In an essay called “Fresh Water” by Barbara Kingsolver, the effects that civilization have on mother water are often mentioned and argued upon. She found that it is important to inform the audience on the shortage of supplies that humans need and how the lack of water has created those problems. She encourages all of mankind to conserve water, and save our earth. It is important to fix not only the water conservation issue, but all issues affecting the state of our planet; such as electronic waste. Electronic waste includes cell phones, computers, televisions, or tablets. Similar to the shortage of water mentioned by Kingsolver, electronic waste has enough toxicity to harm our environment and even affects our food chain.
If a cell …show more content…
Most people don’t know or understand how bad it really is. It will take a lot of awareness and laws to make a national change. Most of our timeworn computers and devices end up in landfills, burners or are shipped to foreign continents. Kingsolver often emphasizes the limitations on natural resources and not recycling electronic waste continues to put restrictions to our resources. Because the electronics we use contain toxic chemicals and other dangerous heavy metals, when the e-waste is dumped into landfills, these toxic chemicals can seep in the soil and pollute our water supplies. This process is not only life threatening to the ecosystem and wildlife, but it’s also dangerous for people living in nearby communities (McGinnis, “Benefits of Recycling”). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has statistics approximating that more than 2,000,000 tons of old electronic appliances are not being properly disposed of each year. Between 2000 and 2007 about 500 million personal computers became outdated and were thrown out (McGinnis, “Benefits of Recycling”). When these toxic chemicals enter the troposphere, people and the environment are at risk. Different ideas have been mentioned regarding what to do with all this e-waste. Crazy ideas such as sending it up into space are mentioned, but an easy option is to send it to an e-waste recycle plant. This must be enforced by laws for people to consider this