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Information provided/Greenpeace Photography/Bailing Greenpeace Executive/Li? Hundreds of rivers are painted black because they contain heavy metals; Piles of electronic waste and large cars stuck in the street are loading and unloading garbage everywhere in the street; Outside the town, those abandoned fields have become all kinds of garbage dumps, often emitting black smoke that covers the sky and gives off a disgusting pungent smell ... This is not a description of the end of the world, but a daily sight of Guiyu, an ordinary town in Chaoshan area of southern China.

The first impression of Guiyu: the land of wealth and pollution.

Guiyu is located in Chaonan District, Shantou City, Guangdong Province, with an area of 52.4 square kilometers and a permanent population of 6.5438+0.5 million. Located in the center of a low-lying land on the west bank of Lianjiang River in eastern Guangdong, this terrain makes Guiyu a serious waterlogging area, and agricultural production is basically insecure. Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, Guiyu excavated a developed waterway and became one of the waterway hubs in Chaoshan area, which is also the origin of the name "Guiyu". At that time, the development of waterways provided many employment opportunities and income sources for Guiyu people outside agriculture. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, with the expansion of highways and the abandonment of waterways, Guiyu people completely lost their advantages and opportunities in this respect.

Facing the heavy pressure of life, the only feasible way is to give full play to the business tradition of Chaoshan people. Guiyu people's choice is to buy old waste. In the first half of the 20th century, farmers in Guiyu Town began to walk around the neighborhood, buying chicken feathers, scrap metal and so on. Scrap purchase has gradually become another form of local main business. By the 1980s, Guiyu had become very famous in Chaoshan area due to the large number of people engaged in scrap purchase. As long as it is Guiyu people, Chaoshan people's first reaction is to collect junk.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Guiyu Town began to set foot in the dismantling business of old hardware and electrical appliances. Due to the huge profits, the scale of the whole industry has gradually expanded. At the same time, foreign e-waste enters Guiyu on a large scale through transfer points such as Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Nanhai. The traditional recycling industry has really developed into the main business of Guiyu people.

After more than ten years' development of garbage dismantling industry, Guiyu has now become a wealthy town, and you can see many new buildings in this area-these houses called "Shanglugen" are very expensive. All kinds of imported cars with local licenses gallop on the road; Several main streets are as prosperous as small towns in the economically developed areas of the Pearl River Delta. Several large supermarkets show the purchasing power of Guiyu people; The higher price level than Guangzhou also explains the economic income level of Guiyu people from one side.

Rich Guiyu is an extremely inconvenient place to live. The harsh ecological environment makes the first thing to do when you first arrive in Guiyu is to adapt to the local air, where you often have difficulty breathing because of the sudden pungent smell. At the same time, people have to drink bottled mineral water, and most of the local surface water and shallow groundwater are no longer drinkable. A local landscape is a running waterwheel, which was transported from Chendian, 9 kilometers away, and immediately changed from 1.5 yuan/ton to 1 to 2 yuan/barrel (40 liters). Water transport has become one of the important local industries.

Ecological Crisis Caused by Electronic Waste Recycling

What caused the ecological environment in Guiyu to be so bad?

The culprit turned out to be electronic waste!

Relevant information shows that waste electronic waste is rich in recyclable materials, including precious metals, plastics, glass and some reusable parts. According to foreign research reports, 1 ton electronic board can separate 286 pounds of copper, 1 pound of gold and 44 pounds of tin, and only 1 pound of gold is worth 6000 dollars, so it is very profitable to disassemble these electronic wastes manually without advanced technology, equipment and cost. Due to the characteristics of electronic industry and its neglect of environmental protection recycling in production design, the cost of waste recycling is extremely high. At the same time, the global shortage of resources makes the recycling of e-waste very profitable. Therefore, under the premise of various loopholes in international trade, it is easy to cause the phenomenon that e-waste flows from developed countries to developing countries, and international waste transshipment will also be generated and intensified year by year. For example, 80% of electronic waste generated by the United States, the world's first consumer of electronic products, is packed in containers and exported to India, China and Pakistan, of which China accounts for 90%. But correspondingly, there is not even a real e-waste disposal enterprise in China at present. These smuggled electronic wastes basically flowed into some manual workshops along the coast of Guangdong and Fujian, and were illegally dismantled.

