1. INTRODUCTION
Over the last two decades, the world has seen a rapid advancement and growth of electronic industries, as result of which the lifetime of electronic and electrical equipment is decreasing very fast. Due to high demand of newer products and continuous development of hardware as well as software section, the electrical and electronic equipment are replaced and discarded every day. As a consequence of that, a large volume of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE or E-waste) is generated such as computers, monitors, household electronics, mobile phones, televisions etc. According to United Nations Environmental program, around 20-50 million tons of E-waste are generated worldwide per year[1]. Due to presence of environmentally hazardous components, these WEEE has been termed as “largest toxic waste problem of the 21st century”.
Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) are the indispensable part of the electronic equipment and account for ~3% by weight of WEEE[2]. Nevertheless, waste PCBs contains one of the most hazardous components of E-waste directory as well as most of the precious metals. The precious metal concentration such as gold, platinum, palladium concentration in waste PCBs is much higher than their respective primary ores. The presence of precious metals and lack of regulation and control on recycling industries in developing countries, the poorest stratum of population finds economic benefits in recovering of precious metals with non-scientific methods while simply dumping the non-profitable and hazardous elements. The conventional waste treatment of landfilling and incineration leads to release of the hazardous components to the environment endangering the eco-system. The backyard operations in Asia, Afric...
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...han, C. Zhang, and Y. Chen, "Heavy metal and persistent organic compound contamination in soil from Wenling: An emerging e-waste recycling city in Taizhou area, China," Journal of Hazardous materials, vol. 173, pp. 653-660, 2010.
[7] J. Li, P. Shrivastava, Z. Gao, and H.-C. Zhang, "Printed circuit board recycling: a state-of-the-art survey," Electronics Packaging Manufacturing, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 27, pp. 33-42, 2004.
[8] K. Huang, J. Guo, and Z. Xu, "Recycling of waste printed circuit boards: A review of current technologies and treatment status in China," Journal of Hazardous materials, vol. 164, pp. 399-408, 2009.
[9] J. Sohaili, S. K. Muniyandi, and S. S. Mohamad, "A Review on Printed Circuit Boards Waste Recycling Technologies and Reuse of Recovered Nonmetallic Materials," International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, vol. 3, pp. 1-7, 2012.
Even though electronic waste contributes one percent of waste as discussed earlier, it poses a significant threat to the environment. “RCRA does not, however, cover electronic waste except CRTs, nor does it regulate electronic devices donated for educational or charitable reuse.” The RCRA should implement rules to govern e-waste because e-waste not only affects lives in the United States, It affects everyone globally. E-waste typically finds its ways out of the United States and ends up in developing countries like
The article “Our E-Waste Problem Is Ridiculous, and Gadget Makers Aren’t Helping” by Christina Bonnington explains that our landfills are being filled with unused electronics of yesteryear. In 2011, there were 41.5 million tons of electronic wastes in landfills. In 2016, they projected the number to go up to 93.5 million tons. Specifically, our old products are in landfills now such as, HP computers, computer towers, cell phones, and batteries. The reason for all the waste is the human race is buying the newest electronics and not disposing of their unused and unwanted electronics properly. Also, not all of the unused electronics are recyclable. E-waste has a huge negative effect while in landfills because electronics breakdown and they breakdown
The article, “Our E-Waste Problem is Ridiculous, and Gadget Makers Aren’t Helping,” by Christina Bonnington, focused the process of electronic devices to be recycled, the challenges of recycling electronic waste, and making devices more recyclable. First, Bonnington described the recycling process. Depending on the condition on the product will determine if it will be reused or stripped down to be destroyed. According to the author, having a simpler design makes the reprocessing easier to bare the electronics for turning into materials. Next, the author mentioned the challenges of recycling. One challenge is how electronics are becoming more compact and tougher to strip apart to separate the materials. Conferring to Bonnington, batteries are
It is generally perceived that electronics are not intended for reuse. In the event that it is completed accurately, hardware reusing can anticipate contamination, make occupations, and spare assets as specified by Thomas, Valerie.... ... middle of paper ... ... The Web.
