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FIGURE 7-1 Guiyu is located in southeast China and is the world’s largest destination for e-waste.

E-waste recycling is big business in Guiyu. It is responsible for the employment of
80 percent of the town’s families—more than 30,000 people. On average, workers make
between US$1 and US$3 per day.
To reclaim copper, gold, and other materials from the 15 million tons of e-waste in Guiyu,
workers dip motherboards into acid baths, grind plastic casings from monitors, and grill
components over open coal fires. Guiyu has some of the largest dioxin levels on the planet.

NOTE Eighty-two percent of children in the Guiyu region under 6 years old in the area have lead
poisoning.

After disassembly, one ton of computer scrap yields more gold than 17 tons of gold ore.
Circuit boards can be 40 times richer in copper than copper ore. Guiyu started taking scrapped
computers in 1995. In 2001, the Basel Action Network made a video about the city and its
e-waste issues, but by 2008 very little has changed.

Africa
A similar problem is playing itself out in Africa. In the Ikeja Computer Village, near Lagos,
Nigeria, thousands of vendors are packed into the market, where all kinds of electronics can