In many parts of the world, electric waste is shipped to locations far away from their origin.
It has just been announced that a huge new recycling centre will be built in China to recycle waste from Russia and North Korea. The centre will be in a city that borders the two countries and each year is expected to recycle nearly three million tonnes of scrap machines, old appliances, old vehicles, cables, devices such as mobile phones, batteries, plastics and other waste.
The recycling centre has been approved in Hunchun City by Northeast China’s Jilin Province. It will cover 135 hectares of land and the combined floor space of the facility will be over 500,000 square meters.
A spokesman from publicity department of Hunchun City Government says that the recycling project is expected to create nearly 10,000 jobs, and when it is operational its annual output value will reach 15 billion yuan (US$2.21 billion).
Recycling centres are good news for mobile phone recycling. The more specialised centres there are worldwide, the better the change of old mobiles being recycled and disposed of responsibly, rather than being sent to landfill and leading to toxic waste.