That waste could be reduced through reuse, repair, or resale. Whether it ever will be is an open question. Electronics have always produced waste, but the quantity and speed of discard has increased rapidly in recent years. There was a time when households would keep televisions for more than a decade.
But thanks to changes in technology and consumer demand, there is hardly any device now that persists for more than a couple of years in the hands of the original owner. As per the report of ENDS Europe agency , built-in obsolescence increased the proportions of all units sold to replace defective appliances from 3.
The share of large household appliances that had to be replaced within the first five years grew from 7 percent of total replacements in to 13 percent in According to a Gallup poll , 89 percent of young adults 18 to 29 own smartphones; 41 percent of the older generation owned VCRs at the same age. The widespread use of semi-conductors and entrance of new players from Brazil, China, and India has made the manufacturing of portable devices relatively inexpensive , and the difficulty, inconvenience, or high cost of repair has made new purchases more economical.
Manufacturers have also used software updates to privilege newer models of smartphones and computers, invisibly pressuring consumers to buy new devices just to maintain parity of experience. And companies have also increasingly ended support for older models or the operating systems that run on them. WhatsApp and Facebook, for example, recently announced that they will stop providing support for their apps on certain older models of Blackberry.
Following the lead set by razor blades, printer manufacturers have realized that they can make more money selling ink and toner than the printer hardware itself. But the prices of printers are so low that once their initial ink supply is spent, the consumer is tempted to buy a whole new machine.
This idea of pushing consumers to buy new items quickly by artificially reducing the lifespan of products is hardly new. In , Phoebus , a cartel between Osram, Phillips, Tungsram, and General Electric, insured that light bulbs did not exceed an expected life span of 1, hours.
This cartel was dissolved in , when Eastern European manufacturers started producing low-cost bulbs. But today, planned obsolescence has broader and more serious consequences. Large and small appliances, as well as cell phones and some toys, also are considered forms of e-waste. In the office setting, some of the most common examples are computer monitors and towers, printers, phones, keyboards, calculators and lamps. Although there are services that refurbish, recycle or safely dispose of these items, a large amount of e-waste still ends up in a landfill.
In fact, the U. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 60 percent of discarded electronics end up in the trash. There are multiple reasons why you should reconsider throwing electronics in the trash.
Here are just a few that may impact your business and community the most. Many electronic devices contain hazardous chemicals. In addition to contaminating soil, hazardous wastes can pollute the air and leach into water sources. E-waste recycling benefits are numerous and the need to address these items in the solid waste stream is becoming more urgent.
E-waste may make its way into scrapyards , mixed in with cars, old appliances and industrial scrap handled by the scrap metal recycling industry. Individual recyclers have different approaches for how to handle these items, but more progress is being made on how to extract valuable material and move these items through the recycling process. Not only is this a problem for E-waste in landfills, but this is a side effect of mining for new sources of metal too. Having an environmentally-friendly source of recycled metal is better for the environment than a company digging up new sources of ore.
Every time you recycle your electronics, you are preventing your E-waste from leaching toxic metals into your groundwater. The recycling of e-waste serves a lot of useful purposes. For instance, include protecting human and environmental health by keeping those devices out of landfills. Or recovering the parts within the devices that still have value, and providing manufacturers with recycled metals that can be used to make new products.
Virtually all electronic waste contains some form of recyclable material. But in far too many instances, they are thrown away. With electronic recyclers like GLEC , we have a solution. The challenge is getting recycling rates, still stubbornly low, to increase. The definition of e-waste is likely to keep expanding. In an era of rapid technological advancement, more and more highly sophisticated electronic goods are being invented and manufactured.
Unfortunately, a skyrocketing amount of e-waste is being written off by owners as junk. New models arrive even as the current one appears to be working just fine. Despite that, the latest version always provides additional features that make it seem too enticing to resist.
The technology innovators continue to create electric devices designed to make our lives easier and more convenient in every conceivable way. Still, we seem all too susceptible to quickly pitching the machines we already have. In , Congress first addressed the issue of hazardous waste disposal with the passage of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. This act sets standards for protecting human health and the natural environment from the potential hazards of waste disposal.
One of the goals of the law was to ensure the management of waste in an environmentally sound manner. The next major step was the Basel Convention in March , an international treaty designed to reduce the movements of hazardous waste between nations and prevent the transfer of hazardous waste from developed to less-developed countries.
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