E-Waste And The Environment

If you haven’t caught on yet, this entire week will be dedicated to Environmental health. I’m not talking about how healthy your home is; I’m talking about the Earth. Wednesday is Earth Day and I’ve decided to write something everyday to talk about environmental risks and such.

Image: Newscom

Shortly after I quit my full time job to start blogging, I wrote an article on E-waste and RoHS (Restriction OF Hazardous Substance ). RoHS is a directive put in to place in 2003 and went effective in 2006. It’s a process of restricting hazardous substance in the manufacturing of goods and products. There are 4 main substances that are restricted to very low levels. This substance are heavy metals such as Lead , Hexavalent Chromium , Mercury and Cadmium . All of these were widely used in manufacturing of electronics for a long time and the e-waste (electronics waste) has been piling up for years, a lot of which contain the 4 heavy metals that can cause cancer and other health problems.

While the production of electronic goods isn’t really slowing any, the electronics of the past and obsolete is taking it’s toll on the environment. According to a report by Electronicstakeback.com , the world’s population disposes of 20 to 50 million metric tons of e-waste each year and only about 11.4% of that get’s recycled.

That is just a phenomenal amount of waste considering that most of it is old hardware that contains lead, mercury and cadmium. Television sets, computer monitors, circuit boards, batteries, you name it. Sadly a lot of E-waste get’s sent overseas to countries such as China , India , Malaysia, Kenya and various other African countries where it either sits or poor communities work to dismantle it for recycling and disposal, not knowing the health risks that they are taking by handling a lot of this waste. It’s not being sent there legally either.

A lot of people think they are doing their part by recycling but what is really happening, as stated above, is that it’s being sent elsewhere for people, sometimes children, to dismantle it for a few dollars a day. The toxins may leak from the E-waste and contaminate the air, water and even food supply. A lot of times parts are burned to extract the metallic waste and even gold used in the product. The burning of these products wreaks havoc on the air quality that is already terrible. Here are a couple of links to read more about this issue.

:60 Minutes Follows the E-waste Trail To China

USAToday: Don’t Recycle E-Waste With Haste

Earth911.com offers some tips on Proper Disposal And Recycling Of E-Waste with manufacturer, retailer specific programs as well as cell phone recycling and donation.

Here is a Greenpeace video that briefly shows you where some E-waste is going. Now before you write off Greenpeace as a bunch of radical environmentalist, watch the video. It’s real. We’re creating a toxic dump site wherever we can and it’s not only killing the planet, but it’s killing the human race as well.