Japan's recycling technology is so high that they dissolve circuit boards, can separate all kinds of metals, and can even refine gold nuggets weighing up to 13 kilograms. But their labor is too high, making it unprofitable, and the Japanese government needs to subsidize the recycling industry. But why not sell your garbage to China and get paid on top of the subsidy fee you save?
But on the Chinese side the money is being made entirely on the environment and the health of the workers. The conditions in the factories in Guangzhou, China, are much worse than in the recycling of plastic bottles. As for recycling IC circuit boards it's even more exaggerated, on the mainland side it's all small family workshop work, using fire (melted lead?) to melt the circuit boards, and pliers to make the boards. The circuit boards are melted, and the electronic components are pulled off with pliers. In the corresponding factories in Japan, the staff work with gas masks, while Chinese workers rely on electric fans to blow away the toxic gases emitted by burning circuit boards. And the final discarded circuit boards cause serious pollution.
The film mentions some figures. The price of a kilogram of scrap plastic is 20 yen. The price for acquiring 1,000 tons of scrap metal is 30 million yen, and the final recycled metal is worth 33 million yen. After deducting transportation costs and labor costs, the profit margin is actually quite low. However, one of their factories has an annual turnover of 1 billion yen, and it is entirely profitable by the scale effect. But given the environmental costs, the bigger the scale, the bigger the losses.
And shockingly, in the end, the Chinese businessmen even want the garbage that the Japanese dig out of landfills that have already been filled with landfill, so disgusting. I am completely speechless.
Some information:
China Becomes America's Garbage Dump: Garbage is now the third-largest U.S. export to China, behind only airplanes and semiconductors and ahead of soybeans and computers. China has become the largest importer of U.S. garbage, with 23 percent of the $5.2 billion in garbage and scrap exported from the U.S. each year being exported to China.
Investigation into imported garbage: Britain dumps 1.9 million tons of garbage into China every year: According to the South East Express, China sends ￡16 billion worth of goods to Britain every year. However, in return, the UK sends a record 1.9 million tons of garbage to China by cargo ship every year. In just eight years, the amount of garbage sent from the UK to China has risen 158 times!
China has a demand for foreign garbage that can be recycled and reused, so there's no way around it. But there are standards for utilizing waste, and medical waste is not allowed to be recycled because it may contain pathogens. (Today's Voice of China reported exclusively on an incident in Henan province in which plastics from medical waste were used to make mineral water bottles.