Electronic Scrap in Afghanistan
Vocab level: B2
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In a workshop filled with TVs, computers, and cell phones,
these electronics are only as useful as what's found inside them.
Workers break them apart using pliers or their bare hands,
searching for gold in their circuit boards.
Once the metal is extracted, the micrograms are accumulated and stripped with acid.
It's a job both tedious and risky.
Those in wealthier nations often rely on technology with better safeguards for the same process.
"It takes a long time to dismantle everything."
"We don't have the necessary machinery, and we don't have much equipment."
"We don't have much acid, which we bring in from Pakistan,"
"so we can't extract anything except the gold, not even the silver."
The men make a typical salary for Afghanistan,
around 166 US dollars a month in this workshop, the owner says.
But while profitable for some, the future of the trade is bleak.
According to workers, more and more electronics are being produced with cheaper metals,
slowly diminishing the amount of gold to be extracted from new items.
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