The Electronic Wasteland Video

The Electronic Wasteland Video Transcript

>> Tonight we're going to take you to one of the most toxic places on earth, a place that government officials and gangsters don't want you to see. It's a town in China where you can't breathe the air or drink the water, a town where the blood of the children is laced with lead. It's worth risking a visit, because much of this poison is coming out of the homes, schools, and offices of America. This is a story about recycling, about how your best intentions to be green can be channeled into an underground sewer that flows from the United States, and into the wasteland. That wasteland is piled with the burning remains of some of the most expensive, sophisticated stuff that consumers crave. ^M00:00:44 [inaudible-foreign language] ^M00:00:51

>> And we discovered that the gangs who run this place, wanted to keep it a secret.

>> [ foreign language ]

>> He said if we don't leave, we may get beaten up.

>> What are they hiding? The answer lies in the first law of the digital age, newer is better. In with the next thing, and out with the old TV, phone, or computer. All of this becomes obsolete electronic garbage called e-waste.

>> You know, my computer seems like such a smooth, clean machine. What's inside it? Lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, polyvinyl chlorides. All of these materials have known toxicological effects that range from brain damage to kidney disease to mutations, cancers.

>> Allan Hershkowitz [assumed spelling] is a senior scientist and authority on waste management at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

>> The problem with e-waste is that it is the fastest growing component of the municipal waste stream worldwide.

>> What do you mean fastest growing?

>> Well we throw out about a hundred and thirty thousand computers every day in the United States.

>> In the United States alone?

>> Correct. And we throw out over a hundred million cell phones every year.

>> And here's what that looks like. At a recycling event in Denver, we found cars bumper to bumper for blocks, in a line that lasted for hours. Most folks in line were hoping to do the right thing, expecting that their waste would be recycled in state of the art facilities here in America. But really, there's no way for them to know where all of this is going. The recycling industry is exploding, and as it turns out, some so-called recyclers are shipping the waste overseas, where it's broken down for the precious metals inside. Executive Recycling of Inglewood, Colorado, which ran this event, promised the public on its website, your e-waste is recycled properly, right here in the U.S., not simply dumped on somebody else. That policy helped Brandon Richter, the CEO of Executive, when a contract with the city of Denver and expand operation into three western states.

>> Tell me what the problem with sending this stuff overseas is.

>> Well you know, they've got low income labor over there, so obviously they don't have all the right materials, the safety equipment to handle some of this material.

>> Executive does recycling in house, but we were curious about shipping containers that were leaving its Colorado yard. We found this one filled with monitors, they're especially hazardous, because each picture tube, called a cathode ray tube, or CRT contains several pounds of lead. It's against U.S. law to ship them overseas without special permission. We took down the container's number, and we followed it to Tacoma, Washington, where it was loaded on a ship.

>> When the container left Tacoma, we followed it for seven thousand four hundred and fifty nine miles, to this place, Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong. It turns out the container that started in Denver was just one of thousands of containers on an underground, often illegal smuggling route, taking America's electronic trash to the far east.

>> Our guide to that route was Jim Puckett, founder of the Basal Action Network, a watchdog group named for the treaty that's supposed to stop rich countries from dumping toxic waste on poor ones. Puckett runs a program to certify ethical recyclers, and he showed us what's piling up in Hong Kong.

>> It's literally acres of computer monitors. Is it legal to import all of these computer monitors into Hong Kong?

>> No way. This is absolutely illegal, both from the standpoint of Hong Kong law, but also U.S. law and Chinese law. But it's happening.

>> We followed the trail to a place Puckett discovered in southern China, a sort of Chernobyl of electronic waste, the town of Gwey Yu [assumed spelling]. But we weren't there very long before we were picked up by the cops, and taken to city hall. We told the mayor we wanted to see recycling.

>> Mayor's gonna ride up front, after you. Very nice car.

>> So her personally drove us to a shop.

>> Let me explain what's happening here. We were brought into the mayor's office, the mayor told us that we were essentially not welcome here, but he would show us one place where computers were being dismantled, and this is that place, a pretty tidy shop. The mayor told us that we would be welcome to see the rest of the town, but the town wouldn't be prepared for our visit for another year. So we were allowed to shoot at that location for about five minutes, and we're back in the mayor's car headed back to city hall, where I suspect we'll be given another cup of tea, and sent on our way out of town, with a police escort no doubt.

>> And we were. ^M00:06:12 But the next day, in a different car on a different road. [ rooster crowing ] We got in.

>> This is really the dirty little secret of the electronic age. Here's a CRT stand.

>> Oh yeah, oh yeah.

>> So they've been dismantling the CRTs.

