E-Waste Essay Example

The article published in the national geographic magazine on 2008 was composed by Caroll. In this article, the author has put the light on the issue of the e-waste and the harmful impact of e-waste on the global world. The article is initiated with the real world incident in which the author has met the persons who earned their living by recycling the e-waste. This recycles was far away from the literal meaning of recycling. The persons took out the memory chips, wires, and other useful components from the electronic gadgets and burn the rest which liberates lead and cadmium. Both of them are hazardous to the health. Gordon Moore found out the fact 40 years ago which illustrated that the computer processes get doubles every two years. Furthermore, new designs of electronic gadgets are produced which in turn makes the older ones to get to an end. Most of this e-waste becomes the part of the landfills which causes the emission of harmful substances such as mercury, lead, arsenic, beryllium and cadmium. Some states possesses recyclers companies which carry out the recycling of the e-waste keeping the liberation of most possible fewer harmful substances into the environment in consideration. On the contrary others transported this e-waste to the developing countries where these materials are disposed of without taking care of its hazardous effects. In order to prevent the developing countries getting harm from the e-waste produced and discarded in the developed countries, the federation and government have devised some rules and legislation for this e-waste. However, the e-waste was not allowed to be dumped in the recyclers companies. Moreover, law for the production of green electronic items was passed. Consequently, the green electronics will have fewer toxic substances in its composition. In addition to this, the most of the electronic wastes was transported to china, and it was thought to get recycled but the fact turn out to be otherwise. The companies in china extracted the metals from these e-waste while burn the rest. The china government banned the import of e-waste after the exposure of truth regarding the recyclers companies.
The problem of e-waste is rising, and the main responsibility lies with the consumers of the electronics in my opinion. The customers who use the electronics and dispose of it off for new electronic gadgets never ponder on the toxic composition of these materials. Even they are aware of the toxicity and global harm caused by the e-waste, they do not raise their voices against the production of electronic gadgets comprising of the harmful chemicals. If they keep on protesting the electronic items and ask for the green electronics, the production companies will strive for the green electronics.
The blame in the article ‘High-Tech Trash’ is laid upon the government and recycle companies. The recycler companies favor their own benefit and let the toxic chemicals be a part of the environment. On the other hand, the government has not strictly put the law in action against the e-waste and has not strictly made the production of green electronics possible.
The video is bearing the title ‘The story of electronics’ composed by The Story of Stuff Projects, blamed the producers of the electronic gadgets for the problem of the e-waste. Under the slogan of “designed for the dump,” the production companies devise the electronic gadgets for the use of the shorter period of time. Hence, the newly launched gadgets replaced the older ones after the short time span. Consequently the older becomes the part of the dump.

Reference

Caroll. C (2008). High-Tech Trash. National Geographic Society. Retrieved from http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/high-tech-trash/carroll-text on 9th march 2015.
The Story of Stuff Projects (2010). The story of electronics. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW_7i6T_H78 on 9th march 2015.