Mason Howe Synthesis/exploration
If all the media hype is to be believed than we are living in some soft of golden age of computing. In the last twenty years Personal computers have come from obscure pieces of equipment that not many people owned or could even use, to something that a vast majority of people keep in there position. And its not just pc’s, net books, tablets, and smartphones are ubiquitous. With all this change in technology comes a potential problem of e-waste. E-waste or electronic waste is composed of, refrigerators, printers, scanners, laptops and desktops, cell phones, and TV’s. The problem with this type of waste as opposed to regular kind of waste is that this contains many heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and mercury. Some estimates believe that about 70% of all heavy metals in us landfills come from e-waste. And believe that e-waste is a growing problem especially in developing countries where much of that waste gets dumped leading to serious environmental, and health damage. Others though believe that the problem has been blown slightly out of proportion, and that companies are doing an increasingly good job at removing harmful toxins from electronics and attempting to recycle old electronics but some is inevitable and Because this is a relatively new issue, (most people didn’t have a computer to dump twenty years ago) there are still many unknown variables.
The Environmental protection agency estimates that e-waste represents approximately one to two percent of the total solid waste produced in the United States.
The EPA states the reason that e-waste has gotten so much attention in recent years due to a rapid change in the product sector, the vast amount of elements in electronic equipment, and the possibility for recourse recovery in collection and recycling. Resource recovery is one of the main reasons that e-waste has become a problem, in order to get Mason Howe Synthesis/exploration some of the rarer materials out of things like circuit boards they are shipped to poor third world and developing countries in order to be harvested and reused. The United Nations environmental program, Salon Magazine, and Time Magazine have all come out against e-waste, and what dumping e-waste does to not only the environment but the people of third world countries.
Others believe that the e-waste issue has been over blown, that e-waste only constitutes a small amount of all waste world wide, and that United States companies are doing an increasingly good job at not only recycling the electronics but keeping harmful chemicals and toxins out of them in the first place. In April of 2010 The San Francisco
Chronicles Praised both Hewlett-Packard, and Apple inc, two of the largest tech companies in the world, for eliminating many harmful chemicals from there products. HP and Dell placed in the top 2 of Greenpeace’s Gide to Greener Electronics, published in
November 2011. HP, Dell, and Apple, some of the worlds largest technology companies, have all started trying to recycle used electronics in fact in 2009 HP ranked number one on Newsweek’s Greenest companies out of the top 500 companies in the United States.
All these examples showing that Americas major technology manufacturing companies are trying to cut down on there environmental impact, and cause as little damage to the environment as possible.
In Salon Magazine in 2006 Elizabeth Grossman, wrote an article entitled “Where computers go to die – and kill” in this article she exposes some of the shady practices that companies do in order to save money on computer recycling costs. What happens is when Mason Howe Synthesis/exploration computers become obsolete they are shipped of to a third party for recycling. Why some of these recycling firms do use proper environmentally responsible methods many of them in order to maximize prophets simply ship the waste to the developing world, mainly China. Grossman estimates that nearly 50 percent of all recycled electronics sent for recycling and processing end up being shipped out of the country, where they are sent to be broken down in small Villages by underpaid workers. And she is not the only one who shares this concern of what is happening with e-waste and third world countries. In
2009 Bryan Walsh of Time Magazine, published an article entitled “E-Waste Not” in his article Walsh reveals the damage that e-waste is doing in countries like China. Walsh’s article states that e-waste it is the fastest growing part of the US trash system, and as
Grossman reiterates in her article the dangers of not only e-waste thrown in the garbage, but also waste that is recycled. Unlike Grossman’s article which covers a broad range of countries, Walsh’s article centers mainly around a small Chinese village called Guiyu.
Guiyu is a hub for “recycling” electronic components. In Guiyu Villager’s burn plastics and separate components in order to get at the rare material inside. The United Nations environmental program also believes that e-waste in developing countries is becoming a major concern. The UNPN believes that within the coming years the influx of e-waste will rise by nearly five-hundred percent. And that if steps are not taken to prevent this massive serge these developing countries can suffer massive catastrophic environmental and health damage, that they may never recover from.
