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News & ArtsThursday, December 8, 2011
Enviro / International Recycled U.S. Batteries Are Polluting Mexico
Posted by Brendan Kiley on Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 4:00 PM
Jesus Christ—can't we do anything right?
NAUCALPAN DE JUÁREZ, Mexico — The spent batteries Americans turn in for recycling are increasingly being sent to Mexico, where their lead is often extracted by crude methods that are illegal in the United States, exposing plant workers and local residents to dangerous levels of a toxic metal.
The rising flow of batteries is a result of strict new Environmental Protection Agency standards on lead pollution, which make domestic recycling more difficult and expensive, but do not prohibit companies from exporting the work and the danger to countries where standards are low and enforcement is lax.
1
brendan. the answer to your question is no. we cannot do anything right. our motivations are 100% wrong as a society, so everything we do just makes things worse. bummer of a realization, but the truth of the world we live in.
2
This reminds me of the recent kerfuffle over horse-slaughtering for food, which was banned in the US by activists, which only meant that the horses were shipped to Mexico to be slaughtered there instead -- meaning that not only did the animals still suffer the indignity of being slaughtered, but now they got a very uncomfortable 2,000-mile ride in a boiling hot truck first.
3
Cool.
Much better than shipping them over to kill kids in China, Tibet, or India instead, using massively dirty bunker fuel to transport them with.
What? You thought recycling was pretty?
Next thing you know you'll think coal mining or nuclear fissile material mining or any other mining is pretty ...
Much better than shipping them over to kill kids in China, Tibet, or India instead, using massively dirty bunker fuel to transport them with.
What? You thought recycling was pretty?
Next thing you know you'll think coal mining or nuclear fissile material mining or any other mining is pretty ...
5
"Free market" has become nothing but a euphemism for "net exporter of suffering."
@4, yes, they're doing it wrong because we don't pay them enough to be able to do it right, but if they don't do it anyway, they don't get paid at all; and because their labor and environmental regulatory standards are laughable.
@4, yes, they're doing it wrong because we don't pay them enough to be able to do it right, but if they don't do it anyway, they don't get paid at all; and because their labor and environmental regulatory standards are laughable.
7
@2 my favorite part of the horse slaughter debate, was the claim that it was a jobs initiative... 'well, we can slaughter horses in the united states now, i guess we can cancel extended unemployment benefits.'
8
Seems to me that were better off dumping electronics into a local landfill. At least we know 10 year olds wont be trying to extract what precious metals are found in them using little or no protection.
10
Now, I realize you guys will use any excuse to hate on America, but I've got to agree with @4 here. The Mexicans are the ones fucking up here.
11
Wait until all those Volts and Leafs have to have their 900 lb batteries replaced after 80,000 miles.
12
@5 better than putting radioactive iodine in our milk supply here.
Sorry, mining and recycling is NOT pretty. Grow up.
Sorry, mining and recycling is NOT pretty. Grow up.
13
But this does bring up the correct point:
Why do none of the WTO "free trade" agreements or NAFTA trade agreements have stronger Pollution, Labor, and Environmental restrictions in them?
See, that's the big problem.
Why do none of the WTO "free trade" agreements or NAFTA trade agreements have stronger Pollution, Labor, and Environmental restrictions in them?
See, that's the big problem.
14
yeah, thanks NAFTA for sending this shit south, along with our jobs, instead of figuring out any way to protect jobs here or poor people anywhere.
image from that EPA DOCUMERICA: Images of America in Crisis in the 1970's. captioned "Smoke and gas from the burning of discarded automobile batteries pours into the sky near Houston, Texas, in July 1972.
image from that EPA DOCUMERICA: Images of America in Crisis in the 1970's. captioned "Smoke and gas from the burning of discarded automobile batteries pours into the sky near Houston, Texas, in July 1972.
15
i know sloggers have a pragmatic thing going, but im really looking forward to sending our trash to space, to a special designated trash planet. please dear god lets all agree it would be awesome to litter in space
16
If the far right have their way and gut the EPA, the cheaper, more toxic extraction can be done in the USA by Americans. That wil increase employment and save on transport costs. Another upside is that less gas will be consumed in shipping, extraction centers can be local.
17
Lead-acid car batteries are largely made in Mexico due to laxer regulations, why wouldn't they send the used ones there to be recycled for the same reason. The guys at the auto parts stores tell me that the new batteries have recycled materials, so maybe some of the lead sent to Mexico and recycled in a non-environmentally friendly way gets into the new batteries that don't last. Sort of a vicious cycle.
18
Maybe we should go back to cranks, very steampunk, provide exercise, and a crank does not run down if you leave your dome light on.
19
For the first time, a draft EPA report links chemicals used in "fracking" natural-gas extraction to pollution of drinking water:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011…
Yeah, duh. Took them long enough. Fracking is thoroughly established at many locations across the U.S. now, with tons of witches-brew chemicals being injected underground and Americans happily inviting gas companies into their back yards (literally) for a few bucks.
This makes me absolutely nuts. Mark my words, this will make the Love Canals and other environmental disasters of the last century look like chocolate milk spilled on linoleum—massive pollution of precious groundwater and all kinds of bizarre health problems, with NO WAY to clean it up except eons of time.
At least we still have an EPA, right? For now. What do they do again, exactly?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011…
Yeah, duh. Took them long enough. Fracking is thoroughly established at many locations across the U.S. now, with tons of witches-brew chemicals being injected underground and Americans happily inviting gas companies into their back yards (literally) for a few bucks.
This makes me absolutely nuts. Mark my words, this will make the Love Canals and other environmental disasters of the last century look like chocolate milk spilled on linoleum—massive pollution of precious groundwater and all kinds of bizarre health problems, with NO WAY to clean it up except eons of time.
At least we still have an EPA, right? For now. What do they do again, exactly?
20
rob! Thank You. These corps are portraying their methods of extraction are soooo safe w/out any real oversight.
21
@8 I'm with you: toss the damn things in the garbage. I do.
...as soon as they started sending separate garbage trucks around to collect recycling and yard waste (doubling the amount of heavy diesel engine use in our city, increasing wear & tear on the roads, dripping twice as much oils and trash-juice through the streets), I knew we were going to be fucked and fucked hard by the whole 'recycling industry', in the largescope (rather than minutea-philia) environmental-wellness sense.
And yes, mexico is also not doing right. It's be nice if all the nations of the world were smart, rich and caring. None of us are though, especially in this hemisphere, so fawking deal.
...as soon as they started sending separate garbage trucks around to collect recycling and yard waste (doubling the amount of heavy diesel engine use in our city, increasing wear & tear on the roads, dripping twice as much oils and trash-juice through the streets), I knew we were going to be fucked and fucked hard by the whole 'recycling industry', in the largescope (rather than minutea-philia) environmental-wellness sense.
And yes, mexico is also not doing right. It's be nice if all the nations of the world were smart, rich and caring. None of us are though, especially in this hemisphere, so fawking deal.
22
I love how we think we can send our problems to Mexico. We're such a racist load of shit sometimes. But the problems always find their way back here some ways. Sigh. I suppose once the Republicans start their new campaign of "deregulation" (all the other disasters were from Republican deregulation schemes) we'll start seeing China's garbage finding it's way here.
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