Chapter 12. Globalization, Innovation, and 21st Century Orgnizational Trends{0}
You can’t just throw your electronic waste away. It contains several toxins and a number of reusable metals and plastics. In fact, in California it is illegal to simple toss the old computer/VCR/DVD player/etc into the trash bin. So what do you do to comply with the law? You keep your ear to the ground and listen for the drum of a “free e-waste” event in town. You take your e-waste and dump it off and thats the last you see of it. Or you visit a site like http://www.myboneyard.com/ and mail off, free of charge to you, your ewaste. But what happens to it? I cannot speak for myboneyard.com but it is apparent that much of the waste gets dumped off in developing countries like Vietnam, as shown in the recent Amazing Race 15 show, or India. Workers, earning as much as 3 dollars a day, squat all day long pulling apart electronic devices. While the Amazing Race show down played the hazards of working in this type of environment it was easy to see the immediate dangers. Workers hands are constantly being cut and scraped by sharp edges and thin sheet metal. I regularly have my hands inside of a computer case and can atest to the razor blade sharpness of thin sheet metal usually found, but not limited to, cheaply made cases. With out these desperate workings tearing apart all of our e-waste most of the worlds e-waste would go un-recycled. A better means of e-recycling must be found. Nokia is attempting to mitigate the waste its products produce via their Take Back program but its only a step in the right direction and not a solution.
BBC World Service. (2009). Hazardous conditions for India’s e-waste workers. Retrieved November 20, 2009 From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8379010.stm
