Anatomy of a Myth: the World’s Biggest E-Waste Dump Isn’t.

Let’s start with two photographs. The first was shot by me in China’s Hunan Province. It shows a warehouse that contains roughly 5,000 old locally-collected televisions awaiting recycling. This photo only captures a portion of what is a big inventory, and a big operation. Every day more arrive. Most people outside of China have never…

Suspend Me On Twitter (Updated)

[UPDATED BELOW] On Friday afternoon I logged into my twitter account and was promptly informed that my account had been suspended. I’d been given no notice, no warnings, no indications whatsoever that something might be amiss (for the record: I am not a spammer, an account churner, or a follow-back participant; I don’t engage in…

What Henry Blodget Didn’t Get About Foxconn

On Friday, China Labor Watch, a New York-based NGO that claims to be “dedicated to promoting workers’ fair redistribution of wealth under globalization,” announced that a “large-scale strike” had shut down a Foxconn factory that manufactures the iPhone 5. The group didn’t cite its sources for the story, but that didn’t stop several major news organizations…

Why are new Samsung and HP computer parts being dumped in Guiyu? Follow the bar codes …

Several months ago I had the opportunity to travel to the notorious southern Chinese e-waste recycling hub of Guiyu. It was an interesting visit during which it became apparent that many assumptions currently held about e-waste processing in China are no longer current. Of these, perhaps the most important is the blanket assumption that foreign…