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essay on electronic waste management
essay on electronic waste management
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The growth of technology is generally exaggerated that as soon as a product hits market, it becomes obsolete. Though this may not be factually true, it does illustrate how rapidly technology advances to newer things. The question then becomes: what happens to the obsolete technology? Often in the United States, individuals simply dispose of their old personal computers, cell phones, or other electronic products with their normal garbage, to be transported to the local landfill. This electronic waste, or “E-waste,” often can be recycled. In developing countries, this e-waste is taken and then harvested for valuable materials, including metals. It is predicted that within the next ten years, the amount of materials heading to these countries will increase by at least fivefold. The process to harvest these materials varies from area to area, but is often hazardous in some manner. Though economically beneficial, it can lessen the quality of life through exposure to toxins. This exposure can come through water contamination, air pollution, or from physically handling the materials.
One method to analyze the problem at hand is to use the Respect for Persons approach. Within this approach, the dilemma can be tested using the Rights test. First, the rights involved are the workers’ rights to life and physical integrity. This is a first tier right, according to Gerwith’s scale. However, the other rights involved in this case include the right to work for profit and the right of purpose fulfillment, which are second tier rights. These are involved because the workers are using the money they make from recycling waste to support their lives and families. The action under question here is if the recycling of e-waste should be continued...
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...ring community can work towards a new design goal, that of making products easier to recycle and increase sustainability. Currently, part of this ideal is underway. Many companies are now introducing products that contain less and less of these hazardous materials, examples including lead-free solder and fluids that are substitutes for mercury. Lead usage has fallen since the advent of the flat-panel and liquid-display crystal (LCD) monitors, though it has not been eradicated from the technology yet. As a society of engineers, our primary duty is to promote the health of the general public, as from the first canon of the NSPE code. By instructing companies to reduce the hazards included in their products, and by designing products that are easier and safer to recycle, engineers can help fulfill this first canon by making the job of a third-world laborer safer.
In conclusion to this investigation one thing is clear and that is that recycling reeks benefits to the environment, Recycling material when compared to making material from raw material is a more efficient energy saving and more environmentally friendly way to reuse material that is usually consider as trash such as empty glass, and plastic bottles, or old newspapers. Recycling helps reduce the possible carbon emissions greatly and does reduce the human carbon footprint. But Recycling doesn’t resolve the pollution that is around the world today. Leading to new questions, questions like what about the landfills are they sustainable, and if so for how long. How long until the air becomes unbreathable? How long until Earth becomes its own furnace?
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 e-waste trade is an exploitative industry in which electronics, circuit boards, old TV’s and desktops that are of no more value, get dumped into third world countries such as Ghana, Vietnam, Malaysia, Pakistan, Hong Kong, and many others. The people of these third world countries than burn the electronics in order to collect the remains and scraps of copper and iron that can be sold for money. The smell and burning smolder of plastic from the computers and old TV’s are incredibly toxic, slowly killing the children, women, and men that burn these e-waste remains in order to create a living for themselves. Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Emile Durkheim all have theories that can be applied and related to this trade of e-waste. Adam Smith’s theory
Caterpillar’s Chairman and CEO, Doug Oberhelman is a member of the Board of Directors of the WRI. The WRI is an environmental group that uses research to find applied ways to safeguard the earth and improve people’s existence (“Sustainability Report,” 2012). Remanufacturing is one of the processes that Caterpillar utilizes to create sustainability throughout the world. Remanufacturing avoids waste through its salvage of materials and the associated resource savings. Sustainability organizations need to forge sustainability strategies which distribute them with cost-effective benefits and social benefits accomplished through environmental accountability. This paper will analyzing different ethical, legal, and economic issues relevant to sustainability as it pertains.
"If it is carried out correctly, electronics recycling can prevent pollution, create jobs, and save resources." Valerie Thomas asserts that reusing strategies Khan 2 that help advancement throughout the complete hardware store network can lessen electronic waste contamination. Transfer or reuse of hardware can have noteworthy human well-being and environmental sway. Gadgets can hold lead, brominated fire retardants, cadmium, mercury, arsenic and an extensive variety of different metals and concoction mixes. In a 2008 report, the GAO [government Responsibility Office] found that a significant proportion of these end up in nations where transfer practices are hazardous to laborers and perilous to the earth.
Capitalism in its purest form is all about maximizing profit at whatever the cost to the workers, economy or environment. In this light capitalism can be viewed as a double-edged sword, in which a company in a capitalistic economy will avoid extra cost at any chance possible even if that means the illegal disposal of harmful secondhand electronics avoiding all the rules and regulations that would make disposal cost extra called E-Waste, to impoverished countries such as China and Ghana. But this in turn hurts the very people that make the system work, which is the second contradiction of capitalism; with the improper disposal of waste that in turns make the workers sick, they then work less or potentially die, but a workers death in underdeveloped countries will have less of an affect on the economy “Because wage structures are lowest in less developed countries, pollution would mean fewer losses in earnings due to morbidity and mortality” (Robbins et al. 2010, 97). And the prime example of the damage that E-waste is causing is in Guiyu, China where irreversible damage has been done to the entire community because of failure to properly dispose of electronics by countries such as the United States, Canada and Australia has led to a surplus of harmful obsolete electronics that have flooded underdeveloped countries all in the name of saving money and avoiding the regulations set about by the U.S. government.
