Hightower Lowdown

Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and the other poobahs of high-techery not only like to gloat about their computer wizardry and business acumen; they also brag that theirs is a “clean industry.”

Try selling that load of crap to the people of Guiya, China, one of the hell holes that America’s high-tech execs use as a dumping ground for their electronic waste, which includes some 45 million computers that are discarded annually.

The dirty secret of the industry is that computers are loaded with toxins, and a new report called “Exporting Harm: The Techno-Trashing of Asia” reveals that these poisons cause environmental and health disasters in the places they’re dumped.

Technically, the industry says, the discarded electronics are “recycled.” In reality, poor Asians are paid a pittance to scavenge various metals and other resalable compounds out of these machines. About 100,000 people—including thousands of children—in Guiya toil amidst of piles of electronic junk, smelting circuit boards, using acid to extract trace gold, prying open print cartridges to brush toxic toner into buckets, and burning plastic components. Guiya’s groundwater is now so polluted that the people have to truck in drinking water.

There’s nothing clean about exporting toxics. For a copy of this report, call: Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition 408-287-6707.