Longtang Town, Qingyuan, Guangdong dismantles millions of tons of foreign garbage every year. 70% of the global e-waste is dumped into China, and China is becoming the most important e-waste dump in the world! Among the eight major electronic foreign garbage distribution centers in China, Guiyu Town, Shantou, Guangdong, Longtang Town, Qingyuan and dali town, Nanhai are among the best, accounting for half of the national electronic foreign garbage import market! After the toxic substances contained in electronic foreign garbage are simply dismantled, the environmental pollution caused by waste water, waste gas and secondary garbage is "impossible to recover in 100 years"! Although the harm to human body is not obvious, its toxicity will have a serious impact on children's brain development! Although the country explicitly prohibits the import of electronic foreign garbage, driven by high profits, criminals do not hesitate to take risks. Some local governments even regard the treatment of electronic foreign garbage as a local pillar industry and turn a blind eye to the pollution problems caused by it. Nowadays, electronic foreign garbage has become a major environmental problem in China. As an important town of electronic foreign garbage, it is urgent to control foreign garbage pollution in Guangdong. This newspaper will launch a series of reports from today, focusing on the formation and causes of Guangdong's electronic foreign waste industrial chain, and exploring ways to control this environmental problem. Electronic foreign garbage is the common name of electronic solid waste, including all kinds of waste computers, communication equipment, televisions, refrigerators, air conditioners and obsolete precision electronic instruments and meters. At present, the world produces about 500 million tons of electronic foreign garbage every year, mainly in developed countries. The reporter learned that a large amount of electronic foreign garbage that poured into China has flowed into illegal garbage disposal plants. In Guangdong, after Guiyu Town, Shantou, a major dismantling town, was severely hit by the government a few years ago, Longtang Town, Qingyuan, a town with more than 30 years of experience in electronic foreign garbage disposal, began to play the role of dismantling center. Longtang Town is located in the east of Qingyuan City, 20 kilometers away from the city center. In this small town with a population of only 65,438+10,000, there are currently more than 65,438+10,000 illegal dismantling factories, and more than 50,000 dismantling teams are working nonstop every day, dismantling nearly one million tons of electronic foreign garbage every year! The reporter saw in Longtang Town that almost all farmhouses here are recycling workshops of various electronic wastes, and there are many women and children in these workshops. "Most of them were dismantled by hand, and computers and photocopiers were dismantled with hammers and coal stoves. There is no protection at all. " A local villager told the reporter that the average wage for processing e-waste is about 20 yuan every day. For the sake of meager wages, migrant workers from Hunan, Hubei and other places joined the original dismantling industry with locals. Without any protective measures, many people suffer from skin ulcers, respiratory diseases, kidney calculi and so on. In the past three years, with the soaring price of copper, aluminum and other metals, Longtang Town has to deal with 2000 standard containers of electronic foreign garbage every month, sometimes even more than 3000 containers, each weighing 25 tons! The dismantling of electronic foreign garbage has become a major local industry and source of income. On the morning of June 1, the reporter went to Ding 'an Village, 2 kilometers away from the town center of Longtang Town. Passers-by told reporters, "This is the village with the largest number of foreign garbage treatment plants in the town, and the whole village is doing this business." Before entering the village, the reporter saw black smoke rolling in the distance, and the air was filled with pungent smell. Almost all the houses on the roadside are filled with all kinds of waste electrical appliances, most of which have been torn into pieces. Local villagers told reporters that the local waste electronic products treatment plant will produce a lot of smoke when burning electrical accessories. "It will still converge during the day and be unscrupulous at night." After the car drove into Ding 'an village, the reporter saw a roadside next to a large and small treatment plant, and a group of men and women were concentrating on dismantling spare parts around a lot of waste electrical appliances. The temperature was as high as 35℃ that day, and almost all the male workers stood shirtless by the fire in each yard, rummaging through the burning accessories. "Now the whole village of Ding 'an has become a' foreign garbage village', with at least 200 large and small factories, and it is increasing every day! An old man in the village told the reporter, "This business is profitable! Several children in our family who used to work outside the home are now back in this business. " He told reporters that these old foreign electrical appliances were shipped from the South China Sea by the big boss in containers and then distributed to various factories or workshops in the village. The above labels are all unreadable words. Workers only need to distinguish between copper and aluminum and iron and plastic. At the foot of the mountain in Ding 'an village, the reporter saw that a large number of forests were destroyed and all the factories dealing with foreign garbage were built. Thousands of treatment plants have formed an industrial chain in Ding 'an Village. There are not many foreign garbage treatment plants run by local people, and most of them are run by Shaoyang people in Hunan. Boss Liu, a native of Shaoyang, has been in Ding 'an Village for five years. Five years ago, he and his fellow villagers came to Ding 'an, spent more than 20,000 yuan to rent a factory of more than 200 square meters, and started the processing business of electronic foreign garbage. Now, he is a millionaire with a car and a house. "This business is easy to do. As long as there are workers, they can make a lot of money. Boss Liu told reporters, "None of the more than 200 processing plants here has a business license, but business is still going on." Under the reporter's questioning, Boss Liu revealed, "In fact, we still have to pay some fees to the relevant departments every month." Our factory has 10 workers, and the monthly cost is more than 10000 yuan. But even if we pay, we still have to make money. "The reporter's subsequent investigation confirmed that what Mr. Liu said was true, and more than 10 processing plants randomly selected did not have industrial and commercial licenses. According to Mr. Liang, the owner of another sewage treatment plant, the local government has long regarded this industry as one of the pillar industries. The annual output value