Turn back the e-waste tide: pressure to stop flood of toxic imports from US to Hong Kong

Environmental officials in Hong Kong and the United States are coming under increasing pressure to stem a growing tide of potentially lethal electronic waste entering the city amid fears it could replace Guangdong province as the dumping ground of choice for the global digital economy.

Months after campaigners against electronic waste handed the Environmental Protection Department a list of dump sites in the New Territories, the Sunday Morning Post has discovered that most of them are still operating.

The 10 sites were identified by the US environmental watchdog Basel Action Network in May after hazardous materials were tracked using special GPS satellite trackers planted in shipping containers leaving the US.

Clustered in Yuen Long – some of them close to livestock and arable farming – the dump sites, which also serve as wrecking and salvaging yards for computer parts, LCD monitors and an assortment of potentially hazardous material, were visited by the Post late last month (see accompanying story below).

We found evidence to corroborate the network’s contention that much of the material had been imported from the US – the world’s biggest exporter of electronic waste.