While reading some articles about electronic consumption, one thing that really stuck out to me was the topic of e-waste. This is something that I have never known too much about in the past. What really intrigued me was the fact that rich countries just dump all of their e-waste into landfills in developing countries, and how many chemicals are in these electronics.
Richer countries are able to drop this waste into these less developed countries because there are no laws against it there. However, this e-waste that is being loaded into these countries contain many toxic chemicals. Electronics contain beryllium, fluorspar, cobalt, tungsten and other materials.
Two questions came to my mind while pondering this topic:
What are the longterm effects of these chemicals?
What are some other/better ways that this e-waste can be disposed?
I found some articles to clear up my questions:
Hazards of Ewaste
Proper ways of disposing Ewaste
By reading these articles, I learned that many rich countries are dumping their electronic waste into less developed countries to save themselves time and money. This e-waste dropped into developing countries contains many chemicals that can cause long term health effects to those who are living nearby. And overall, I feel that this is very unethical and wrong for us to do.
But I also read about some other ways that we can dispose of our electronic waste. There are many trusted recycling programs out there that will properly dispose of your electronics for you. And you could always try and buy products that can easily be repaired or that have a longer life cycle. However in the world of products that are designed to de quickly disposed of this can be very difficult, so the best we can do is to make sure our electronics get disposed of properly!
Good job on this module. I to chose e-waste because I didn't really know anything about it.
ReplyDelete