Big Red Goes Green

Televisions, refrigerators, printers —  their lifetimes are incredibly short. Think about all the cell phones you’ve owned in your lifetime. In fact, the average American keeps the same cellular device for only 18 months. Everyone has a similar story: your iPhone battery becomes spastic, or your screen cracks, and maybe it might make more sense to purchase the shiny new model instead of fixing the broken parts in the phone you already own. Maybe the cost to replace is not all that much more than the cost to repair. Maybe you just really want your pictures to come out a little bit clearer.   The first world discards 50 million tons of electronic waste (e-waste) annually, with the United States accounting for nearly a fifth of that amount.  Only 12.5% of this e-waste is recycled. Several companies, notably Apple, Dell, Toshiba, Hewlett-Packard, Philips, Panasonic etc. dump their waste, often illegally, in poor parts of the world that do not have the mechanisms or infrastructure in place to properly dispose or recycle the unwanted products.In the landfills of the developing world, these products affect both the environment and the people who live nearby. It is common for children to go into the e-waste dumps and burn wires and cables they find in attempt to salvage the precious metals built into them, such as copper and nickel, for profit. The people who go rummaging through the e-waste are exposed to a multitude of neurotoxins such as lead and cadmium. The effects of neurotoxins include memory loss, loss of vision, uncontrollable behavior, headaches, cognitive issues and sexual dysfunction among many others. According to Ghanian environmental journalist Mike Anane, who is following the massive amounts of e-waste in Accra, Ghana, the people who collect at these e-waste sites, some of whom are children, complain of persistent headaches, respiratory problems and chest pains as well, not to mention the risk of physical injury these sites already pose.In addition to the detrimental health effects of e-waste, the actual making of all of these electronics is also straining the Earth; it takes 530 pounds of fossil fuel to manufacture one computer and monitor. Perhaps the most maddening part of this issue is there is actually so much potential for benefit in the solution, both economic and humanitarian. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, for every one million cell phones that are recycled, 35,274 pounds of copper, 772 pounds of silver, 75 pounds of gold and 33 pounds of palladium can be recovered. The gold and silver parts alone could generate over 60 million dollars every year.  Even the plastics in e-waste can be recycled into garden furniture, the batteries reused in other batteries and metals repurposed in jewelry and automotive parts. In addition, educational organizations could make so much progress in reaching the last mile; there are so many expensive computers in India, China and of course, Ghana right now that could be fixed with a 25-cent part. E-waste is an undiscovered gold mine; it is time for its eradication to rise as a movement.