What to Do about all the E-Waste

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A product made today will not last long deliberately. Most products are planned so that they die or fail after certain months, and most of them are unrepairable or almost the same price of the product to get it repaired. A new and better product will be out for us to buy. Due to these reasons we the consumers tend to buy more products. This is called as “Planned obsolescence”, what is planned obsolescence? Basically it is a business strategy in which a product is planned and manufactured in a way that it will create problems for the user. It is done because in future the consumer will feel a need to purchase new products from the manufacturer again. Most manufacturing companies use planned obsolescence in order to increase their profits and to make sure that the consumers are constantly buying their products only. For example; Apple, almost all their products are planned obsolescence. New Apple’s iPhone comes out every year, the new one will a little difference and a small performance boost. IPhone 5 came out on September 21, 2012, before that people had iPhone 4s. After the release of iPhone 5, they also released an upgrade to the OS to the iPhone older line, which caused problems. “The new operating system (iOS 7) being pushed out to existing users was making older models unbearably slow. Apple phone batteries, which have a finite number of charges in them to begin with, were drained by the new software.” [1] Not just apple, almost all electronic company does this. It is like products are developed with a time bomb chip installed in them, so that they will start slowing down when a new model comes out. In the old days the main objective of manufacturing companies was to produce the most reliable, high in quality and durable prod...

... middle of paper ...

.... The process of recycling products with hazardous components inside them have a great challenge, ultimately this will force producers to design products which are environmentally friendly and more sustainable.

Works Cited

1. Rampell, Catherine. "Cracking the Apple Trap." The New York Times. The New York Times, 02 Nov. 2013. Web. 04 Apr. 2014.
2. "Following The Trail Of Toxic E-Waste." CBSNews. CBS Interactive, n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2014.
3. "Green Chemistry vs Toxic Technology." Electronics TakeBack Coalition. TakeBack Coalition, n.d. Web. 04 Apr. 2014.
4. R. Chepesiuk, “Where the Chips Fall: Environmental Health in the Semiconductor Industry.” Environmental Health Perspectives 107 (1999): 452-457. E-Book. 04 Apr. 2014.
5. "Global mobile statistics 2012 Part A: Mobile subscribers; handset market share; mobile operators". Mobithinking. 2012-08-09. Web. 04 Apr. 2014.

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