Houbajia Village is less than 3 kilometers away from Zhongguancun Street, connected to the North Fifth Ring Road in the north, Yuanmingyuan in the west and Xiaoyue River in the east. There are no tall buildings, no brilliant neon lights, no luxury shops and no high-tech atmosphere. If you don't explain, you won't even feel that you are in Beijing. It is no different from ordinary rural areas in any underdeveloped area in China. However, it is the largest e-waste "transfer station" in Beijing.
Seven discarded mobile phone circuit boards can extract a gold necklace.
Of course, in Lao Teng's eyes, it is not only the largest in Beijing, but also the "largest" electronic waste "transfer station" in China. Lao Teng has his own reasons: "We will accept as many old computers as Zhongguancun can sell!"
Lao Teng is a native of Xinyang Mountain Area, Henan Province. He spent four or five years in the last eight stores recycling electronic waste. Lao Teng's home is in a rectangular community not far from the last eight villages. The yard is small, but there are more than 30 households, 100 people. Into the yard, every door is covered with a dusty tarpaulin computer monitor or mainframe box, as well as bags of keyboards and power supplies.
The Laoteng family lives in a room of less than 20 square meters, and the monthly rent is 500 yuan. The engine room is neatly stacked with recycled computer hosts, motherboards, speakers, power supplies, computer radiators, dvd drives, and even abandoned walkie-talkies, miniature cameras, electronic calculators, and so on. These things are piled up more than one person high, and some places are piled up from the floor to the ceiling. Bundles of plugs and wires are still hanging on the wall. The computer monitors and mainframes outside the house are piled as high as the roof.
"We are here, although the place is small, every household is hoarding four or five hundred thousand goods." Xiao Teng said. Seeing the author's surprised expression, Lao Teng added: "How many goods do you think I have in this room?" After a pause, he said, "What I saved alone is worth 20 thousand to 30 thousand!" "
These things were all brought back by Lao Teng and his wife from all over Beijing with flatbed cars. Lao Teng's daughter-in-law smiled. "When the business is good, a car can pull 1000 yuan of goods! Pull twice a day. "
Lao Teng's daughter-in-law also has troubles. Originally, there were few people and business was easy to do. There are more and more people doing this job now. Sometimes several fellow villagers touch each other and raise their prices. "Who has a computer and is still staring!"
The used electrical appliances bought back should be tested first. The so-called test is to plug in the power supply, what can be turned is good, and what can't be turned is bad. Classify after testing, such as memory, CD-ROM drive, hard disk, etc. And the price is different.
Lao Teng's daughter-in-law said, "DVD costs 7 yuan a catty, but now it's down to 3 yuan a catty." And good brand DVD players are sold in 50 yuan and 80 yuan even at a price of 100 yuan. If it is completely abandoned, it will earn hundreds of dollars per ton, and some will sell it at this price. "
Scrap equipment containing metal also makes money. Lao Teng picked up a computer motherboard and pointed to it: "Don't look at this small board, the yellow ones on it are all gold! At first I thought it was copper, but later I realized there was gold in it. Very valuable! Two fingernail-sized widgets for two dollars! In particular, imported machines have high gold content and are more valuable. At first, no one understood. They were all sold as ordinary garbage and later learned. "
According to some data, among these electronic wastes, seven discarded mobile phone circuit boards can extract a gold necklace. If the mobile phone battery is recycled to one ton, 200 grams of gold can be extracted, while only 2 grams of gold can be extracted from each ton of ordinary gold ore. 1 ton of waste circuit board can separate 286 pounds of copper, 1 pound of gold and 44 pounds of tin, which is worth $6,000. If iron, aluminum, cadmium and nickel are added, the value may reach $7,000.
Those "good things" that are picked out will be assembled into second-hand electrical appliances and sold to companies, Internet cafes and schools. He told reporters: "If you want to buy one or twenty sets, you can generally guarantee that it is a brand and a model. Not if there are more than 30 sets. Many of our fellow villagers have gone back for the Spring Festival. If you usually have more than 30 sets, you can assemble a brand and a model in a day or two. " There are no eight companies in Beijing that collect waste materials. The waste materials that cannot be assembled are generally sold to Cantonese, and even the broken glass of monitors can be sold for 50 cents a catty.
