Saturday, January 27, 2007

Red With Anger, or Herrings?


It's so hard to tell with China and their eWaste problem/policy. According to BAN, they are mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore; eWaste that is, from other countries such as Britain which handed them 1.9 millions tons in the last eight years. They even have their own State Environmental Protection Agency, and the site is in English for concerned folks like me to read. The link is slow, go make yourself a sandwich while it loads.

I guess you don't stop accepting 70 percent of the world's eWaste overnight. One thing that would really help is to establish recycling in the host countries, but when you can send a 26 ton shipping container of waste plastic to China for 500 British pounds, it's hard to make an economic argument. In true Chinese fashion,
they made themselves the world leader of waste processing, unmatched in processing quantity or price. And they did this by using business-friendly, loose regulations. It's not unlike the United States.

If they want to change, they do have at least one friend, and that friend is England. Judging from the numerous self-critical reviews in the Independent and New Consumer that have appeared recently, they seem mostly likely to start a solve for the problem. Now the only question is whether China is serious.

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