Chinese SDTV Graveyard
The Chinese greedily, or perhaps wisely, recycle everything they can from electronic junk. There’s lots of gold, copper and other precious metals on them there circuitboards, and the Chinese are busy extracting those valuable materials for reuse or in some cases, personal gain.
On the flip side, there is much more lead solder, mercury, phosphorous, cadmium, and other dangerous materials that would make such a large scale operation, like the one pictured, ecologically illegal here in the states.
I found the photo here at Engadget, where someone in the comments asked if anyone had ever seen such a thing? Well, I had. When I got started in the computer repair industry, I used to work in old storage facilities that were stacked floor to ceiling with old outdated CRTs- many of them either black and white or monochrome, or at best, supporting to 256 colors. And those old storage facilities? They weren’t any fancy schmancy warehouse, nosiree. They were old foreclosed homes scattered across the Hampton, VA Peninsula, with no electricity, no heat, and one I remember was completely infested with roaches. It was like I was working for a technology hoarder. And HRCC is shockingly, still in business.
And the Chinese even recycle old keyboards too.
I see trees and grass growing around the facility, so its obviously not that hazardous to the environment. I guess its safer in a landfill here in the US or like you said
, stockpiled in abandoned homes. Environmentalism in the US is such a joke.
Actually, I meant the extraction process of the precious metals being the dangerous part ecologically. Stockpiling it is just step one.
I bet the big blue facility in the back is a preliminary processing warehouse where they break down the components- separate plastic from circuitry prior to the de-soldering processes.