Sunday, July 1, 2018

The World's Rubbish Dump


At a deserted factory outside Bangkok, skyscrapers made from vast blocks of crushed printers, Xbox components and TVs tower over black rivers of smashed-up computer screens.

This is a tiny fraction of the estimated 50m tonnes of electronic waste created just in the EU every year, a tide of toxic rubbish that is flooding into south-east Asia from the EU, US and Japan.

Thailand, with its lax environmental laws, has become a dumping ground for this e-waste over the past six months, but authorities are clamping down, fearful that the country will become the “rubbish dump of the world”. The global implications could be enormous.

You can read the rest @
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/28/deluge-of-electronic-waste-turning-thailand-into-worlds-rubbish-dump

And I bet you thought the "new" economy wasn't all that wasteful. Well, you thought wrong.

Have you noticed that most of the canned tuna sold in US stores comes from Thailand? I wonder if any of this e-waste might be leaching out into their fishing grounds and on to our dinner tables.

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