Not Every one sees it as doom and gloom though Apple, HP, and Dell the major
US computer manufactures have all made attempts to cut down on electronic waste by Mason Howe Synthesis/exploration starting corporate responsibility programs disposing of electronics in an environmental responsible way and more importantly designing there products to be “green from the start.” For instance CRT monitors (cathode ray tube)(those old really big computer monitors) which contain lead and are classified as “hazardous waste” by the EPA because they are so hard to recycle are being phased out for lighter more efficient LED
(light emitting diode) displays which don’t have the same harmful chemicals in them.
Another example of this is Apple announcing that by 2008 they had eliminated all the
PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) and BFRs (Brominated flame retardants) two environmentally damaging substances from there entire line of products, And HP and Dell have both started recycling billons of pounds of electronics as well as eliminating harmful chemicals in there product lines. In fact Greenpeace in there guide to greener electronics rated HP and Dell first and second, respectively, for greenest electronic companies, with
Apple ranking 4th overall. These are just a few examples of many that the industry is using to try to make there products safe for not only the customers but for the environment as well. Admittedly they can do better however they are making putting a lot of effort, money and devotion into being part of the solution and not part of the problem, yes there is still a ways for them to go, however, they are making large amounts of progress.
As for me I never realized how much e-waste was produced and why it was considered such a bad thing. Like most recycling I though it went to some sort of plant where they melted it down and then made something different out of it, but that really is not the case.
Why I know it is inevitable, that one day you are going to have to get rid of your old Mason Howe Synthesis/exploration hardware, it would be nice to see more people using things longer and perhaps repurposing there things so they can stay out of our landfills and third world countries for longer. I also believe that why much of the responsibility does lie with shoddy corporations shipping things overseas to maximize prophets, I don’t think all companies should be thrown under the same bus. Many of them are doing the best that they can to try and eliminate the harmful effects of e-waste. We should also be mindful of ourselves and how much and ask how much of the electronic equipment that we buy do we actually need. Moreover it would be nice to see a joint effort from the EPA, corporations and consumers to have a program that makes it easy for them to make sure that the electronic devices that they throw away end up in the right hands where the damage they do will be minimized.
Work cited Apple, INC. "Apple 2008 Environmental Update." www.apple.com. N.p., 2008. Web. 28 Nov. 2011.
ComputerinfoWeb.com. "Computer Electronics: Blu- Ray." ComputerInfoWeb.com. N.p., 6 Nov. 2011. Web. Nov. 2011.
Electronics TakeBack coalition. "Facts and Figures on E-Waste and Recycling." 4 June 2010. PDF file. http://www.electronicstakeback.com/wp- content/uploads/Facts_and_Figures
Grossman, Elizabeth. "where computers go to die-- And Kill." Salon 10 Apr. 2006: n. pag. Web. 6Nov. 2011.
Jones, Daniel Christopher. "The Global e-waste problem." busmanagementme.com. N.p., 26 Feb. 2010. Web. 6 Nov. 2011.
Smith, Tod. "Poison PCs and Toxic TVs:." zdnet . N.p., 24 June 1999. Web. 6 Nov. 2011.
United Nations. United Nations Environment Programme. Urgent Need to Prepare Developing Countries for Surge in E-Wastes. N.p., 22 Feb. 2010. Web. 6 Nov.2011. United States . Environmental Protection Agency. Statistics on the Management of Used and End-of-Life Electronics. www.epa.gov. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Nov. 2011. Walsh, Bryan. "E-Waste Not." Time 8 Jan. 2009: n. pag. Print. Wikipedia. "Electronic Waste ." Wikipedia . N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2011. Wikipedia. "Hewlett-Packard." Wikipedia . N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2011. Wikipedia. "Dell." Wikipedia . N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2011.