Electronic waste, or any waste for that matter is an inevitable part of an economic system where the destruction of an ecosystem is the primarily source of resources that are used to create the product. The waste that occurs from this process has to be disposed of in some way and more often than not, it is disposed of carelessly with out consideration to the affect it would have on the environment or the very people that create and let capitalism live on, “The political economy approach also defers progress on environmental issues to a pint after economic ones are solved” (Robbins et al. 2010, 114). And if this continues there may be no place left for the excess waste created by capitalism.
Science and engineering of soldering has taken a major change in direction ever since the legislation that mandates restriction of certain hazardous substances (RoHS) and the waste electrical and electronic equipment had been introduced by many countries. The first administrative region of the world to actively legislate against Pb use in electronics has been the European Union, which has introduced RoHS and WEEE directives. These directives target the electrical and electronic equipment and are designed respectively to outlaw many harmful substances from use and make the producers of electrical and electronic goods responsible for their safe disposal or recycling at the end of their lives.
We can’t ignore the importance of ethics in our society. Ethics are the moral principles necessary for providing equal treatment to minority groups and women; whether it’s in healthcare, a courtroom, or the environment. Environmental justice started when people began to recognize the poor tended to be exposed to a greater share of pollution, hazardous material, and environment degradation than richer people; and that, racial minorities are more likely to be exposed to hazards than whites. This is believed to be a direct result of institutionalized racism and inadequate government policies. Environmental justice involves the fair and equitable treatment of all people with respect to environmental policy and practice, regardless of their income,
Around 48% of workplace papers are recycled. Exclusively to be adapted create additional writing papers and cardboard 96% recyclable material: 95% uranium and 1% plutonium, which will be reused to produce electricity.
The MacBook Pro is made by using a milling process. The body of the computer is made from a single block of aluminium which is then cut by 13 different machines exactly to the unibody finished product (Jaymi). The use of a unibody Apple removes the need for smaller parts. By using smaller parts, Apple removes the possibility of error that could come from having multiple parts. In the past 4 years Apple has made an effort to create the most environmentally friendly notebook on the market. This was done by focusing on the make up of the small parts to ensure that the glass was arsenic-free and the wires were PVC-free (Apple). However the recent generation of Macbook pros are not as eco-friendly as the older counter parts.This is primarily because they are glued together and cannot be properly dismantled for repair or recycling processes. Parts of the Macbook Pro Retina such as the LED screen which usually can be recycled have had glass glued to the screen for a seamless design. This design element has made recycling the LED screen more diff...
...ions can still be recovered due to the high selectivity, The recovery of metals from these materials is also environmentally favourable, since many of the scrap metals have large amounts of heavy metals and base metals which are hazardous to the environment and the recycling of home scrap means that wastes from production is reduced and therefore in the end there is only a small disposal amount into the environment. (12)
The future for these products is also quite often over looked. The components are not made to be detachable, so the different materials cannot be recycled correctly or recycled at all, which leads to landfills and pollution. Every material, from wood to steel to carbon fibre has an environmental story behind it and these can all be reused, however there is quite often not enough thought into this design aspect. These components are not labelled correctly for recycling and the result is a scarred landscape. However recycling these days has now turned into a way of life for us. Bins are now everywhere marked with the unmistakeable ‘three-green-arrow’ (another remarkable graphic design – now playing a huge role in the way we live), which lets members of the public kn...
In the present techno-economic era, the energy and environmental crises developed due to huge amount of cellulosic materials disposed as “waste”. Globally, the estimated quantity of the waste generation was 12 billion tons in a year 2002 of which 11 billion tons were industrial wastes and 1.6 billion tons were municipal solid waste. About 90 billion tons solid wastes will expected to be generated annually by the year 2025. Annually, Asia alone generates 4.4 billion tons of solid wastes and municipal solid waste comprises 790 million tons of which about 48 million tons are generated in India.
Recycling is a six step process. First they must be cleaned and separated by the
There are also several long term benefits of recycling. For example, “collecting and processing secondary materials, manufacturing recy...
Recycling is such a fantastic way for us to reuse the waste we once throw. Yet, not everything is easy to be done in this world. There many difficulties that face recycling process economically and socially. Usually In order to recycle, waste paper needs to be sorted and treated from any Impurities. Which means that companies will loss finance because there must be someone or something that could sort or treat these papers. Another problem is that to start recycling, companies needs a lot of good recyclable supply to pick it up; after all, they need good economic benefits (Problems with Recycling, 2014). According to the Waste and Resources Action Program, there are some barriers p...