Five years after California launched an ambitious effort to control pollution from electronic waste, much of our e-waste is being shipped overseas, where it is contributing to a legacy of pollution and disease that would not be tolerated in this state, a Bee investigation has found.
Domestically, California's program is doing just what officials intended: It has outlawed e-waste from landfills and jump-started a multimillion-dollar state industry to recycle televisions, computer monitors and other video display devices, paid for with public money.
But there is a blind spot: The program provides no money for anything else, meaning large volumes of low-value, hazardous electronic waste that are difficult to recycle at a profit in California are instead being exported, a consequence the state did not anticipate.
Much of it is flowing to developing nations where it is picked apart by workers exposed to a high-tech cocktail of contamination.
"Most people just don't know what's happening to their material when it's dropped off," said Taggart, one of the state's leading e-waste recyclers. "If they knew, they wouldn't be dropping it off."
Hurricane Beryl was unusual in many ways before it struck Texas on 8 July – it...
Oregon’s wildfire season is off to an explosive start with more than 1m acres (405,000 hectares)...
The largest wildfire to break out in the West this summer continued its explosive growth Friday...