The average cell phone is used less than 18 months and 140 million of them end up in a landfill each year.(Statistics) The landfills are slowly filling up with our obsolete cell phones. The phone’s circuits are coated with lead, and the lithium ion batteries often explode in landfills creating craters of heavy metal toxic waste for future generations to have to deal with. Even though there is an effort to recycle this waste, the problem is going to get worse before it gets better as more and more of the world’s citizens embrace cellular
According to Gale opposing view points, “the cost of collecting, sorting, and proceeding recyclables can, for some materials, be higher than that of creating new raw materials” (Gale). This goes to show that even sometimes, recycling an item such as steel or paper or whatever, can cost more than actually make a new material from scratch, aka raw material. Not only that, but the places where the give mentioned provides a recyclable bin, they cost money also. A different type of trash machine comes to pick it up, more money there. The driver gets paid. The employees at raw recycling factor, which probably don’t do much, also get paid. All these unnecessary funds going to waste while the are people starving in the nation. While there are people around the world who don’t even have safe, clean water to drink; yet the government goes and spends on recycling
The amount of waste is gradually increasing with economic development in Japan. The government attempts to reduce such wastes by promoting recycling low. In addition, recycling has recently become the focus of public attention, because it is a big problem that the amount of CO2 emission is increasing in the country, and people expect that the recycling will be a good solution for increasing amount of CO2 emission. There are however, some problems to encourage recycling, especially in terms of that recycling is not efficient way to reduce CO2 emission, recycling takes high cost and people don’t have knowledge about recycling very much.
“Our E-Waste Problem is Ridiculous and Gadget Makers Aren’t Helping” written by Christina Bonnington focus on what dangerous and damaging affects e-waste has on the environment caused by gadget makers. Accordingly over forty million tons of the electronic devices, where a great fraction of the waste ending up in the landfills. For this reason, many of the chemicals in the electronics eventually seeps in the water supply. Although, it is not assume instantly as horrific, numerous chemicals in these devices are hazardous such as mercy, lead, and arsenic. This means the toxic chemicals are putting people and the landscape in danger. Meanwhile, damaged batteries that are in the electronics could cause an explosion, putting worker at risk whom remove
Policy is needed to regulate which course of action should be taken and how it should be implemented. Because of this, many plans and policies revolving around the management of solid waste have been put in place. Sometimes however, a particular policy can have its shortfalls, potentially resulting in its negative aspects outweighing the positive ones. According to the Conference Board of Canada Report, “Canadians dispose of more municipal solid waste per capita than any other country” (2013). Solid waste management in particular, involves many aspects, ranging from packaging waste, food waste, etc. (White & Franke 1999), hence, the following analysis revolves around household and commercial waste – referred to as Municipal Solid Waste (White & Franke. 1999) – in the Greater Vancouver Regional District. Municipal waste is a major health and environmental concern as it contributes to numerous problems like habitat destruction, surface groundwater pollution, and other forms of air, soil, and water contamination. Waste disposal methods like incineration create toxic substances, and landfills emit methane, which contributes to global warming. According to the Zero Waste Objective Report, “The impact of climate change and the increasing awareness of the role of “waste” and “wasting” in the production of greenhouse gas emissions is a constant environmental pressure… (2009). This leads to an increasing limitation of government to prevent and control the volume and toxicity of products in the waste stream and a growing need to shift responsibility to the product manufacturer.
As humanity develops new technology, the magnitude and severity of waste increases. When computers were developed, it widely was believed that the need for paper would be eliminated. On the contrary this was widely proven false and we are now utilizing more paper than ever. Canada is not an exception as the typical Canadian generates an average of three pounds of solid waste each day1. This alone shows what a careless species we have become- using and disposing materials without even considering the damage we are causing. With half a trillion tones of waste around the world, only 25% may be reused for a second or third time and less than 5% can be renewed limitlessly1. These facts are true only in developed countries. Since these traditional waste reduction methods have been proven inefficient, we must endorse new innovative technology to arrive at a solution.
On the other hand, some people feel that recycling should not be mandatory. Some people feel as if recycling is not always cost effective. Sometimes, there may be a need for new factories to process reusable materials. This could even create more pollution because of the cleaning, storage and transportation that takes place. Also, some people feel that recycled products may not last for long. Recycled materials are not always a reliable quality. The materials are mostly made up of trashed waste, which is why the products are cheap and last for a shorter period of time. Another reason why some people think it is not necessary to recycle is because there are unsafe and unhygienic recycling sites. Places like landfills, where all sorts of waste is dumped contribute to the spread of different diseases and other dangers caused by harmful chemicals and waste. People also think that r...
Efficient waste managing approaches help with reducing and avoiding unpleasant impact on the environment and human health, while allowing financial development and progress in the quality of people’s life. People do not even imagine what is the size and capacity of their activities and the impact they produce on the environment. Garbage is an important ecological problem. It is seems amazing that approximately all of the citizens of the world identify rubbish as a major environmental problem and yet these people still litter. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (2008), an American produces 250 million tons of garbage per year (para.2). There are different circumstances that are based on the society, environmental conditions, occupation and size of each of the different family. As Richmond (2010) stated, if no administration organizations has the responsibility or resources to concentrate their efforts on the waste disposal, then the responsibility to do that is on ...
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...