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(Image: Kai Loeffelbein/Laif/Camera Press)

THERE is an air of contentment about the scene, of a responsible job proudly and diligently done. Yet these women in Guiyu, a cluster of villages on the south China coast, are doing some of the world’s dirtiest work: recycling electronic waste.

Laptops, smartphones, microwaves and fridges contain a cocktail of valuable elements in their circuits and casings, among them copper, gold, silver and lead (see “The materials bonanza“). It’s bounty enough to keep an estimated 3000 workshops in Guiyu busy, extracting the raw materials to sell on.

Much of the e-waste is the product of China’s domestic electronics boom, with over . But shipments from the US, Australia and Europe regularly circumvent an import ban instituted in 2000.

The cost to the environment and human health is high: run-off from acid baths used to strip out metals has entered watercourses, while burning off plastics has fouled the air. Neurotoxic PCBs have , and children in the area have .

Since 2007, a UN initiative called StEP – – has coordinated efforts to stem the flow of e-waste by encouraging manufacturers to remove the most harmful chemicals from their products and creating and maintaining more formal recycling streams. Too late, perhaps, for the ladies of Guiyu.

Leader: “We can have more stuff without the guilt trip“

This article appeared in print under the headline “Waste not, want not”