Guiyu () is a
town
A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world.
Origin and use
The word "town" shares an ori ...
created from an agglomerate of four adjoined villages totalling 150,000 people in the
Chaoyang district of
Guangdong province in
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
.
Situated on the
South China Sea coast, Guiyu is perhaps best known in the global
environmentalist community for its reception of
e-waste. In fact, the town also holds the record for being the largest e-waste site of the world, as of 2013.
Electronic waste
Guiyu was once the largest e-waste site on earth, Regions like Guiyu rely on primitive electronics recycling as an economic staple despite the adverse effects electronic waste has on health and the environment.
The burning off of plastics in the town has resulted in 80% of its children having dangerous levels of lead in their blood.
A recent study of the area evaluated the extent of heavy metal contamination from the site. Using dust samples, scientists analysed mean heavy metal concentrations in a Guiyu workshop and found that lead and copper were 371 and 115 times higher, respectively, compared to areas located 30 kilometres away. The same study revealed that sediment from the nearby
Lianjiang River was found to be contaminated by
polychlorinated biphenyls at a level three times greater than the guideline amount.
Since 2013, local authorities moved most e-waste workshops into an experimental
industrial ecology park called the National Circular Economy Pilot Industry Park. There, toxic waste by products can be better treated and recycled. Air and water quality subsequently improved in the town, though many were still left contaminated from the remnants of e-waste processing and have not been cleaned up.
In 2005 the Italian band
Planet Funk
Planet Funk is an Italian electronic band. The group is composed of Marco Baroni, Domenico "GG" Calipari, Alex Neri, Dan Black and formerly Sergio Della Monica who died in February 2018. In addition a number of guest vocalists joined the group, i ...
shot and published the music video for their song "Stop Me" in which Guiyu and its e-waste environment are portrayed.
See also
*
Agbogbloshie (electronic waste site in Ghana)
*
Dali Town,
Foshan
Foshan (, ), alternately romanized as Fatshan, is a prefecture-level city in central Guangdong Province, China. The entire prefecture covers and had a population of 9,498,863 as of the 2020 census. The city is part of the western side of the ...
another E-waste processing town in China.
*Longtang Town,
Qingcheng District,
Qingyuan another E-waste processing town in China.
References
{{Reflist, 2
External links
Images of e-waste
Shantou