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Taking a Crack At Recycling E-Waste
An anonymous reader wrote to mention a New York Times article being hosted at News.com. It touches on a new initiative in upstate New York to deal with the problem of e-waste. The Town of North Hempstead has positioned helpers at the dump the last four weekends, assisting people with a flood of old monitors, keyboards, laptops, word processors, and even a Pong game or two. Besides the obvious benefit of getting this junk out of our homes, the article highlights why this should be a growing concern around the country. From the article: "While federal law regulates the disposal of electronics by businesses and government agencies, it does not affect individual consumers, who account for more than half the e-waste produced annually, according to the federal agency. Every old computer monitor contains about four pounds of lead, and other parts are filled with heavy metals like mercury, arsenic, cadmium and chromium. They have toxins that hover in the air after incineration or leach into the water supply when buried in landfills. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh say that dumps around the nation's major cities, including New York, hold more than 60 million computers."
This post made with 100% recycled electrons.
I think one of the solutions is to get companies to donate old equipment, or give it to organizations that will fix it up and give to the needy. I have seen companies trash perfectly good computers, but refuse to give them to anyone. These computers were far from useless, and could be used by grandma to get email and surf the net. I think if these type of programs were setup at companies it would reduce the level of waste considerably.
Still we need a solution to the problem of lead and other toxic chemicals leached into the soil. That makes me wonder...what happened to all the stories of businesses dumping this type of waste in rural China?
Steve Wiseman
http://www.windows-admin-tools.com