components isn't very far-fetched.
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noonespecial|15 years ago|reply
Its easy and well worth it even for me the rich westerner. I'm not sure how valuable a mixed bin of SM capacitors are, but I assure you, if they weren't making something from them, they wouldn't do it.
[+] [-] stretchwithme|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] known|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DuckPaddle|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m0wfo|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shareme|15 years ago|reply
Both co-founders of Apple were part-time employed in such adventures in the USA..Steve Jobs was in-fact a junk yard IC chip seller.
Even now there are still re-used chip sellers in the USA who do this in that they sort through used chips to find those to sell that are in demand.