I've watched all the videos in this thread, and I thank Copper Head for providing them. However, I still fail to see how this is an e-waste problem that abundant western cultures have dumped on poor African and Chinese neighborhoods, while turning a blind eye. There is not a fleet of container ships mysteriously showing up in the night, dumping millions of tons of scrap on the beach, and taking off before they are caught.
These are contracted import/export shipments, legal and non-legal, that are scheduled to arrive from a documented shipper to a documented receiver. It sounds like they are being represented as working items, and often actually either need repair or are non-repairable. So, at the outset it is either a local customs issue or an international legal fraud issue. The receiving countries are ill-equipped to detect and enforce the violations, and illegal shipping continues.
Once the items are tested, working material is sold in markets and non-working material is dumped and scavenged for scrap (sort of like what we do here in the US.) At this point it is no longer a customs issue, but an EPA issue. Local receiving governments are not doing enough to protect the environment. Why do we not see these burn piles and neighborhoods in the US?
Because our EPA does a better job enacting and enforcing laws against it. Evidently, in Ghana and other places, the local EPA is not doing enough to prevent it from happening. If they would enact laws against it, educate their people how to safely operate, and enforce those laws appropriately, the local scrappers (recyclers) will learn to adapt. It is guidance from our local governments, along with legal deterrent, that has educated our population on appropriate ways to recover recyclable materials.
In the final video that Copper Head posted, it really is unrelated to e-waste. It talks more about 64 million empty apartments is China, and empty shopping malls, etc.., and how the Chinese government keeps building these empty cities. I think the Chinese government has watched "Field of Dreams" once too often. But, they may be right. If they build it, they will come. Only time will tell. Surely a population of 1.3 billion people can figure out how to fill those empty spaces eventually. Again, I do not see an e-waste issue here. This is a problem that the market of buyers and sellers will have to work out. China is still very new to free markets, and this is a by-product of those growing pains.
I think I've gone from 2, to 4, to 6 cents now. So, I'll stop.
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