Sources
Domestic
China's domestic contribution of e-waste is substantial. The Global E-waste Monitor 2020 report found that the amount of annual domestic e-waste generation in China alone reaches approximately 10.1 million tons, thus overtaking the U.S. as the largest e-waste producing country. This overtaking was expected given China's rising economic development, technical innovation, and urbanization as more electronics are being created, consumed, and disposed. E-waste from computers, mobile phones, and other electronics is expected to rise to 27.22 million tons by 2030, growing at an average annual rate of 10.4% as the fastest growing waste stream in China. The major sources of e-waste processed in China are households, domestic institutions such as schools and hospitals, government agencies and businesses, and equipment manufacturers. This e-waste is usually channeled through: second-hand markets where reusable devices can be re-sold at reasonable prices, (illegal) donation systems that send used home appliances to poorer rural areas of western China, or through peddlers who re-sell e-wastes to dealers. The third channel is the most common form of e-waste management in China, which creates a massive informal sector.Foreign
Large amounts of foreign e-waste, mostly from the developed Western world, have been imported into China since the 1970s. Cheaper labor and lax environmental standards attracted e-waste from developed countries that could save much of the cost of processing the waste domestically. By 2000, China was the largest importer of e-waste in the world. According to United Nations data, about 70% of electronic waste globally generated ended up in China,” said Ma Tianjie, a spokesman for the Beijing office of Greenpeace. In January 2018, the Chinese government implemented a waste import ban which Hong Kong has not enforced. Since the resumption of China’sRecycling methods
Formal
According to a study done in 2020, China’s formal e-waste recycling industry is quite developed, following strict regulations, governmental incentives, and the development and expansion of recycling facilities. The formal recycling process practices safe methods of handling the waste and allows for the recovery of precious raw materials, which can later be reused in other manufacturing. E-waste recycling processes typically consist of the following steps: collection, storage, sorting/dismantling/shredding, separation, and recovery. E-waste is collected from enterprises or manufacturers and safely stored in recycling facilities until they are manually dismantled and sorted into categories of what to discard and what to recover. The smaller electronic parts are further separated into their specific materials using water and magnets, and finally, the desired components can be recovered and restored for future use. Despite the thoroughness of this formal recycling process, it is reported to be only about 40% efficient.Informal
A main contributor to China’s e-waste problem is that the majority of e-waste dumped in China - reports vary between 60% and 80% - is handled through illegal informal recycling processes. Unlike China’s formal methods, informal e-waste recycling is extremely unregulated and unsafe, remaining a profitable market due to cheap labor and a high demand for the disposal of electronics. The informal sector consists of a system of small-scale, often family-run workshops and “backyard” recycling, usually performed by marginalized groups of the population. Peddlers travel from door-to-door and buy unwanted electronics, later reselling them to informal e-waste recyclers. The informal recycling process is often done in the open and uses extremely rudimentary methods such as stripping metals by hand, burning toxic materials, disposing parts in bodies of water, and more. To keep operations running, these informal practices are typically carried out in suburban areas, where there is a lack of effective enforcement and control.Environmental and health impacts
Environmental
While the formal e-waste recycling process in China is contained and regulated, the overwhelming informal sector causes serious environmental hazards. Crude recycling methods, especially the burning of materials, release massive amounts of toxic chemicals like lead, chromium, cadmium, and more. Studies conducted in China report that the soil, air, water, and entire ecosystems near informal recycling sites and e-waste landfills are highly contaminated by these dangerous substances. The air around the vicinity of informal e-waste recycling was found to have particles with high amounts of heavy metals, 100 times greater than normal levels. The pollution of dirt, however, is not contained to only the immediate recycling areas. Studies have found contaminants in the soil of rice fields and duck ponds with toxicity levels failing to meet many international agricultural safety standards. Further, toxins travel through bodies of water from the informal recycling sites, with scientists consistently finding heavy metals in the water, sediment, and even fish. It is predicted that these contaminants will have lasting effects on the environment and allow for the possibility of the formation of more dangerous substances in the future.Health
