This just makes me really SICK

On Mon, 26 Jan 2004, Marvin Johnston wrote: Yes, and this would still be going on were it not for the reporter that traveled to China and took photographs of streams piled with waste and little bare-footed kids picking parts out of scary looking electronic scrap (lots of sharp edges). It still goes on of course, but to much less of a degree since new laws were passed barring any scrap electronics from being shipped overseas (at least here in California, and at least as long as the various recyclers are willing to play by the rules). The ACCRC, for example, used to use middlemen who were shipping the stuff to China until that article hit (and in their defense, they had no idea this was going on, same with 99% of the recyclers out there). Now they audit every plant that they send scrap to and, per California regulations, nothing they send out leaves the United States. Everything is processed with recyclers that do the refining within the borders of the US, preferbly within the state itself. Yes, environmental regulations are often onerous, sometimes contradictory, many times ineffective, but the problem is not the laws being passed but the people passing them and the lobbyists working on behalf of the gross polluters who are not interested in maintaining sensible and ethical practices but are after the almighty dollar so that rich people can become obscenely rich. The laws are a result of a broken process. Sorry, there I got being a far-left-leaning liberal bitch again. -- Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org [ Old computing resources for business || Buy/Sell/Trade Vintage Computers ] [ and academia at www.VintageTech.com || at http://marketplace.vintage.org ]