Waste Crime - Waste Risks: Gaps in Meeting the Global Waste Challenge

bromides. Old cathode ray tube televisions (CRT) contain lead and phosphorus pentachloride; flat-screen televisions (LCDs) have mercury; fridges and other cooling equipment have quantities of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Valuable materials recovered from the e-waste commodities are sold on to the manufac- turing sector through a new brokers’ network (UNODC 2013). Even though the informal e-waste recycling system is deeply embedded in some provinces in China, it is possible to phase it out. In the last five to ten years, informal recycling activities were eliminated in Taizhou due to shifts in local manufacturing of electronic products and stricter regulations on polluting activ- ities related to e-waste recycling. Moreover, the new economic development in China, which is now both a producer and a consumer of electric and electronic products, could shift the entire global dynamic and put China in the role as an e-waste exporter. There are reports of African brokers now coming to China to collect second-hand goods, such as kettles, shavers, washing machines, etc., for shipment to Africa (EFFACE 2015). Similarly, Asian actors, according to research done in Ghana, buy copper from Ghanaian dismantlers (Bisschop 2012).

Informal recyclers tend to cluster around the key waterways and ports of entry, suggesting that the input materials for recycling are imported. The business has spread from Guang- dong Province to other regions, such as Guangxi, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Tianjin, Hunan, Fujian, and Shandong (Wang et al. 2013). Recycling or disposal facilities in the developing world are often very basic. The town of Guiyu in Guangdong Province – often referred to as the WEEE capital of the world – is home to more than 300 companies and 3 000 individual workshops that employ people in informal recycling activi- ties, such as extracting metals from computer circuit boards and burning the plastic off copper cables (Wang et al. 2013). Artisan recycling is very labour-intensive. Most of the workers in Guiyu are rural migrants coming from neighbouring agrarian regions and working for relatively low wages. Many of these workers are women and children (Wang et al. 2013). Artisan recycling is based on the profit from materials of positive market value. These include plastics; preciousmetals, suchas gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and copper; and strategic metals, such as rare earth metals and other non-ferrous metals. For example, 25 tonnes of mobile phones can yield 10 kg of gold. But elec- tronic goods also contain a wide variety of hazardous substances. Printed circuit boards contain arsenic, cadmium, mercury, and

In West Africa, the situation is different. E-waste collection and recycling systems are less significant. This might be

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