Circling back on e-waste

Between March and June, the Malaysian government seized over 100 shipping containers full of electronic waste illegally sent from the US and other developed countries. Malaysian authorities also recently found a large e-waste dismantling factory hidden deep inside an oil palm estate , labored by illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, Myanmar, China, and Nepal. In a press release , the executive director of Seattle-based Basel Action Network (BAN), a waste trade watchdog, likens attempts to quash the illegal deeds to the game Whac-a-Mole. China, Malaysia, Thailand, and others have banned the import of e-waste from higher-income countries. But illegal traders find ways to dodge the hammer. Sadly, nothing about this is new. BAN takes its name from the United Nations' 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, an international treaty designed to restrict the movement of hazardous waste between countries. BAN first reported