
Amazing way Chinese recycle millions of cellphones every year - pitdesi
http://blogs.nokia.com/nseries/2011/05/03/how-china-recycles-millions-of-cellphones-every-year/
======
angusgr
It's a shame that most e-waste recycling in China is not as clean and neat as
this. Case in point, the town of Guiyu:

[http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1870162_182214...](http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1870162_1822148,00.html)
<http://www.viceland.com/int/v14n9/htdocs/ctrl.php#>

(Don't get me wrong, responsible e-waste recycling is to be lauded and
encouraged - it's all the more important because of places like Guiyu. I'm not
too surprised Nokia choose to focus on one angle while not really mentioning
the other one, though.)

~~~
angusgr
_most e-waste recycling in China is not as clean and neat as this_

Now I come to think about it, the original blog post shows 3 people working
hot air desoldering stations without any visible ventilation, and with only
one wearing a thin respirator. So it's probably not all that healthy for the
workers even there. At least in the photos I've seen of Chinese electronics
_assembly_ factories, the workers have extraction units for their soldering
stations.

~~~
sliverstorm
Do _de_ soldering stations actually generate enough fumes to be comparable to
actual soldering? When I do hot-air rework, I rarely see any smoke at all,
unless I have just put a lot of flux down.

~~~
angusgr
Yeah, you might be right. My understanding is the bulk of (at least visible)
fumes when soldering are from flux, but there are other fumes present. When
you're not temperature controlled then you probably have other things melting
and fuming up as well though, depending on how deft you are.

------
latch
Garbage sorters in HK isn't a sight I've 100% gotten used to. It is extremely
common (somewhere around 1 every 2KM you walk - and those are just the ones
you catch actually at a garbage). They are mostly after cardboard from what
I've seen - or maybe that's just what they find the most of.

As a general rule, they are all old and don't look particularly healthy. But
they are hard working. I feel equal measures of shame and pride in humanity
when I see one. It's actually an emotional experience for me for some weird
reason.

I wish I knew more about them. What they earn, how long they work, how the
system works (they seem to have local drop off centers which all have floor
scales - so it must be paid by weight, and then it gets shipped off from there
by god knows who).

~~~
dualogy
I've seen them too... on the one hand maybe they don't look as "healthy" as a
Calvin Klein model. On the other hand, especially when watching the older ones
-- they sure have kept their mobility and muscles in a working condition
throughout the years doing what they do and they make me think of the majority
of old folks back home whose bodies are often deteriorating and falling apart
from NOT getting any physical exercise, from spending hours in front of the
telly for years and from feeding themselves pure toxic junk food for decades.
Well... it's a big world out there.

~~~
Tichy
"especially when watching the older ones"

A relevant question would be how old they really are, though. Maybe they only
look old.

------
ck2
They are screwed when their middle-class gets big enough to cause inflation
and labor is no longer cheap enough to abuse people like that.

They'll have to double the size of their prisons and use prison labor, and yet
we'll keep buying.

------
known
Everything is possible in China because of wage slavery
[http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-
show-1-tech-...](http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-tech-
apple-workers-forced-to-sign-no-suicide-pledge/20110504.htm)

~~~
jdietrich
The suicide rate amongst Foxconn workers is dramatically _lower_ than that of
China overall.

Most of the population of China are peasant farmers, living in huts with no
running water or electricity. A factory dormitory looks pretty unpleasant to
us, but for most of the people living in them it's a big step up.

Do you have a better idea for how to lift 800,000,000 people out of poverty?

~~~
known
Evenly distribute $3 trillion forex to 800,000,000 people.
[http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-
show-1-heres...](http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-heres-
what-china-can-buy-with-3-trn-forex/20110504.htm)

------
sliverstorm
This is fantastic. Disassembled all the way down to the capacitors... If these
parts are resold and reused, I don't think anyone could hope for better, short
of a way to decompose and reuse PCB, or at the very least harvest the copper.

~~~
unwind
Tbe only thing that worries me if that if these components are sold as new,
that would be a bit unpleasant. Sure it's recycling, but it's dishonest. Of
course, I'm not saying that the pictured establishments in particular should
be suspected of any such deviousness (I don't know them at all).

Also, I really don't want to sound prejudiced, I've just read about fake
components coming out of China sometimes, and it seems the step to fake "new"
components isn't very far-fetched.

~~~
sliverstorm
Well, you get what you pay for. Buy reputable brands through reputable dealers
and pay a few extra cents for high quality parts, and you'll probably be ok.

~~~
colanderman
"Probably" is the key word. Counterfieters do an awful good job at making
themselves and the product look reputable, and China could use some work on
trademark enforcement. cf. the many stories of "empty" big-name ICs from
Chinese distributors.

~~~
sliverstorm
It's all about the supply chain you use. Buy from an authorized reseller; they
have a _vested_ interest in selling you the real thing.

Tangentially, notice the counterfeit IC's from China are mostly storage
(unless something has changed that I wasn't aware of) The margins on faked
storage are pretty good. The margins on SMT capacitors? I can buy authentic,
extremely high quality capacitors on DigiKey for $0.07.

------
JoeAltmaier
Yay! Another variety of sweatshop. Those chips have to be worth, what, 0.02?

~~~
noonespecial
Arm cpus and flash memory chips are worth a bunch more than 0.02 and they are
easy to reuse. I've desoldered a few myself for projects. I've even rescued
the data on a flash chip by pulling it from the phone.

Its easy and well worth it even for me the rich westerner. I'm not sure how
valuable a mixed bin of SM capacitors are, but I assure you, if they weren't
making something from them, they wouldn't do it.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Their boss is making money, sure. They are getting paid something I suppose. I
really have no idea whether its a sweatshop or not. But I get suspicious when
people spend hours a day on activities of marginal utility.

~~~
angusgr
Apparently some of these jobs can pay quite well:
<http://shanghaiscrap.com/?p=6448>

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stretchwithme
Someday, robots will be doing this with virtually everything tossed away. And
they'll be taking apart our old landfills too.

~~~
known
<http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm>

------
DuckPaddle
Recycle is nice until your electronic brakes fail because the manufacturer was
sold these parts as new. Old HK saying "Only the con man is real."

------
m0wfo
Sounds like Nokia palming off its RoHS obligations to a cottage economy which
luckily for them seems to be thriving. You couldn't do this in Europe or
America.

~~~
shareme
You are wrong..

Both co-founders of Apple were part-time employed in such adventures in the
USA..Steve Jobs was in-fact a junk yard IC chip seller.

Even now there are still re-used chip sellers in the USA who do this in that
they sort through used chips to find those to sell that are in demand.