The situation of Lao Teng's family is typical in the last eight families. There are about 20,000 migrants in Houbajia Village, accounting for three quarters of the total population of the village. Most of them come from Henan, Anhui and Sichuan, and make a living by collecting waste products. In the urban-rural junction outside the Fourth and Fifth Ring Road, vendors engaged in this kind of business abound, and the surrounding areas of Dongxiaokou Village and Tiantongyuan in Changping are also relatively concentrated, but the scale is far less than that of the last eight, and there are twenty or thirty households in Dongxiaokou Village in Changping. But in terms of the total number of people, it is called "100,000 mobile troops".
According to Lao Teng's daughter-in-law, many people in Xinyang, Henan Province are doing e-waste business in the last eight districts. At first, a relative surnamed Wang of Lao Teng's daughter-in-law's family was doing e-waste in Guangdong. Later, there were more people doing this business in Guangdong, and the competition was fierce. In 2002, Lao Wang came to the last eight shops in Beijing, which were originally garbage collectors. At first, he treated e-waste as ordinary garbage and threw it into the garbage dump.
"My relatives just entered No.8 Middle School, and the business is very good. Many people who collect e-waste don't know that there are precious metals on the plates. The whole computer that collects garbage makes some money and sells it to my relatives. Who knew there were so many good things in the circuit board at that time! My relatives made a fortune after working for a year. Our fellow villagers saw that he made a fortune doing this, earning hundreds of thousands a year, and they all followed suit, more and more. Now, not only the last eight companies, but most of them in the country are Guangshan. Those who do this now can earn hundreds of thousands a year. " Lao Teng's wife recalled. In 2007, there were more and more people doing electronic waste recycling in Beijing. Seeing that he couldn't make any money, Lao Wang went back to Guangdong as the "general boss" and stopped doing it himself.
"This thing is more polluted because it has heavy metals and is toxic."
Everyone in Lao Teng's family is well aware of the dangers of dealing with e-waste. Xiao Teng said: "This thing is very polluted. Generally, burning some plastic paper will make you feel polluted. This thing is more polluted because it has heavy metals and is toxic. " At some point, Xiao Teng picked up a newspaper next to him. Below the newspaper is his own computer mainframe, and the box cover is opened: "Look, this has to be covered with something, otherwise there will be radiation, which is harmful to people's health."
There is no clear technical standard to determine e-waste. But generally speaking, all discarded or unusable electronic products belong to electronic waste. Improper disposal of electronic waste is extremely harmful, especially electronic products such as televisions, computers, mobile phones and stereos, which contain a lot of toxic and harmful substances such as lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, polyvinyl chloride and bromine flame retardants. According to some data, the cathode ray tube in each TV or computer monitor contains an average of 4 to 8 pounds of lead. Once lead enters the soil, it will seriously pollute the water source, which will eventually cause harm to humans, plants and microorganisms, and will also have a great impact on children's brain development. Cadmium in old mobile phone batteries can pollute 60 thousand liters of water, which can fill three standard swimming pools. Although the new mobile phone battery is gradually phasing out the use of cadmium, there are still many toxic substances in it.
Since the middle and late 1980s, all kinds of electronic appliances have entered thousands of households. According to the investigation and calculation of experts such as Liang Haoguang of Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, according to the average service life of household appliances from 10 to 15 years, Beijing has entered the peak period of scrapping electronic and electrical products since 2003. By 20 10, the amount of e-waste will rise to 158300 tons, accounting for one tenth of the whole country.
It is understood that the global e-waste is growing at a rate of 3% to 8% every year, and will soon climb to more than 10%. The reason for the rapid growth is that with the acceleration of the upgrading of high-tech products, the use time of electronic products is getting shorter and shorter, resulting in more and more electronic waste. According to the statistics of environmental protection organizations, between 1997 and 2005, the average service life of computers was reduced from six years to two years, while the service life of mobile phones was even less than two years.
The "regular army" is no match for100000 mobile troops.
In April 2007, Huaxing Group Environmental Protection Industry Development Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Huaxing Environmental Protection), a government-approved waste household appliances recycling and processing unit, began to operate. In 2008, Beijing's first centralized processing and sorting center for electronic waste and used household appliances was built and put into use in Hanjiachuan, Haidian District. This year, the first large-scale electronic waste treatment plant in Beijing will be built in Yizhuang.
However, according to media reports, Hanjiachuan e-waste sorting center is faced with the embarrassing situation of "no government subsidy, but people don't recognize it": since it was put into use, it has not received any information about government subsidies, and the recycling of e-waste has never been clearly protected by law. The biggest impact on enterprises comes from the high-priced acquisition of waste electrical appliances by the people.
