oneworldtalk

Benny Cubby

22 May 2009

Illegal shipments of electronic waste from Australian homes - old computers, televisions and mobile phones - have been seized from cargo vessels, part of a little-known smuggling trade that fuels child labour and toxic pollution in China.

Since the start of last year, 12 ships carrying "e-waste" have been intercepted leaving Australia for Asian ports without hazardous materials permits, including four so far this year, Australian Customs and the Department of Environment confirmed yesterday. These seizures were the tip of the iceberg, recycling industry sources told the Herald.

Only about 4 per cent of the nation's e-waste is recycled, the Environment Department says. Most of the rest goes into landfill, and an unknown proportion is shipped overseas illegally.

The national policy on controlling e-waste, and other recycling measures, will be reviewed at a meeting of state and federal environment ministers in Hobart today.

Industry and environment groups believe the ministers have a chance to kill off e-waste smuggling by adopting a national levy on electronic goods that would pay for safe collection and recycling in Australia.

Much e-waste exported from the developed world ends up in China, particularly in the southern city of Guiyu, which is sometimes referred to as the world's most polluted town. Until now, Australia was not thought to be a contributor to that trade.

A United Nations report released in December recorded potentially deadly levels of mercury and other toxins in Guiyu's water and soil, together with highly dangerous work practices.

Observers saw thousands of peasant labourers, including children, chipping apart televisions, computers, DVD players and phones with chisels to get at the valuable minerals inside. Some appliances were soaked in acid baths to burn away worthless plastic shells and extract the traces of gold and platinum used in electronic circuitry.

The Environment Department said it had co-operated with the Australian Customs Service to intercept ships in both Australian and foreign ports. Materials seized had been safely processed in Australia but no prosecutions for illegal shipping of e-waste had been carried out yet.

About 37 million computers have been buried in landfill around Australia, along with 17 million TVs and 56 million mobile phones, according to a report prepared last year by the Total Environment Centre, using government data.

Toxic materials inside some common electronic goods in Australia include mercury, lead, arsenic, bromide, beryllium and cadmium, although these are usually in tiny amounts.

Australia has the capacity to recycle much more e-waste than the current 4 per cent, though in many cases it remains more profitable to ship it overseas.

A Sims e-waste recycling plant in Villawood, opened in November by the Minister for the Environment, Peter Garrett, was still operating at only a third of its capacity of 20,000 tonnes a year, Mr Radhakrishnan said.

"There are all sorts of problems. These are toxic materials that need to be collected and recycled appropriately.
"If not, they are severe environmental hazards for both the population that lives near landfills as well as the world."

Computer waste is still being dumped in developing nations in contravention of the Basel Convention, an investigation by the BBC Earth Files programme shows.

The research reveals both companies and governments are flouting the treaty designed to regulate the shipment and disposal of hazardous materials.

Posing as an Irish computer shop, Earth Files found US firms willing to assist in the evasion of Basel regulations.
E-waste is a mounting problem with much of it dealt with in India and China.

To investigate how things work in practice, the BBC World Service's Earth Files set up a false online identity posing as a western computer shop which wanted to get rid of unwanted equipment, and sent e-mails to a number of companies which we suspected of exporting to Asia.

"Dear Sir/Madam," we wrote, "I run a computer business just near Dublin, Ireland.

"We have a lot of second-hand CRT monitors, servers, hard disk drives, motherboards, etc.

"We are looking for a new business partner to buy this stuff. Could you let me know if you might be interested and what sort of prices you would be paying per container."

All too easy

Four companies responded, and two were interested enough to pursue negotiations to an advanced stage.

Both are based in the United States, and export to partners in Hong Kong.

As China has ratified the Basel Convention, it is meant to turn back any shipments of e-waste from other ratifying countries which have not gone through the full Convention procedures, and it is barred from importing any consignments from nations which, like the US, have not ratified.

We made it clear that some of our units did not work, and that we had no intention of going through Basel Convention procedures.

"According to the law here, we have to go through heaps of paperwork if we ship anything at all which doesn't work, even if it's one monitor in a batch of 500," we wrote.

"So I really need to know that you do get the stuff through customs your end whether it's all working or not." They told us it would be easy.

'Unbelievable' bribes

"As regards to customs, in HK we have had no problems; I ship about 100 containers a month to HK at this point," wrote one; while the other said: "Don't worry about customs issue; I have already exported a large quantity of containers to Hong Kong, and [there's never a] problem. Please trust me."

Asked how the containers are cleared through customs, the companies were less forthcoming.

One answer could be that the sheer volume of trade is beyond the capacity of customs officials. Hong Kong, for example, handles over 10 million containers per year.

Another answer is that incentives are offered to ease the passage of certain consignments.

The Seattle-based environmental group the Basel Action Network (BAN) has collected some graphic examples.

"Brokers tell us they carefully tape $100 bills just inside the back of the shipping container so when the customs agents open up these containers, they've got their bribe and it can just pass on through," says BAN's Sarah Westervelt.

"The containers really are full of all sorts of things, including, we're told - though it's a little hard to believe - bribes as big as a Mercedes."

You will not find Shangba on many maps, even Chinese ones.

It is a tiny hamlet - a little jumbled collection of small whitewashed houses with wooden roofs, sitting in the lush green paddy fields and hills of southern China.

There is a broad river running to the side of the village - its shallow waters rippling over smooth stones.

For years locals relied on the river for drinking water, and to irrigate their crops.

Now, though, many of those same people are dying of cancer. This small hamlet has joined the ranks of what China's media calls the country's "cancer villages."

Villagers say the water is polluted and blame the mineral mines further upstream for dumping toxic waste into the river.

There is a thick red residue on the riverbank and walking along the little paths that wind their way through the fields outside the village I saw streams that were a rusty orange.

In the rush to get rich, factories, mines and farms have ignored environmental guidelines and are dumping toxic chemicals and untreated sewage into rivers and lakes - making China's waterways some of the most polluted in the world.