The Primary Causes Of Electronic Waste

This paper will discuss what e-waste is, what is happening to the e-waste and why it is a problem. The paper will then discuss what can be done to improve the situation.

Electronics Recycling. Electronic recycling is one consideration the company can do better with. Recycling in general lowers greenhouse gas emissions that are caused by manufacturing items for the first time. Recycling electronics conserves natural resources making cleaner air and water. The valuable resources computers and electronic components carry are metals, plastics, and glass. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), recycling a million laptops would give back enough energy for 3500 American homes’ electricity. A million cell phones would could yield 35,000 pounds of copper, 772 pounds of silver, 75 pounds of gold, and 33 pounds of palladium. Instead of throwing out the old computers and blackberry’s, the company could simply upgrade the hardware or software and then recycle the parts necessary.

E-waste or electronic waste is the number 1 fastest growing trash in the united states since 2004. E-waste is made up of lead, mercury, , and caldium. All of these Acids are deadly to the human body. Alex lin and many other teen activists work with these acids every day. Also, These activists are trying to stop these deadly acid from seeking into the ground and killing natural resources. These acids can also get into the water systems and harm people. When you get a new electronic you would most likely through it out in the TRASH, but you should recycle old electronics. According to the Electronic recycling 101 article, 3 million tons of electronic are trough out and only 13.6 of them are recycled. This shows that many people are unaware of

As used electronics is becoming a waster hazard worldwide local governments such as where I live include programs at local waste stations purely for electronics. This encourages local residents to freely drop off their electronic waste, like TV’s and computers and mobile phones to these locations where the waste is sorted and than shipped to facilities that can process this waste appropriately which also includes recycling as much material as possible. This has a

It has become the new “norm” with people to replace their electronics because their devices become out of date or they feel like they have to have the latest thing. In the article “Our E-Waste Problem Is Ridiculous, And Gadget Makers Aren’t Helping,” by Christina Bonnington, the author discusses how people buy new electronics every year when they come out and the old ones get abandoned. She also talks about how many people aren’t properly recycling their old devices and how some electronics can be impossible to recycle the right way. She also talks

In the Article, “Alex Lin, Teen Activist,” Lin states, “When improperly disposed of—i.e. dumping, burning, etc.—these chemicals can seep into the surrounding environment, harming humans, crops, and ecosystems. With the advent of the computer in the 1970s, electronics use has increased exponentially, bringing with it ever-increasing amounts of waste. In the majority of the world, this waste is improperly disposed of, resulting in untold damage to the environment.” As you can see, by improving our world speaking out against electronic waste, Alex Lin has made himself known as a

In her essay, “The Story of Stuff: Electronics”, Annie Leonard discusses certain technology manufacturing processes, and the growing ecological problems of technological “e-waste” that they cause.

Alex Lin was one teen activist who saw a problem in e-waste.He was reading an article from the wall street journal, and he saw that there was an e-waste tsunami to come. In the article, it said that Americans discarded more than 112,000 computers daily, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.Even worse, just 18 percent of discarded televisions and computer products were collected for recycling.To stop this he created team W.I.N, {Westerly Innovations Network}.He worked with Metech International to hold a recycling program for e-waste and they collected 21,000 pounds of E-Waste.Then his team saw that it was easier to refurbish the electronics than to recycle them.He worked with his school district to put refurbishing

Technology is always changing and more than ten million tons of electronics are made each year. Each changing how the world and people think every single day. Multimedia has revolutionized the way from how we produce movies to making a home cooked meal, but there is also a bad side of multimedia. In Australia 1.6 million computers are thrown away, 1.8 million are in storage and 5.3 million are just sitting unused on shelves and gathering dust. In 2007, 26.9 million TV’s were thrown away and only 6.3 million of them were recycled.

Eilperin describes the electronic waste, or e-waste as she dubs it, with aplomb. She especially pays attention to how the exportation of electronic waste from the United States to Asian countries affects their communities and environment. In my estimation, like many of the other articles she aims to educate and warn her audience of the danger looming on the horizon if society does not take action. Her audience should come from the article with an idea of how their habits with electronics can damage others half a world away and pose a threat to their environment here at home. This source was found through a search for electronic waste, global and asia on National Newspaper Core.

The pamphlet "Australia's e-waste a ticking time bomb", distributed by an unnamed environmental organisation, serves as both a warning to its readers as well as a useful informative resource on the topic of 'e-waste' - that is, unused technology that has become landfill. The writer adopts an informative yet cautionary tone in an attempt to show readers the urgency with which the problem needs to be addressed. They contend that Australians should aim not to remove technology from their lives altogether, but to seek out ways to be more sustainable users of it. By appealing to readers' concern for the environment and revealing the risks for their own health, the writer seeks to establish fear and, as a result a desire to reduce their own personal

People of the world today are unaware that electronics are a lot more dangerous than they are led to believe. There are hidden dangers that are not understandable until now. Some might agree or disagree with my idea of attack on electronic devices of today. The use of electronic devices should be revamped for health and safety reasons such as cancer risks, traffic accidents, and security purpose.

In 2002, the Basel Action Network (BAN) along with the SVTC released a groundbreaking, heartrending investigation called Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia [PDF].

Now consumers are not supplied with enough opportunities for a proper disposal of e-waste, i.e. recycling management is not sufficiently developed. Consequently, instead of being recycled a growing number of end-of-life electronics with a variety of hazardous components such as lead, mercury set in their structure is turned out to be simply dumped in landfills or incinerated, which substantially exposes the whole environment to a serious problem of contamination with toxins. For example, ‘milligrams of mercury that are used in LCDs structure, can be so toxic that as little as one gram of airborne mercury deposited per year to a 20-acre lake is enough to maintain mercury contamination at a level where the fish are unsafe to eat’. (Takeback coalition, 2009) Besides, such placement of toxic e-waste in landfills leads to expansion of different human health problems such as ‘elevated risks of cancer and developmental and neurological disorders’. (Binns, 2006) Mercury can serve as a glare example as even in a small dosage it is very toxic and may bring about brain and kidney damage. In 2000 the National Academy of Sciences stated in its report that as mercury is able to be passed through breast milk, each year there are approximately

The production and circulation of electronic waste is a highly politicized and complex issue which highlights the conflicts and tensions between jobs and the environment. There are debates surrounding governance decisions and global economic linkages which approach the disposal of e-waste from two different stand points. One view is that the first world is making an unethical political decision to send its e-waste problem to pollution havens i.e. third-world countries with less stringent environmental standards. Electronic goods consist of highly toxic substances such as lead, chromium, mercury, and brominated-flame retardants, therefore when they are disposed of in an uncontrolled and risky low-cost manner such as in informal sectors they can cause major issues to both human and environmental health (Pickren, 2013). The root of this cause is linked to the asymmetrical relationships of power and the unsustainability of the current social, economic, cultural, and political movement. The decision to send e-waste ‘out of sight and out of mind’ is highly politicized and based around issues of power and control. However, another view is that north-south flows can be beneficial to informal e-waste economies and has been observed to be creating new economic settlements in third world countries in which livelihoods depend on re-using and re-pairing e-waste and selling them within the community.