Recycling Electronics

For those of us who take our old electronic items to a local recycling center, here’s a sliver of shocking news: some 43 electronics recycling companies here in the U.S. illegally send toxic waste material through Hong Kong to southern Chinese cities.

What this means is every time you throw out an old cell phone, or dispose of a new laptop for the new sleek apparatus now on the market, you just might be contributing to the already high levels of cancerous carcinogens in cities like Guiyu, where the lead-polluted water and air pollution has led to higher incidents of miscarriages. Children are also some of the most vulnerable. 70% of the city’s young population is reported to have unusually high concentrations of lead in their blood.

This news, buttressed by this excellent report on 60 Minutes, marks a sense of urgency about the economy of waste. On one hand I feel a sense of outrage and helplessness, but on the other hand, I also realize I could do a little more to make a difference.

This weekend I was shopping around for a smart phone to replace my current ‘dumb’ phone. There’s nothing wrong with my old phone, but there are so many other tantalizing options available, and the new smart phones deliver Wi-Fi access, internet, e-mail, and doubles as a PDA.

I realize now I don’t really need this new contraption, whose novelty will most likely wear out in a matter of months. My plan now is to keep my ‘clunker’ until an environmentally safe option for its disposal is clearly present.

I also don’t think the children and women of Guiyu need more carcinogenic waste dumped outside their doorstep. After all, Americans dispose of 130,000 computers every day, and an astounding 100,000,000 cell phones annually.