Where does the electronic waste of America end up

Here’s a quote from NPR–“The dirty little secret is that when you take [your electronic waste] to a recycler, instead of throwing it in a trashcan, about 80 percent of that material, very quickly, finds itself on a container ship going to a country like China, Nigeria, India, Vietnam, Pakistan — where very dirty things happen to it,” says Jim Puckett, the executive director of the Basel Action Network, which works to keep toxic waste out of the environment.

“Recyclers can make money from selling scavenged metal from electronic equipment, says Puckett, but the process to retrieve usable metals is typically extremely toxic. Workers who remove the metals often have no protective equipment and breathe in high levels of toxic chemicals, which are then released into the atmosphere. And most of the countries where the processing takes place — China, India, Ghana, Pakistan — do not have regulations in place to protect workers or prevent the primitive recycling operations.”

What You Should Do With Your Old Electronics

“So how does your computer or handheld electronic device end up in developing countries, where people remove usable metals by hand?

“The answer, says Puckett, is that electronic recycling is a very lucrative business.

“A recycler can be a recycler in name only,” he says. “These so-called recyclers have found that that they can make a lot more money just exporting this material, because the U.S. laws completely allow it to happen. And they’re able to externalize the real costs of doing things in an environmentally responsible way.”

“Hundreds of containers leave North America every day full of electronic waste, says Puckett.

“It’s a massive trade and what has happened is, we’ve passed laws to make recycling become the password. And unfortunately, it’s the password to a lot of very sad results,” he says.