E-Waste (Electronic Waste) is becoming a huge problem throughout the world. We as American produce the most E-waste as we dispose of and attempt to recycle our outdated and obsolete electronics. Much of this out-dated product has toxic materials such as heavy metals like lead, Mercury, Cadmium and Hexavalent chromium.

Image: Newscom

I wrote a short article on E-Waste yesterday at Blisstree Men’s Health. Here is a short excerpt and if you have a moment, head on over to the original article and give it a read. There is also a video about America sending it’s E-Waste to third world countries for recycling and the conditions that the people that are recycling the material in are not exactly healthy.

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’srecycled.

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.

Think about it next time you go to throw away a TV, motherboard or hard drive…

Post from: EveryJoe

E-Waste, An Ever Growing Problem

I had been opinionated about using push buttons and organizing program files, worried about the rising types of blog fraud and spam mail, conscious about the precautions to be taken in a cyber cafe and disposing e-waste responsibly, sad about the layoffs and the Mumbai attacks, and excited about the Ancient Rome 3D and the LIFE photo archive projects. I also began an ongoing series on Cygwin: pre-introduction, introduction, installation. For all the things in between, refer the November archives.

I thank the readers for stopping by here, the fellow bloggers for link love, the spammers for spam that couldn’t be caught by Akismet, and the fraud bloggers for blog clones. Or not.

Looking forward to a better blogging experience this December.

Post from: EveryJoe

November Month in Retrospect

A laptop that served you, that kept with you in good times and bad, deserves a good send off. If not a wake, a private “I will miss you” would be nice. The riddance itself could mean careful planning. Dumping the computer dude in a dump is a serious offence, just like DUI. Most electronic components are non-biodegradable and some are even toxic.

Brian Reich has a wonderful article about responsible disposing of computer equipment. Of the three R’s — Recycling, Reducing and Reusing — he says that while the former is catching up, the latter two are preferrable.

For those in a hurry, here is the gist of the article. But don’t forget to bookmark this and get back to it later.

1. Buy quality products. Consider that extra pay as an investment than an expense.
2. For reasons of law and security, wipe your hard drive clean before initiating disposing. Before you do that, back up.
3. Resell and consider buying resold goods.
4. Donate. Libraries, charity organizations, poor students,…
5. If you can’t resell or donate, recycle. Earth 911 and UNICOR Recycling Program can be your place to start. If these services don’t offer any viable solution in your locality, you can always call the service center of the company from which you bought the hardware and give it back to them.

Post from: EveryJoe

Responsible Disposing of E-waste