China’s most notorious e-waste dumping ground now cleaner but poorer
Thousands of polluting recyclers have shut down in Guiyu, Guangdong, while others have moved into tightly controlled industrial park
Yang Linxuan grew up amid the choking fumes and mechanical clatter of electronic appliances being broken down for scrap.
He was born 22 years ago in the village of Jiaan in east Guangdong’s Guiyu township, where his family and neighbours were part of an army of people making a living by processing electronic waste, smelting down parts of discarded computers, television sets and mobile phones to extract valuable metals like gold, silver and copper.
“Every household was engaged in that business and we just did it at home and on the street,” Yang said. “The whole town was blanketed by foul air that smelled of acid. I always felt like coughing.”
When it was time for Yang to make a living of his own, he also went into e-waste processing, but the industry had changed in the meantime.
The small, street-side recycling workshops that were once Guiyu’s defining feature are no more, with all its e-waste processing now taking place in an industrial park on the town’s outskirts.
Yang said the move to the park had reduced incomes but had also made the environment cleaner, with the fumes and waste water that are by-products of the recycling process now treated before being discharged.
