Guiyu () is a

town A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city. The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...

created from an agglomerate of four adjoined villages totalling 150,000 people in the Chaoyang district of

Guangdong ) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...

province in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. Situated on the

South China Sea The South China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean. It is bounded in the north by South China, in the west by the Indochinese Peninsula, in the east by the islands of Taiwan island, Taiwan and northwestern Philippines (mainly Luz ...

coast, Guiyu is perhaps best known in the global

environmentalist Environmentalism is a broad Philosophy of life, philosophy, ideology, and social movement about supporting life, habitats, and surroundings. While environmentalism focuses more on the environmental and nature-related aspects of Green politics, g ...

community for its reception of

e-waste Electronic waste (or e-waste) describes discarded electrical or electronic devices. It is also commonly known as waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) or end-of-life (EOL) electronics. Used electronics which are destined for refurbi ...

. The town holds the record for being the largest e-waste site of the world, as of 2013.

Electronic waste

Guiyu was once the largest

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 released 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 biphenyl Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are organochlorine compounds with the formula Carbon, C12Hydrogen, H10−''x''Chloride, Cl''x''; they were once widely used in the manufacture of carbonless copy paper, as heat transfer fluids, and as dielectri ...

s at a level three times greater than the amount prescribed in the guideline. Since 2013, local authorities had moved most e-waste workshops into an experimental

industrial ecology Industrial ecology (IE) is the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems. The global industrial economy can be modelled as a network of industrial processes that extract resources from the Earth and transform those resource ...

park called the National Circular Economy Pilot Industry Park. There, toxic waste by products can be treated and recycled with better efficiency. 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 music, electronic band. The group is composed of Marco Baroni, Alex Neri, Dan Black, and formerly Sergio Della Monica and Domenico "Gigi" Canu. In addition a number of guest vocalists joined the group, includ ...

shot and published the music video for their song "Stop Me" in which Guiyu and its e-waste environment are portrayed.

References

{{Reflist, 2

External links

Images of e-waste
Shantou Electronic waste in China

Electronic waste

See also

References

External links