E-waste flowing into China is not only large in quantity but also serious in harm, especially TV, computer, mobile phone, stereo and other products, which contain a lot of toxic and harmful substances. Such as solder on TV picture tubes, cathode ray tubes, printed circuit boards and plastic casings, are all toxic substances. There are more harmful substances in the computer. More than 700 kinds of chemical raw materials are needed to make a computer, of which more than 50% are harmful to human body. The average lead content of computer monitors alone is more than 65,438+0 kg. Tin, lead and dibromide are absorbed into the body during the treatment of e-waste. Britain, beryllium, cadmium and mercury will cause toxic harm to workers and nearby residents; Heavy metals such as lead and barium penetrate into the ground, which will pollute the groundwater; Hydrocarbons, heavy metals and bromides directly dumped on rivers and banks will acidify rivers and harm fish and plants.

Guiyu, a small town, came into people's field of vision with such scars.

It is the front-line workers in the recycling industry who suffer greatly. In Guiyu electronic waste dismantling industry, the most harmful to workers' health are the circuit board treatment in Beilin and the production of plastic granular raw materials in Longgang. Foreign workers work hard in these heavily polluted factories and workshops, often without necessary protection and purification measures. The recycling treatment of Beilin circuit board is to take the integrated circuit board directly to the fire for baking. After the circuit board is heated and softened, use pliers to remove all kinds of chips, capacitors, tin, etc. from the solder joints behind the circuit board. When the circuit board is softened by heat, it will release pungent and unpleasant gas-the pungent smell of streets in Beilin area is produced from this.

Longgang's plastic recycling and processing industry is the pillar of Guiyu's electronic waste dismantling industry in terms of scale and output value. However, even in the factories and workshops of this pillar industry, the most primitive production methods are still used. Due to the lack of corresponding identification equipment, workers need to ignite the sample plastic after cleaning the plastic and before cutting, and distinguish the plastic types by smell, such as whether it is flame retardant or not, whether it contains formaldehyde, etc. Smelling this plastic burning gas for a long time will inevitably cause harm to the body.

Despite the harsh production environment and harsh labor treatment, some basic principles of local businessmen still provide basic protection and reasons for a large number of foreigners to stay in the local area. Guiyu people have inherited the business tradition of Chaoshan: they attach great importance to the principle of good faith. As long as the boss talks about the price with the workers, in most cases, the local boss will pay the workers on time and monthly. In the local area, it is often heard that people complain that local bosses beat and scold migrant workers, but it is rare to hear people complain that bosses are in arrears or deduct wages. In the atmosphere of general dishonesty in the whole society, the biggest reason for migrant workers to stay in Guiyu is that they can get their wages in advance as agreed.

Power background behind e-waste

After more than 10 years of development, the electronic waste dismantling industry in Guiyu has formed the scale of industrial operation, and 80% of local families are involved, which has become the pillar industry of Guiyu and the most important source of income for local residents. Foreigners have become the most basic node in the dismantling industry.

Because the raw materials used in Guiyu's e-waste dismantling industry are imported from the beginning, and e-waste is a sensitive commodity, the transaction becomes very secret. The reason why Guiyu has been developing in the electronic waste dismantling industry for so many years is directly related to the developed local clan organizations and powerful social networks.

The development process of Nanyang is a good example: due to the strict supervision of the government, less and less e-waste can enter the customs smoothly, and getting back the goods from the traditional sources-Nanhai and Guangzhou is also facing various strict examinations. Through a huge clan network, Nanyang Township has found some stable suppliers of the same clan in Nanhai and other places, and managed to let the highway supervision department release them. This tight network has made Nanyang rise rapidly.

Moreover, the regional distribution characteristics of electronic waste dismantling industry in Guiyu are closely related to clan forces. In Guiyu, every clan has a strong tendency of internal mutual assistance and external unity. Under this tendency, families of the same clan will naturally help each other, provide each other with information, and even conduct business activities in the form of partnerships in economic activities. At the same time, people outside the clan are kept secret, and even people from other clans are deliberately not allowed to engage in the same industry to avoid the intensification of competition. As a result, economic production is clustered according to clan, forming a very obvious dismantling production area.

The reason is that Guiyu, after all, is a small town with a newly developed commercial system, without a perfect commercial credit system, and its commercial operation basically continues the traditional "acquaintance economic model". For example, a plastic collection and crushing workshop may only supply several plastic raw material production workshops, because they are familiar with each other, and this trust makes them not need to have a special credit certification process, and at the same time cooperate with each other in terms of delivery date, cash flow and production technology. Because of the long history of clan struggle in Guiyu, the trust between different clans is weak, and it is very easy to establish trust among members of the same clan. Therefore, Guiyu's internal production organization is naturally influenced by clan relations, which is also an important reason for Guiyu's e-waste dismantling industry to gather regionally according to clan. ...