Exported Waste Asia

                                                                        


                                                                      EXPORTED WASTE

The third world countries have been recipients of these commodities for more than three decades now. These are the junks of more advanced countries that are mostly sold and shipped to countries like the Philippines. Commonly exported junks are used computers and television sets, old cargo trucks and tractor heads, old cars and vans, used engines, used heavy & construction equipments like excavator/loaders, loaders, dozers and cranes, really old junk cargo ships and self-propelled barges, and near expiring medicines.                                                                                                                                                                             Unaware of toxic effects, or simply myopic, the government has allowed unabated entry of such goods into the country for so long. Some however, are smuggled through different ports by unscrupulous traders.                                                                                                                                                                                                                These oldies (televisions & computers) are very saleable and normally end up in garbage piles. More often than not, those used engines that repowered cars and buses and trucks are heavy polluters carbonizing both the highways and lungs of the daily commuters. The other oldies are deployed in the cities and provinces spewing carbon dioxide and leaking engine oil to the ground, and rivers & bays. Junk cargo ships are good source of scrap metals, plastics, wood, etc., for recycling into deformed bars, copper bars, aluminum and cast iron. However, these ships are also laden with asbestos, acids, nitrates, and other toxic chemicals. Ordinary workers and welders chop them into pieces and those harmful materials are ditched on the ground. One worst pollutant that most people are unaware of is the expired medicines that get to the dumps and waterways.                                                                                                        Those countries made huge profits while they moved their garbage next door, but the ecological damage is global and certainly, will also be in their backyard.
 Poor recipients, not only are they choking due to toxic waste, they are limping too, because their factories that used to manufacture those products had all shut down.
wilfred                                                                                                                                                                                     9/30/09