e waste

It’s a strange thought that the most expensive mobile phones, laptops and other devices will become landfill or pollute thousands of gallons of water most e waste ends up in Nigeria and Pakistan or china which are all developing countries the reason why people do it is that is that it’s too expensive to properly recycle them. Since the average use of most devices has decreased since the last decade there have been more and more of them in landfill, but what happens to it when it’s in the 3^rd world countries? People burn parts of the computers to melt away the plastic and reveal the gold and other metals which are toxic and can seriously damage your lungs and severely decrease a person’s life span in some cases of people who deal with e waste a lot and touch it with their bare hands their hands turn pitch black, the people who sell the gold don’t get much from it because there isn’t very much gold in most things any way. Little children who have had to quit school are some of the many people seen in the landfill sites there’s fires every where

Recycling

Recycling is one of the best solutions along getting things fixed the only problem with recycling is that it costs money but there are ways around this some say that prices of products that need to be recycled should go up and the extra money used to meet the costs of recycling but others argue that recycling should be a free service that councils or the government should pay for , but personally that it shouldn’t be free it should be included in the price because if you are going to buy it it’s your responsibility to recycle it. Computer Companies are now working on making computers that are designed for disassembly and recycling which would make it cheaper and easier to recycle them thus stopping them being burned though this could take 10 to 20 years.

In China

It’s sick that China is the country that makes the devices and the same country that burns them and they don’t even earn much from making them, people really shouldn’t just dump harmful chemicals on a country with some of the highest pollution in the world and some of the poorest people. It’s mostly dumped in Gulyu and Nanhai most of the Asian e waste ends up in China. It’s not just e waste that ends up in china other waste such as plastic bags are also shipped to China many of its polluting the streets and rivers in Nanhai 20% of the waste recycled was imported from other countries though there is going to be a ban in place to stop unlicensed businesses from importing the waste.

Dangers

The sad thing is not much is really being done to stop e waste a lot of it does still get burnt or buried in other countries who have lots of other problem’s and people still dump some more on them .the chemicals in the computer aren’t just dangerous being recycled but also being assembled people can be breathing in the potent chemicals.

What can people do about it?

There are numerous causes and charity’s set up to stop e waste all you have to do is sign up or if you want to do something bigger you could join a protest, I’ve already joined the e waste causes on Facebook they really need more members because there isn’t enough awareness about e waste so please join them.

my personal vew

I think it’s horrible that people even children have to deal with our rubbish its wrong and something should be done to stop it, these people’s health are at serious risk and sometimes they don’t have enough money to pay for food and they live of the dumps breathing in all the toxic chemicals because they have no choice. This is one of the terrible down sides of the evolution of our electronics people don’t realise that when you buy something new your old things don’t just magically disappear someone somewhere has to deal with them. In this day and age recycling should be more accessible and happen more often.


please comment with your thoughs on this issue.