by Device Type
by Starting Region
by Ending Region
Highlights
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.”
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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
Jim Puckett
Eric Hopson
Monica Huang
Angelo Godbey
Hayley Palmer
David Joseph
Colin Groark
Graham Kaplan
Sylvan McFarland
e-Recycling of California
Richard Howlett
Eugene Lee
Monitour is a non-commercial application built with Mapbox, jQuery and D3.js.
Tracker ID
E234243223
Travel Distance
22883
km
Travel Duration
223
days
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Discovering previously unknown international electronic waste
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Optimized for Chrome/SafariLarge 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….