"(...) Except watching the Olympics and being in the beautiful Stockholm archipelago, I have spent a lot of time reading during my holiday. One of the most interesting books I read has not been published yet. It is a novel written by an old friend dealing with the export of toxic e-waste from the developed to the developing world.
It is a story about love, corruption and the environment that takes the reader on a journey from Stockholm to the ‘toxic city’ of Guiyu, in the southern province of Guangdong. It shows how the North’s discarded mobile phones and other forms of e-waste too often end up in a developing country. Here the local poor pass circuit boards through red-hot kilns or acid baths to dissolve lead, silver and other metals from the digital debris. Although mainland China banned the import of e-waste in 2000, it is still arriving in Guiyu, which remains the main centre of e-waste scrapping in China. When Greenpeace International tested streams in Guiyu the streams had Ph readings of 1 or 2 rendering them so acid “to disintegrate a penny after a few hours”.
“What will it take to keep Bejing on the sustainable track when the Olympics have come to an end and the international community is no longer scrutinizing its efforts?”
Fredrik Moberg/Editor