Zhou Xu, manager of Huaxing Environmental Market Planning Department, said that the purpose of small traders recycling e-waste is to make huge profits. They extracted precious metals from it, completely ignoring the toxic and harmful substances contained in the rest. A formal environmental protection enterprise like Huaxing Environmental Protection doesn't matter if it is "useful or useless". All hazardous wastes in components must be treated or sealed according to national requirements. The rest, it is necessary to introduce advanced technology and equipment, and a production line will cost tens of millions. At such a high cost, small traders will not invest.
In addition, according to the figures of the previous two years, Beijing eliminated 3.5 million to 4 million sets of electronic waste every year. After the establishment of Huaxing Environmental Protection, the amount of recycling and disposal has increased year by year, but it is still far from the actual demand. Zhou Xu said: "We can't compare with 100,000 mobile troops."
Miss Wang, who lives in Xuanwu District, said that the first thing that comes to mind when she sells old TV sets that have been used for 20 years at home is small vendors. I haven't heard of any formal processing enterprises, and I don't know how to hand them over to formal environmental protection enterprises. It is understood that small vendors who walk around the streets really provide great convenience for consumers to deal with used household appliances. Regular environmental protection enterprises generally provide door-to-door service, but consumers need to call the hotline or fill in their own information in official website first, and then the enterprises will send people to collect it. There are few special recycling points in the community.
In 2006, Dell Co., Ltd. took the lead in launching waste computer recycling service in China. Zhang Sa Ding, director of corporate communication department of Dell Company, also revealed in an interview with the media: "We collect it at home, and consumers can just make a phone call. But the effect is not good. "
In this way, small vendors like Lao Teng who do electronic waste recycling occupy a huge market share of electronic waste recycling with high price and convenience. In fact, there is nothing wrong with recycling electronic waste. The key point is that the recycling of small traders will cause environmental pollution to the remaining non-high-profit parts. However, due to the lack of relevant legislation on e-waste disposal, small vendors engaged in e-waste recycling are unsupervised.
Who should pay for e-waste disposal?
Although China passed the Law on the Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution by Solid Waste in June 1995+00, the reality is not optimistic. Many enterprises are not enthusiastic and have no good preventive measures. Some people call for special legislation on electronic waste disposal, but the superficial problem of legislation is how to establish a formal electronic waste recycling channel. The key crux lies in clarifying who will pay for electronic waste disposal and the proportion of sharing the bill. For a long time before, this work was quite bumpy. Manufacturers don't want to bear a large proportion, and consumers can't be the main burden. Therefore, this legislative work has repeatedly run aground.
Internationally, the practice of sharing the cost of e-waste treatment is also very different. In Japan, consumers throw away refrigerators, not only can't get the money to sell discarded household appliances, but they also have to pay nearly 4,000 yen for electronic waste disposal, while Sweden requires that all of them be paid by manufacturers. There is a problem of changing the concept of consumption, which will be a long-term and arduous task.
The person in charge of the toxic pollution prevention project of a non-governmental environmental protection organization said that the processing cost of e-waste should be borne by the production enterprises. Electronic products enterprises are responsible for recycling their own waste products, which can give enterprises the motivation to improve product design, use less toxic substances and make products easier to upgrade and recycle. Moreover, the enterprises that design and manufacture these electronic products know their product structure and material use best, and are most suitable for recycling their waste products. It is the general trend of the electronic industry for electronic products enterprises to take full responsibility for their products until they are scrapped, and it is also the most effective means to prevent electronic waste pollution from the source.
Recently, some media reported that the "Regulations on the Management of Waste Electrical and Electronic Products Recycling" (hereinafter referred to as the "Regulations"), which has been called for many years, is expected to be promulgated in the near future. Li Hengyuan, deputy secretary general of China Environmental Protection Federation, said in an interview that as far as he knows, the problem of who will bear the governance costs has been solved. For a long time, the question of legislation has been "who will supervise", and now it is determined to be supervised by the Ministry of Environmental Protection. At present, the discussion on the Regulations has been held at the executive meeting in the State Council. In addition, the Circular Economy Promotion Law, which came into effect on June 65438+ 10/this year, is also helpful to improve the current situation of e-waste treatment.
Li Hengyuan suggested organizing and managing small vendors who recycle e-waste. Zhou Xu also mentioned that, in fact, their channels are still available.