On Dec 23, 2008, at 12:41 PM, Clark Martin wrote:
> And you may get picketed. > > A few years ago I took a bunch of stuff to a recycling event on the > Stanford campus. There were people picketing it claiming they were > just > dumping garbage on the third world. I guess we were supposed to only > send new computers to poor countries. Very few computers dropped of at 'recycling' sites are ever actually recycled as functional system. I just saw a news report on 60 minutes on computer 'recycling' places in the third world, particularly CRT recycling. (note the oh-so- green(R) bit about the recycling day in Denver) MIKO is recommending sending functional systems to places for use, but almost all of the stuff taken in through these recycling ends up in places like the rural village in china where the industry (illegal under Chinese law, btw) is run by local gangsters, and the 'recycling' consists of peasants stripping circuit boards of components like capacitors, then tossing the boards into open cauldrons over open fires to burn away the plastic and melt the metals for later refining. The residues are just dumped out, into huge mounds, and toxic wastes permeate the land and water, both chemicals like dioxins (from burning the plastic) and heavy metals. <http://tinyurl.com/55f6hj> The rates of cancer, birth defects and chronic lung diseases in the area are staggering. The reality is that the West routinely ships millions of tons of waste materials to third world nations with lax enforcement of environmental laws for the enrichment of a few. Look at the shipbreaking industry in India for another example <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13443629/ >. Horrific. If they'r not killed outright by collapsing sections of ship, they're dying from completely unmitigated exposure to the witches brew of toxins present in most of the ships being processed there. This is the kind of thing Greenpeace is screaming about when they rag on Apple and others about toxic manufacturing. -- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