of Ding 'an Village alone is 780 million yuan, while that of the whole town exceeds 3 billion yuan. According to a local processing factory owner who asked not to be named, there are at least 1000 electronic foreign garbage factories in Longtang Town, which has formed an industrial chain of production, sales, transportation and processing. According to the boss, at least 2000 containers of electronic foreign garbage are transported to Ding 'an Village every month. At the end of each year and the beginning of each year, at the peak of the elimination of foreign garbage appliances, the amount of foreign garbage transported is two or three times that of usual. According to this calculation, there are at least 50,000 tons of electronic foreign garbage transported to Ding 'an Village every month! Due to the abundant supply, metal recyclers from all over the country come to negotiate business every day. "Sometimes the metal recycling price here has even become a benchmark across the country!" A large amount of secondary waste is dumped in the open air. According to environmental experts, dismantling electronic foreign garbage by illegal small workshops with backward technology will cause great damage to the local environment and residents' health. It is understood that half of the 700 kinds of chemical raw materials needed to make a personal computer contain toxins harmful to human body. If computer equipment is burned, it will release a lot of harmful and toxic gases, pollute the air and eventually form acid rain. If lead enters the soil, it will pollute the water source and endanger human beings, plants and microorganisms. According to the statistics of Greenpeace, in areas with serious e-waste pollution, the rate of local children infected with respiratory diseases is three times that of children in normal areas. According to the investigation in Longtang Town, more than half of the electronic foreign garbage 1 ton treated by local processing plants and small workshops have become useless polluted garbage after repeated treatment, and a large number of electronic wastes and processing residues have not been recycled, but simply dumped in open fields, rivers, ponds, wetlands, rivers and irrigation canals. The reporter also learned another fact: many people who have been engaged in dismantling for a long time have almost changed their hands, either red or swollen, but they don't know what is going on. A Hunan girl who works in the local area told the reporter, "We know that this is not good for our health. Generally, I dare not do it for too long. We will go home in a few years. Some people work for a long time, get sick inexplicably, and finally can only go home. " Li Yin, deputy mayor of Longtang Town, recycles foreign garbage for economic reasons. At 8 pm on June/KLOC-0, the reporter interviewed Li, deputy mayor of Longtang Town Government. Li frankly, the deputy mayor, said that at least 1000 large and small factories in the town are engaged in the treatment of electronic foreign garbage, and none of them has obtained an industrial and commercial business license. "These factories were built in the late 1970s. They are all problems left over from history, and it is difficult to ban them all at once." Vice Mayor Li said that processing electronic foreign garbage has become an important channel to solve the economic source of local farmers and has formed an industry. Since the country has strictly prohibited the import and processing of electronic foreign garbage, why do local governments still let it develop at will? Vice Mayor Li said that recycling these foreign wastes is entirely out of economic considerations, and this industry brings a lot of metal raw materials to the country every year. "The problem facing the government now is how to standardize and unify the operation." Regarding the pollution of electronic foreign garbage, Li, deputy mayor, said: "At present, the government of Longtang Town has registered all more than 20 large-scale treatment plants in the town for environmental protection, and the environmental protection office personnel track the remaining garbage 24 hours a day and ask the treatment plants to transport the garbage to a unified landfill for treatment." For the management of many other small treatment plants, "violators will be punished and banned". During the interview, Vice Mayor Li and Deputy Director Xian of Qingcheng District Safety Production Supervision Administration of Qingyuan City unanimously told the reporter: "In order to standardize the electronic foreign waste treatment industry, with the consent of the superior government, the town has set up two exclusive areas in Longtang Town, and plans to put all the existing 1000 electronic foreign waste treatment plants in the town into standard operation, and the project has been approved by Qingyuan Environmental Protection Bureau." Regarding the owner of a sewage treatment plant who revealed that "the government has to pay 1 more than 10,000 yuan for industrial and commercial, taxation, environmental protection and other expenses every month", Vice Mayor Li said categorically: "The government has never charged them a penny! But we don't know whether the industrial and commercial and tax departments have received money. " If environmental experts do not deal with it in time, it will do harm to the water and soil in Guangdong. "The polluted land and water can't be recovered within 100 years." Speaking of electronic foreign garbage, Professor He Pinjing, director of the Institute of Solid Waste of Tongji University, was very excited. "Our country has enough headaches to deal with its own garbage, so where can we afford foreign garbage!" He Pinjing analyzed that the treatment cost of secondary pollutants generated by garbage is very high, and the classified recycling of garbage can only be profitable if the secondary pollution control is not strict. During storage, pollutants such as waste water, waste gas and residue will be produced. Some of these pollutants are visible, some are invisible, and even spread with the flow of air and water, which is "endless harm". In addition, the water used to clean up the garbage and the secondary garbage left everywhere not only pollute the surface water, but also enter the underground to pollute the drinking water. According to environmental experts, electronic products contain toxic and harmful substances such as lead, mercury and brominated flame retardants. Compared with other wastes, e-waste is extremely harmful, with the characteristics of long pollution time and great pollution harm. A section of waste No.5 battery buried in the soil can make several square meters of land barren for several years, and its impact on the whole soil will last for half a century. If it is not handled properly, harmful and toxic substances in e-waste will enter the soil, seriously pollute the water source, and finally endanger the survival of human beings, plants and microorganisms. What is particularly worrying is that e-waste will also have a serious impact on children's brain development.