Ch. 12 article, “E-Waste: The Dirty Secret of Recycling Electronics”{0}
As technology progresses that mean electronics become outdated faster than we think. What are we doing with the “old” electronics that has been newly upgraded with modern electronics? Well, this kind of waste has a name, E-waste, which is the discarding of old computers and other electronics that will no longer be used. Large electronic companies pay recycling companies to dispose of these old electronics in order to save people from the toxins that they are created with. Some of the toxins are lead, mercury, and cadmium. All of these can sink into the ground and are very harmful if ingested. The amount of waste is constantly doubling each year and with it the worries of how to cut back the waste begin to increase. Many of the recycling companies are paying to export this waste to Asia, which is currently being investigated because it is affecting many farms and irrigation systems through Asia. Supreme is a company that is said not to do the exporting of monitors to Asia, yet some of the employees will admit that the company does it, which if this can be proven, then Supreme will be closed down for endangering a large amount of people and having knowledge of it. To help make this clearer as to how important this issue really is. There was some testing done awhile back in China and the outcome was horrifying. “The blood of children in rural Guiyu, China, a notorious e-waste scavenging site, contained lead at twice the acceptable level set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.”
There are a lot of issues that we are unaware of because they are very easily hidden out of the public eye. The fact that each of us can probably say that we’ve had to get rid of old monitors because they broke, which means that we are part of this problem that needs to be evaluated closely. I plan to research this more because I was very unhappy to discover such horrible information about companies that are literally being paid money to send toxins over to China for children to consume.
Reference:
Elgin, Ben and Grow, Brian. E-Waste: The Dirty Secret of Recycling Electronics. Retrieved from Business Weekly on Oct. 29, 2009 from: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_43/b4105000160974.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_news+%2B+analysis