A Chinese Town's Get-Rich Scheme: E-trash to Cash.

The electronic trash that most Americans deposit at centers for recycling toxic materials often ends up polluting a town in China. In Guiyu, China's southeastern Guandong province, where thousands of tons of old motherboards, printers, and monitors from the U.S. end up each year. China has become the favored destination for the world's discarded computers and peripherals and the main source of used computer parts. According to James Puckett, coordinator of the Basel Action Network, an environmental watchdog group in Seattle, the residues such as lead, mercury, and other toxic materials all end up in China. This article shows how China and other developing countries benefit from electronic trash coming from the U.S.