The reality is much of the stuff ends up in the garbage.
E-Waste Is Hazardous Waste
But there's a dirty little secret piling up with those electronics thrown into the garbage. This "e-waste" is tainted with hazardous contaminants.
The average computer monitor contains more than five pounds of lead. Computers can also contain mercury and cadmium. When you multiply that by the millions of outdated computers and monitors, you've got lots of toxins that you don't want to put back into the earth.
Well, that really sucks. I have to admit I never realized. I also never realized that we were sending tons of the stuff over to poison third-world countries.
That's dirty little secret No. 2: Some recyclers may not be recycling everything. Actually, some experts say most recyclers aren't recycling everything.
"Eighty percent of all the scrap electronics in the United States end up offshore and usually in Third World countries," said Bob Glavin of Chicago, who runs one of the biggest recycling plants in the country.
I can't quote all the parts I want people to see, so please read it. This is just one of those things that should NOT be happening. I'll give you a little taste of what they talk about in the article.
"What we witnessed was these former farmers cooking circuit boards over little wok-type operations over little coal fires and melting the chips so they could pull them off. These chips would then go to acid strippers using very dangerous acids, dumping all the waste from the process into the river, and that acid process was to extract the tiny bit of gold that was in those chips. It was quite a cyber-age nightmare," he said.
10 comments:
Hey there! I've got three recent posts on this subject. The first one was last week, so it's in archives, Apres Nous, La Deluge.
thebluevoice.blogspot.com/2005/12/aprs-nous-la-dluge.html
The other two, The Deluge, Continued, and a post with links to reputable recyclers and other resources, are on the front page, still pretty close to the top. I'm glad to see that this topic is finally being shouted about. It's a horror, that's for sure.
marigolds2 from The Blue Voice
Diamond talks about this a little in "Collapse". There's one picture of a mountain of electronic waste that men are going through looking for usable scrap.
Welcome to the modern world motherfuckers. The question you should be asking yourselves is why was such knowledge not commonplace decades ago? The answer is that the owners of the 5th estate care more about the next quarterly report than they care about the worldwide environmental disaster Katrinaing away while they outfit their yachts.
Well you can blame the media for everyone's ignorance, but the stories have been out there. Obviously I got this from ABC news. I'm not defending them, but you have to realize that for the most part ignorance is a choice. As an example, in a similar vein do you think many people know about the pollution that shipbreakers cause? That story has been out there, if not on the front pages. Any knowledge you want is at your fingertips if you can use the internet (and generally all you need for that is a library card). Blame us for ignorance, not somebody else.
Well, that was kind of my point in the other post.
Your article above simply reiterates why we must be ever-vigilant against the ethos of a "throw away" society. Personally, I am and have been well aware of the toxicity inherent in the computer boon. And this goes a long way toward explaining why I tend to update my computer as opposed to purchasing new ones every year or two.
That said, a year ago my printer went on the fritz. Ideally, I wanted to get it fixed rather than buy a new one. Unfortunately, the way the system works, it would have cost tons more to fix it than to just buy a new one. I admit that I succumbed to the financial incentive, but I didn't feel good about my choice.
It's going to be a hard attitude to change. Not impossible, just extremely difficult, and we probably shouldn't expect big changes any time soon. Our current attitudes towards trash aren't really any different from those of the past. In my anthropology classes we learned that in prehistoric North America often times a hunting camp would be occupied until there was too much trash all over the ground. Then they would just pick up and leave. And before anyone argues that it was all bio-degradable, ask yourself how we found it. Also, many ancient cities of the Near East are built up over old layers of trash. Places like Tyre and Antioch have been raised up dozens of feet over the hundreds of years because people just build right over the trash.
Now this is no excuse for the behavior mentioned in this article; I'm just saying that people are accustomed not to worry about what happens to the trash they throw out.
I do not think it fair to dump on "us" at all over the issue of computer garbage. We live in a system, a system that gets you called traitor and worse if you question it any part of it these days; part of the system is the now vomit inducing sycophantic 5th estate. There are powerful cultural and political reasons why we do what we do. Blaming "us" is a cop out.
My town looks like a dump what with all the litter everywhere. Why do we treat our neighbourhoods as dumps? Is it because we are evil or is there a cause behind our nasty throw away attitude?
I'm saying you can't place 100% responsibility on outside forces unless you claim to be under mind control. It's everyone's responsibility to some degree what they do with their trash, and their attitudes are heavily ingrained from the fact that we have never cared what we do with it as long as it doesn't become a bother to us.
I'm cool with that, but then I am under mind control...
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