Enormous Rare Earth Toxic Waste Pond

The production of "rare earth" materials (which interestingly are actually very often not "rare" at all) requires large amounts of highly toxic chemicals, which end up being waste material. It is largely for this reason, that "rare earth" materials such as both neodymium and cerium are produced in China, which does not follow sound environmental policy.

This dystopian (or maybe objectivist utopia) landscape that is an enormous pond outside of Baotou in Inner Mongolia is one of the largest (if no the largest) toxic waste pond in the world. This area is known as the Baogang Steel and Rare Earth complex.

The Western world is able to produce most of what we use, including rare earth minerals, without creating toxic sludge lakes. The only reason we send all of these industries to China is to because their lax environmental and labor laws allow cheaper production, and thus higher profit margins. Our modern lives don't depend on utterly screwing up our environment, but ridiculous executive pay and concentration of wealth at the top benefit greatly from it. Studies (which I'm too lazy to look up, but I'm sure others can find easily) show that it doesn't cost that much more to make goods in the US and Europe, labor and environmental regulations and all. The outsourcing of manufacturing hasn't even significantly dropped retail prices much, though profit margins (and net profits) are at record highs across most industries.