Services
May 25, 2012
Did you know that Americans discard approximately 200,000 computers per day? That’s a staggering amount of e-waste. And if that numbe
r doesn’t give you pause, consider this: Because of a lack of national oversight of e-waste disposal, only 30% of it is accounted for. That’s right. No one really knows where 70% of the e-waste is going – it could be in people’s attics, in landfills, or exported.
Exportation of e-waste is also a growing concern. A lot of it is put in containers and shipped abroad to developing countries, particularly China, India, and more recently Latin America and Western Africa – countries that are not technically or administratively structured to receive these potentially dangerous materials. Electronic waste contains extremely toxic material like lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, and polyvinyl chlorides. These can produce a range of harmful effects including brain damage (particularly in children), cancer, and kidney disease.
There is currently a bill that has bipartisan support in Congress prohibiting the export of e-waste to developing countries – it just needs to be passed to stop the trade. In the meantime, Casey Harrell, international electronics campaigner for Greenpeace, says the recycling process needs to be made more accessible for the general public. “What we know is that if we make collection inconvenient, meaning if you have to drive or take your electronic product – which is easy for a cellphone but more difficult with a flat-screen TV – somewhere but not having it picked up, the percentage of products that do get collected are quite small,” Harrell said.
He says for recycling to really work it has to be “free, convenient, and easy” – that is, easy for people to understand what can be recycled and what cannot.
Categorias: Services
Tags: e-waste recycling,
