Issues Paper on E-Waste
E-WASTE and Environmental Impacts of Computer Hardware
Electronic Waste (E-waste) is a generic term embracing various forms of electric and electronic equipment that is loosely discarded, surplus, obsolete, or broken. When e-waste is improperly discarded as trash, there are predictable negative impacts on environment and human health. E-Waste is a popular, informal name for discarded electronic products, such as computers, VCRs, and cameras, which have reached the end of their useful life. Discarded electronic products contain toxic metals and chemicals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, and PCBs which effects environment very badly causing many harmful diseases to mankind. Due to the continuous development in technology in today’s world many electronic products are produced every day and large amount of them is being discarded as they are reaching the end of their life which leads to the wastage of goods.
The rapid progression of technology has undoubtedly produced many advantageous commodities for the modern era, many of which are essential to our daily lives. However, as the technology evolves, 2580tonnes of appliances and electronic waste (e-waste) of previous generation electronics fill landfills where the accumulation of toxic metals continues to grow [1]. Computers are one of the highly purchased electronic items and have a useful life of 3-5 years only, thus contributing huge amounts to annual e-waste volumes. Hence, as the E-waste is increasing day-by-day environment is also effected very badly causing in untimely change of weather conditions, birth to new bacteria causing human infections, and also in polluting the surrounding environments and depleting of Ozone layer making the globe a worst place to live in and hence there must be some preventive measures to be taken to reduce this e-waste by educating the people and reusing the discarded products for various other purposes.
The main issue in this field is presented in the paper “The Wild
Electronic Waste (E-waste) is a generic term embracing various forms of electric and electronic equipment that is loosely discarded, surplus, obsolete, or broken. When e-waste is improperly discarded as trash, there are predictable negative impacts on environment and human health. E-Waste is a popular, informal name for discarded electronic products, such as computers, VCRs, and cameras, which have reached the end of their useful life. Discarded electronic products contain toxic metals and chemicals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, and PCBs which effects environment very badly causing many harmful diseases to mankind. Due to the continuous development in technology in today’s world many electronic products are produced every day and large amount of them is being discarded as they are reaching the end of their life which leads to the wastage of goods.
The rapid progression of technology has undoubtedly produced many advantageous commodities for the modern era, many of which are essential to our daily lives. However, as the technology evolves, 2580tonnes of appliances and electronic waste (e-waste) of previous generation electronics fill landfills where the accumulation of toxic metals continues to grow [1]. Computers are one of the highly purchased electronic items and have a useful life of 3-5 years only, thus contributing huge amounts to annual e-waste volumes. Hence, as the E-waste is increasing day-by-day environment is also effected very badly causing in untimely change of weather conditions, birth to new bacteria causing human infections, and also in polluting the surrounding environments and depleting of Ozone layer making the globe a worst place to live in and hence there must be some preventive measures to be taken to reduce this e-waste by educating the people and reusing the discarded products for various other purposes.
The main issue in this field is presented in the paper “The Wild
References: 1.) Schrier, D. (2009) Electronic-Waste Recycling in British Columbia. Environmental Statistics. BC Stats 2009 2.) Blevis, E. 2007. Sustainable interaction design: invention and disposal, renewal and reuse. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (San Jose, CA, USA, April 28-May 3, 2007). CHI’07. ACM, New York, NY, 503-512. DOI=http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1240624.124070 3.) F. Taiariol, P. Fea, and C. Papuzza, Environmental impact of a telecommunication service, Proc. IEEE Symp. Electronics and the Environment, 2001. 4.) Sun Fire X4200 Server Family – Overview, http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x4200/. 5.) KoldLok Raised Floor Grommets, http://www.upsitetechnologies.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=22&Itemid=51.