Lacking the proper methods and necessary safety precautions, informal e-waste recycling is directly responsible for worsening the health of many in China. Since the pollutants that are released during the process travel, the effects on health are widespread. Firstly, those who reside around informal sites experience second-hand exposure to the hazardous e-waste remnants through inhalation, digestion, and skin contact. The workers who directly handle breaking down electronics, often women and children, experience the most harm. Informal workshops are usually not well-ventilated and workers wear little-to-no protective equipment, resulting in direct exposure to toxic substances that can cause severe developmental problems and have been linked to increased chances of cancer. Studies on informal e-waste workers in China showed extremely high levels of hazardous materials in their systems - the highest concentration in humans ever recorded. There is rising concern for the health of children who are exposed, as their potential health risk is measured to be 8 times higher than that of adult e-waste workers due to their smaller size and higher ingestion rate. Scientists are continuing to perform more research on the long-term effects of handling e-waste, focusing especially on pregnant women and children.Affected regions
Most of China's informal recycling sectors are limited to regions along the southeastern coast of China. The main region where the e-waste is shipped to is the Guangdong province, situated along China's south east coast. From there e-waste is spread to other regions such as Zhejiang, Shanghai, Tianjin, Hunan, Fujian and Shandong for processing. E-waste disposal operations frequently occur in the suburban areas, due to the lack of effective enforcement and control.Guiyu
Guiyu inTaizhou
The Taizhou region of theLegislation and regulation
National legislation
A variety of environmental legislations and programs have been issued by the Chinese government in order to regulate the electronic product production and e-waste management sectors. Effective February 1, 2000, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) passed a regulation entitled Notification on Importation of the Seventh Category of Wastes. This regulation prohibits e-waste from being an allowed importation under the seventh category of waste approved by the MEP. On July 1, 2004, Measures on the Administration of Business Certificate on Hazardous Materials required businesses to acquire a license to legally collect, store, or dispose of e-waste. Additionally, previous legislation was revised in 2005 to firmly disallow imports of solid waste from entering China for the purpose of dumping. In 2008, the MEP passed Administrative Measures for the Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution by Electronic Waste - a set of administrative rules requiring all e-waste treatment enterprises to adopt pollution control techniques and register with local government agencies. Under this act, violators are subject to heavy fines of up to ¥500,000 ($73,000). In 2011, the Collection and Treatment Decree on Wastes of Electric and Electronic Equipment strengthened national standards for the e-waste treatment sector, setting minimum annual treatment capacities for formal e-waste treatment enterprises. These new set of laws also required treatment plants to adopt pollution prevention principles during the entire disposal process in order to minimize negative environmental impacts. In 2012, China adopted theLegislative inadequacies
The Chinese government has long been aware of the environmental and health consequences of electronic waste, and was one of the first global supporters of banning exports of e-waste to developing countries. The failures of China’s legislation have come from its inexperience of how to manage e-waste and its overall ambiguous, contradictory legislation 7 Imports often walk the line between illegal smuggling and legal import, as judicial authorities that enforce regulations struggle with ambiguities and contradictions in the regulations 7 For example, waste imports that are marked as “recycling copper or aluminum” would be a legal import under the Notification on Importation of the Seventh Category of Wastes, creating a loophole for e-waste to legally enter China for many years. Though legislation and regulations have been accepted by the developed countries against illegal exportation of e-waste, the high number of illegal shipments continues to exacerbate the e-waste problem in China. For instance, the members of the EU agreed not to transport any waste subject to theProvincial programs
