Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Electronic waste management essay
What is a solution for e-waste
Electronic waste management essay
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Electronic waste management essay
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.
Talk to the manufacturing vice president, scheduled to visit next week, and emphasize the responsibility that Chem-Tech has as an industry leader to set an example. Recommend to her that Chem-Tech participate in voluntary pollution reduction as a marketing tool, positioning itself as the environmentally friendly choice.
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?
Dixon, Will. "Will Dixon's ECO 108 Site: Critical Analysis: The Case for Contamination." Will Dixon's ECO 108 Site: Critical Analysis: The Case for Contamination. Class Summary, Oct. 2010. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.
US Enviromental Protection Agency. (2010, December 13). Retrieved January 20, 2011, from US EPA Human Health: http://cfpub.epa.gov/eroe/index.cfm?fuseaction=list.listByChapter&ch=49
The environmental health problems described in this book are that phthalates, PFOA and PCBs are dangerous chemicals. We are exposed to these chemicals on a daily basis and they are common household products and hygienic products. We are also increasing our exposure levels, which can create negative health effects and affect our environment. The magnitude of the problem is enormous. Everybody uses and are exposed these products on a daily basis.
Meaning corporations purposely make products that won’t last or will be otherwise social unacceptable to own in the near future. This is all a trick to cause the consumer to buy more of a product and spend more money. According to Annie Leonard, author of The Story of Stuff, “[designers] discussed how fast they can make stuff break and still leave the consumer with enough faith in the product to go buy another one” (11). This fuels consumption further than necessary and most importantly at an alarmingly wasteful way. Nothing shows more obsolescence than the technology market with computers and phones. Giles Salde wrote an award winning book about technology obsolescence and explains “a century of advertising has conditioned us to want more, better, and faster from any consumer good we purchase, in 2004 about 315 million working PCs were retired in North America” (Planned Obsolescence viewpoint). This shows the affect caused by corporations to increase profits at the cost of resources. They use new software and products being incompatible with previous versions of electronics to force consumers to buy more. You see this commonly with televisions, gaming systems, computers, and many other electronic
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.
Many companies all over the world produce chemicals for their products that are harmful to the environment, human health, and to all living species. Green Chemistry is the use of chemistry for the prevention of chemical pollution to the environment by using chemicals that are benign, or not harmful. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) states that the mission of Green Chemistry is, “To promote innovative chemical technologies that reduce or eliminate the use or generation of hazardous substances in the design, manufacture, and use of chemical products.” Green Chemistry contains any aspects and types of chemical processes that reduce the negative effects of certain chemicals, in a way, using chemistry to fight chemistry.
BA#v=onepage&q=price%20of%20cell%20phone%20in%201980s&f=false Chowdhury. R. Evolution Of Mobile Phones: 1995 - 2012. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/evolution-of-mobile-phones/ MobiThinking. Global mobile statistics 2013 Part A: Mobile subscribers; handset market share; mobile operators. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats/a#subscribers Poole. I. History of Mobile Phone. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.radio-electronics.com/info/cellulartelecomms/history/mobile-cell-phone.php UMTS World. History of UMTS and 3G development. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.umtsworld.com/umts/history.htm WorldMapper. Cellular Subscribers 1990. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.worldmapper.org/display.php?selected=333
ILO. 2014. Environmental and Public Health Issues. [online] Available at: http://www.ilo.org/oshenc/part-xi/iron-and-steel/item/593-environmental-and-public-health-issues [Accessed: 24 Mar 2014].
U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, (EPA). (2012, June 21). Toxic air pollutants. Retrieved from http://www.epa.gov/air/toxicair/newtoxics.html
Hazardous materials are in almost every community placing everyone at some level of contact with various chemicals almost daily as they exist throughout the community and in our households. Chemicals are used for a variety of purposes such as in the water purification process, by farmers to produce a higher crop yield and are used in households and almost every business. Not all chemicals are hazardous but most pose some level of risk to people...
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...
Poliakoff, M., Fitzpatrick, J. M., Farren, T. R., & Anastas, P. T. (2002). "Green Chemistry: Science and Politics of Change." Science, 297, 807-810.
"Recycling | Reduce, Reuse, Recycle | US EPA." US Environmental Protection Agency. Web. 06 Dec. 2011. .