Apparently there have been some interesting stories about garbage lately. While many of us were first lectured on the problem of trash from a very young age, some people are seriously questioning whether or not waste, in itself, is a problem at all.

In some respects, I am inclined to agree. Litter, once the original environmental scourge, isn't really a big deal. Sure, it looks bad, but globally, trash is fairly benign. And while landfills are certainly ugly and smelly wastes of good land, commenters point out that a few square miles of land could take care of all of Americas trash for decades.

Leaving out where we'll find a few square miles of ecologically useless land for sale, and how we're going to ship all the garbage to that massive dump, the problems with e-waste have very little to do with where to put the waste.

There are two main problems with e-waste. First, it is largely toxic. Lead, mercury, selenium, cadmium, and arsenic are all very common to computer components. Second, if labor is cheap enough, and regulations lax enough, computer parts can be profitably harvested in developing countries.

The components that do end up in landfills, thus, poison the land and water surrounding the landfill. And the components that don't end up poisoning people in developing countries working for dollars a week.

But the story doesn't end there, every computer discarded is a computer that must be replaced. And the environmental costs of creating a computer are, indeed, more significant than those of disposing of one. So the commenters were correct, preventing waste is of vital importance not just because of where the waste ends up, but because wasted items must be replaced. And creating these machines, it turns out, is an environmentally significant undertaking.

Comments (8)

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written by rob , March 11, 2007

The amount of perfectly good products we throw away in the western world is very disturbing.

I had gone to our local tip (recycling center now) to dispose of the wreckage after my fence was wrecked in a recent storm.
I also took the monitor from my girlfriends computer, which had gone "pop" and started to smoke the week before.
I was asking one of the workers where to put the monitor and he showed me a big stack, heaped in the corner of a shed. I asked if any of the others worked, as I still needed a replacement.
He thought they might, so we tried a few of the best looking monitors and they seemed alright.
So I ended up going home with a 17inch monitor (girlfriend previously had a 15inch), a 64mb graphics card (got the driver off the net) and a DVD player (in its box) with a little scratch on the top, for £18.
All the items are working well and the graphics card has given my girlfriends computer a new lease of life, as it previously only had 16mb onboard.
The DVD player seems to be virtually new, apart from the slight scratch.
It does make you wonder why perfectly good items are thrown away and not sold, or given to charity shops, or online sites like Freecycle.

p.s. I was also given a perfectly good wheelbarrow to dispose of down the tip by a neighbour, which is now residing in my shed.

Waste: A deep Non-problem
written by Steve Nordquist , March 11, 2007

You're speaking as if the land used for waste were not in use! While it will be some time before someone orders building fascia made out of little-processed high-polyethelene schist that we are making in dumps, and sulfite bacteria aren't rocking that much harder than they have historically, it is not as though a compelling development will not (WM or no) process whole square miles into stuff ADM and Monsanto can sell, plus a few use-case specific types of land.

I'd agree there might be room for Crog's list or something; a place where sellers won't represent or prettify or deliver goods whose imperfections have become too much for those who know them.
The website would just sort of sense your pain and offer to deliver it from you? You wouldn't have to explain what should have worked to operate or fix it, on either end, and it would reject overextensions on giving and taking ends. "No. You were going to use that mug for paintbrushes even though you dumped coffee."

Disagreed
written by Benjamin , March 12, 2007

And while landfills are certainly ugly and smelly wastes of good land, commenters point out that a few square miles of land could take care of all of Americas trash for decades.

I have to disagree. If the world produces 40 mil. tons of e-waste (source: http://stephenleahy.wordpress....1/e-waste/) each year and I put these estimates on, it's gonna take a lot of space:

Let's say e-waste weighs 7 kg / m3
Let's say we pile it 2 meters high.

That gives us 2 billion m2 of garbage - about the size of Luxembourg. And that's the amount of e-waste the world produces each year.

E-waste can be avoided on a very large scale and it represents - as you say - both pollution from production, from use and from disposal. It represents the over-consumption that's taking place today and we need both cleaner products, smarter production systems and smarter consumers (who don't buy a new computer ever 2nd year because Bill Gates makes another crappy OS).

keenzo-computer components
written by gene , March 22, 2007

hey,i agree with you regards e-waste .there are number of disadvantages with e-waste i.e. environmental factors like pollution and also this things are utilized in the developing countries.need more about computer components...computercomponents

maybe..
written by jenny , May 02, 2007

i really think that if companies such as Electronic Recyclers
were to educate the public then maybe the citizens could do more to help the enviorment and recycle their computers and other electronics instead of throwing it in land fills. and if they informed people of things such as Video Verification of destruction
Video Verification of destruction provides clients with live video data of their e-waste destruction, removing all liability from clients and assuring that confidential information will never end up in anyone else's hands. then maybe the public would help out more.

Wedding Bands
written by Steven James , June 20, 2007

http://www.weddingbands123.com

Quality vs quantity
written by Kriss , September 04, 2007

I have this idea: nothing could be made or sold that cannot be recycled or biodegraded or bioenert. Pollution would dissappear. Could it work?

Platinum Wedding Bands
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At Love Wedding Bands, we have a large selection of diamond, platinum and men's and women's wedding bands and rings. We are your source for wedding jewelry. In business since 1994. Offering the comfort fit design and lifetime warranty.http://www.loveweddingbands.com

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