Along with national legislation, several provincial programs have been set in place to address e-waste management issues in more urgent regions, such as the Guangdong, Qingdao, Beijing and the Sichuan provinces. Many of these programs have been aimed at controlling the informal sector and strengthening formal e-waste channels. Waste collections systems and storage points for e-waste have been created in villages with larger disposal sites. In the regions of Tianjin, Taicing, Ningbo, Taizhou and Zhangzhou, local recycling parks have been built in which informal laborers still work as manual recyclers, but under production and pollution management. In Guiyu, the government promoted technical upgrades in informal workshops by replacing coal-fired grills with electrical heaters that would reduce the amount of leaked toxins when treating circuit boards. In June 2009, China initiated the "Home Appliance Old for New Rebate Program", which first launched in nine cities and provinces considered to be more economically developed. It restricted the collection of old appliances by accredited household appliance retailers. These authorized collectors would be able to pay consumers a higher price for their e-waste as well as compensate them with discount coupons for new devices. By April 2011, about 46.6 million old home electrical appliances were collected along with the sale of 45 million new ones. This initiative resulted in the rapid growth of the formal waste electronic and electric equipment recycling industry. It reduced e-waste recycling based on private individual collection, and increased collection by formal entities through large-scale delivery and rational distribution with a centralized and statistical information system.Corporate initiatives
In order to establish a normative e-waste recycling network, theInternational agreements
Basel Convention
In 1992, the United Nations Basel Convention was established to control the transboundary movement and disposal of hazardous waste. The Basel Convention makes up the global legal infrastructure addressing the transnational trade of e-waste. It is the centerpiece of an international legal regime that has shaped or influenced many countries’ national legislation on e-waste. It provided the first comprehensive global environmental agreement on hazardous wastes and acknowledged e-waste as within the scope of environmental protection and cross-border trade. The general obligation proposed by the convention is that states exporting hazardous wastes must do so in an environmentally sound manner for the state of import and that they respect the policies of any country that prohibits imports as a whole. Currently, 176 states, including China, have ratified the convention. China signed the Basel Convention in 1990.The United States is the only developed country that has not ratified this treaty. Some US recycling plants have found that shipping their hazardous e-waste overseas for processing is much less expensive than handling it in the states where there are strict labor, environmental, and safety regulations. Members of the European Union can be penalized for shipping e-waste to developing countries, but they do manage to get away with it on some occasions. However, shipping e-waste to other countries is still legal in the U.S., so there are no consequences for companies that choose to do it. The Convention does not impose a complete ban on the international transfer of hazardous waste. The transfer may be allowed under certain conditions, for example, if the state of export does not have the technical capacity and the necessary facilities, capacity or suitable disposal sites in order to dispose of the wastes in question in an environmentally sound and efficient manner. The definition of some of these key terms, “technical capacity,” “necessary facilities,” “environmentally sound and efficient manners,” and “wastes required as raw material” can be rather controversial in practice. Different countries may understand differently what can be counted as “necessary facilities” and what varieties of materials should be seen as “e-waste. Waste has been classified into two categories in the Basel Convention, namely, “hazardous wastes” and “other wastes” (wastes collected from households). The Basel Convention is only applicable to hazardous wastes. Many elements of e-waste are often categorized in the field under both entries: hazardous and other. The physical and chemical constitution of e-waste is very complex, and different elements are usually articulated or blended, making it highly labor-consuming to separate them. Consequently, wastes which have been categorized as “other wastes” are exempt from the regulation of transboundary movement, despite them being identified by the Convention as hazardous wastes. At the global scale, trajectories of global e-waste flows are shaped by the multitude of loopholes, contradictions and ambiguous articles left by the Basel Convention and by different countries’ disparate attitudes towards the e-waste trade. Despite the longstanding international and national legislation regulating transnational trade and domestic recycling, informal e-waste economies are still clustering in many Global South countries. Moreover, a thorough ban on the international trade of e-waste can result in the loss of revenue for some industrial advocacy groups. Additionally, the focus of the Basel Convention is on the regulation of the body of countries, whereas illegal waste transfer is usually conducted by private firms or individuals.References
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