China's e-waste capital chokes on old computers

By Mark Chisholm and Kitty Bu

GUIYU, China (Reuters) - Guiyu is a modern day gold rush town. But instead of panning for gold in babbling streams, workers shift through piles of broken old computer parts in acrid smelling shacks, smelting down parts with crude equipment to extract valuable metals like gold and copper.

Every year, millions of unwanted computers, keyboards, television sets and cell phones are smuggled into China by sea. Much ends up in Guiyu, a rough town on the southern Chinese coast, not far from the former British colony of Hong Kong.

There is little regard for safety -- no masks, little ventilation and few signs of government officials enforcing what safety rules do exist in China.

The lucky few wear rough but thin gloves. They are too scared of losing their jobs, or being beaten up, to dare to talk to visiting foreign reporters.

The state-run newspaper the People's Daily said last year that Guiyu's more than 5,500 e-waste businesses employed over 30,000 people.

It estimated the business to be worth 1 billion yuan ($130.9 million) in Guiyu alone.

Yet many of the workers, who come from all parts of China, are paid as little as $3 a day.

"Workers never benefit from this," said Lai Yun from environmental group Greenpeace, poring over gruesome pictures of workers injured by exploding computer parts or burns from the furnaces.