>> There's as well. Little bit of everything in here, and this is the place where they're clearly doing the burning.

>> Green peace has been filming around Gwey Yu, and caught the recycling work. Women were heating circuit boards over a coal fire, pulling out chips and pouring off the lead solder. Men were using what is literally a medieval acid recipe to extract gold. Pollution has ruined the town, drinking water is trucked in, scientists have studied the area, and discovered that Gwey Yu has the highest levels of cancer causing dioxins in the world. They found that pregnancies are six times more likely to end in miscarriage, and that seven out of ten kids have too much lead in their blood.

>> Open, uncontrolled burning of plastics, chlorinated and brominated plastics is known worldwide to cause the emission of polychlorinated and polybrominated dioxins. These are among the most toxic compounds known on earth. We have a situation where we have twenty first century toxics being managed in a seventeenth century environment.

>> The recyclers are peasant farmers, who couldn't make a living on the land. Destitute, they have come by the thousands to get eight dollars a day. Green peace introduced us to some of them. They were afraid, and didn't want to be seen, but these are the hands that are breaking down America's computers.

>> [ foreign language ].

>> The air I breathe in every day is so pungent, I can definitely feel it in my windpipe and affecting my lungs. It makes me cough all the time.

>> If you're worried about your lungs, and you're burning your hands, do you ever think about giving this up?

>> Yes, I've thought of that.

>> And why don't you?

>> [ foreign language ].

>> Because the money's good.

>> It struck me, talking to those workers the other day, that they were destitute, and they're happy to have this work.

>> Well desperate people will do desperate things. But we should never put them in that situation. You know, it's a hell of a choice between poverty and poison, we should never make people make that choice.

>> Oh my goodness, look at the ash river here. [ coughing ] Oh my goodness.

>> It's unbelievably acrid, and - [ coughing ] I'm choking. What are we seeing here?

>> This is an ash river, this is the detritus from burning all this material, and this is what the kids get to play in.

>> After a few minutes in the real recycling area, we were jumped. [ scuffling ]

>> [ foreign language ].

>> Several men struggled for our cameras. The mayor hadn't wanted us to see this place, and neither did the businessmen who were profiting from it. ^M00:09:29 [ scuffling ] ^M00:09:41

>> They got a soil sample that we had taken for testing, but we managed to wrestle the cameras back. ^M00:09:46 [ scuffling ] ^M00:09:53

>> But the question is, what are they afraid of? They're afraid of being found out. This is smuggling, this is illegal. A lot of people are turning a blind eye here. And if somebody makes enough noise, they're afraid this is all gonna dry up.

>> Back in Denver there was no threat of it drying up. In fact, it was a flood, and Brandon Richter, CEO of Executive Recycling was still warning of the dangers of shipping waste to China.

>> You know, I just heard actually a child actually died over there from breaking this material down, just getting all these toxins.

>> Then we told him we'd tracked his container to Hong Kong.

>> This is a photograph from your yard, the Executive Recycling yard.

>> Uh-huh.

>> We followed this container to Hong Kong.

>> Okay.

>> And I wonder why that would be?

>> Hmm, I have no clue.

>> The Hong Kong customs people opened the container -

>> Okay.

>> - and found it full of CRT screens -

>> Huh.

>> - which as you probably know is illegal to -

>> Yeah, absolutely.

>> - export to Hong Kong.

>> Yeah. I don't know if that container was filled with glass, I doubt it was. We don't fill glass here [inaudible] those containers.

>> This container was in your yard, filled with CRT screens, and exported to Hong Kong, which probably wouldn't be legal.

>> No, absolutely not. Yeah.

>> Can you explain that?

>> Yeah, it's not, it was not filled in our facility.

>> But that's where we filmed it, and it turns out we weren't the only ones asking questions. Hong Kong customs intercepted the container, and sent it back to Executive Recycling, Inglewood, Colorado, the contents were listed as waste, cathode ray tubes. U.S. customs x-rayed the container, and found the same thing. We showed Richter the evidence, and later his lawyer told us that the CRTs were exported under Executive Recycling's name, but without the company's permission.

>> I know this is your job, but unfortunately you, you know, when you attack small business owners like this, and you don't have all your facts straight, it's unfortunate, you know?

>> But here's one more fact. The federal government accountability office set up a sting, in which U.S. investigators posed as foreign importers. Executive Recycling offered to sell fifteen hundred CRT computer monitors, and twelve hundred CRT televisions to the GAO's fictitious broker in Hong Kong. But Executive Recycling was not alone. The GAO report found that another forty two American companies were willing to do the same. ^M00:12:30 [ ticking ]