by Device Type

    CRT

    LCD

    Printer

by Starting Region

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by Ending Region

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TRACKING E-WASTE ACROSS THE WORLD

A joint project between the Basel Action Network (BAN) and the MIT Senseable City Lab has led to the discovery of previously unknown international electronic waste routes departing from the United States.

Printer, and LCD and CRT monitors were embedded with GPS trackers capable of remotely reporting their location from overseas locations. These trackers were then delivered to recyclers and charities around the country. 65 of the first 200 trackers deilvered as part of the Monitour/e-Trash Transparency Project went offshore, mostly to Asia. On-the-ground investigations in Asia by BAN produced a clearer picture of these trade routes. Results of this study can be found here on this site in graphic form and will also be released in a series of reports by BAN. These can be found at: www.ban.org/trash-transparency.

While legitimate e-waste recycling helps reduce landfill contamination and raw material extraction, the export of hazardous electronic waste is most often illegal trade under the Basel Convention and moreover, the management of toxic electronic waste in the informal sector damages human health and the environment. The Monitour/e-Trash Transparency Project demonstrates how relatively new technology can generate unique data needed by civil society, law enforcement and enterprises to better track what until now have been hidden flows.

Since the time of our experiment, the UN Organization on Drugs and Crime has confirmed that the Mong Cai border is a primary corridor for e-waste flowing from the US and EU into China, part of an estimated US $3.75 billion market for illegal e-waste.

“Note: The geographic coordinates for many points have been temporarily reduced in precision to obscure exact locations while investigations by BAN and government entities are pending.”

Next

SENSEable City Lab :.::

Carlo Ratti - Director

Assaf Biderman - Concept & Supervision

Dietmar Offenhuber - Project Lead

David Lee - Project Lead

Fábio Duarte - Project Lead

Brandon Nadres - Deployment

David Perez - Deployment

James Simard - Deployment

Mark Yen - Hardware research

Weng Hong Teh - Hardware research

Wenzhe Peng - Visualization

Youjin Shin - Visualization

Chaewon Ahn - Web Design

Paul Bouisset - Web Design

Wonyoung So - Web Design

Basel Action Network

Jim Puckett

Eric Hopson

Monica Huang

Angelo Godbey

Hayley Palmer

David Joseph

Colin Groark

Graham Kaplan

Sylvan McFarland

Special thanks to

e-Recycling of California

Richard Howlett

Eugene Lee

Software Licenses

Monitour is a non-commercial application built with Mapbox, jQuery and D3.js.


The application is served by BAN and MIT.

Tracker ID

E234243223

Travel Distance

22883

km

Travel Duration

223

days

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Discovering previously unknown international electronic waste

routes.

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Large amounts of electronic equipment are dumped around the world each day. These devices contain toxic materials.

To expose this harmful practice, we installed GPS trackers in electronic waste and dropped them off at a variety of recyclers and charities around the United States.

Now let’s explore where your e-waste has been going….