I like scrap yards; I’m fascinated by what happens to the things that developed societies don’t want anymore; and I’m even more fascinated by the ingenuity that developing societies do with those throwaways. Scrap yards are not, by their very nature, sentimental places, and I really can’t say that I’ve ever felt emotional about the…
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Christmas Leftovers, Scrap Edition.
As much as I hate people and organizations who show me how much damage my lifestyle is doing to the environment just when I’m in the midst of enjoying myself … below, two images of American Christmas lights piled up in a Guangdong scrap yard. To the left, the pile, to the right, a close-up.…
It had to go somewhere: (some) Chinese E-waste flowing into North Korea.
As I’ve argued elsewhere on this blog, climate change – despite its popularity as an environmental cause in the developed world – really doesn’t have much of a constituency in China. And among the most important reasons for that lack of popular interest is the persistence of far more immediate, and toxic, environmental issues. Of…
Green as Scrap.
Apropos of really nothing … it’s not very often that you can guess what, precisely, will become of your recycling. But if you are a resident of Seoul, and your apartment was recently demolished, then I can give you some assurance that it has made its way into the grip of one of these grapples,…
The Limits of Control: a skeptic’s view on China, Copenhagen, and Compliance
Back in May 2007 I attended a speech given by Feng Zhijun, then a member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, and the government official charged with corralling China’s Circular Economy law – the most ambitious environmental legislation in Chinese history – through China’s opaque legislative hurdles. The occasion of the speech…
Apple’s Chinese iPhone: bad for the environment.
Last night Apple and China Unicom finally rolled out the Chinese version of the iPhone. So far, at least, the introduction seems to have been a low-key affair, with media attention focused – if at all – on the fact that the Chinese version of the iPhone lacks wifi capability. No doubt, that’s a key…
The Happy Neighborhood E-Waste Merchant
Earlier this morning I walked out of my apartment building en route to the post office when I came across the corner scrap dealers selling their inventory of home appliance scrap – ie, e-waste, as the kids now like to call it – to their preferred buyer, a roaming Shanghai motorcycle e-waste merchant. Then and…
E-waste – There’s an app for that.
My first piece for Foreign Policy, “E-waste – there’s an app for that” is now live. It covers a couple of different issues, including the growing tide of Chinese generated e-waste, and the rather limp response to the problem by Apple and other consumer electronics companies (especially as compared to the efforts they make in…
Ghosts of the Machines – OR – Just where do all of those Chinese PCs go to die, anyway?
On August 28, Science, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals, ran a news item regarding ongoing studies of the health effects caused by environmentally unsound processing of e-waste (PCs, monitors, printers, etc) in south China [subscriber only]. in part, the opening paragraph reads: China has been accepting vast quantities of discarded televisions, computers,…
Why is this recession (potentially) different from all other recessions?
A small but significant set of data points in the ongoing discussion of how – potentially – China’s economy has altered the global economy, especially as it impacts the current economic downturn. I received this first one last week from my pal Bob Garino, Director of Commodities at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries [ISRI] in Washington, D.C.…