Your ‘recycled’ laptop may end up in an illegal Asian scrapyard

“The junk comes in on shipping containers, trucked over from the port,” said Bee, a low-level administrator at an electronics scrapyard in Thailand (“Bee” is a pseudonym she provided in lieu of her actual name). When the Chinese government intensified its crackdown early last year, many e-waste brokers scattered into China’s backyard. These lawless recyclers quickly set up shop in Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand, countries with good ports, cheap labor and lax of US recycling pile up as China restricts imports

The transnational, e-waste trade is now in total disarray — and amid the chaos, brokers are fanning out across Asia, seeking new territory to exploit the weak and pollute the skies.

Source: www.pri.org