Electronic Waste Mountains
Posted December 12th, 2009 by simon
The United Nations released information recently that an estimated 20-50 million tonnes of electronic waste is produced every single year. This ranges from old mobile phones to old computers. A large amount of that waste ends up in India and China where workers toil in appalling conditions picking through the metallic carcasses and extracting any parts which can be sold on for cash. This may be recycling of a sort but the horrible reality for many workers is long hours, frequent injury and exposure to toxic chemicals in return for which they earn around $3 per day.
Many people are calling for the manufacturers to take responsibility and mobile phone manufacturers are seen as one of the biggest offenders because mobile phone waste is growing by almost 10% every year thanks to free upgrades and an endless parade of new models. Perfectly good electronics are thrown out by people every day, devices that could go on working for many more years are ditched in favour of the latest releases. With no clear solution being proposed it remains to be seen whether this problem will be tackled or left to grow ever larger.
