According to Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist and authority on waste management at the Natural Resources Defense Council, electronic hardware — or e-waste — is “the fastest-growing component of the municipal waste stream worldwide.”
Thanks to ongoing development of newer, faster, smaller and more capable devices, the computers, cell phones and other electronics that consumers crave and businesses rely upon tend to have short life cycles. “We throw out about 130,000 computers every day in the United States,” said Hershkowitz. But it is not the growing bulk of e-waste that is creating the problem.
Inside those sleek exteriors are a variety of recoverable, precious metals mixed with some seriously nasty materials known to cause brain damage, kidney disease and cancers: lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, polyvinyl chlorides.
As municipalities, businesses and consumers have become aware of the environmentally damaging, toxic substances within our electronic devices, more and more of us have turned to recycling our outdated equipment. Having acted responsibly ourselves, we assume that someone, somewhere, will then separate the precious metals from the toxic materials, recycling what can be sold and properly disposing of the dangerous content. But most of us never know for sure.
Indeed, some e-waste is processed in high-tech facilities that follow environmentally sound procedures. Some, we are learning, is not.
This week, Friday Night at the Movies features a segment from CBS’s 60 Minutes, aired November 9, that looks into the latter – a nightmare scenario in which e-waste intended for recycling is shipped overseas, processed by workers with no protections, and poisoning ecosystems.
I put a call into our local recycling facility concerning how our e-waste is handled and am awaiting their response. After seeing this segment, you might want to consider doing the same.
– Bob
