A New York Times short video on electronics recycling, and how it helps keep hazardous waste out of waterways.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.
1 How much electronics waste does America create?
2 What does '80%' refer to?
3 What is the main obstacle to electronics recycling?
4 What is Green Citizen’s solution to the problem?
5 What are the two big groups in which Green Citizen divides items?
6 What does '30%' refer to?
7 What does an ecoATM allow you to do?
Just in America, we throw away two million tons of electronic waste every year. It is a major environmental and health disaster. Luckily, there’s a better way.
Lead can leak into the water and leak into the soil. When you are burning openly, just to get traces of gold, the toxic airs can emit into the atmosphere. All those environmental damages plus the health damage to the people who are near the water source, it’s been an afterthought. I have spent close to 20 years in the high-tech industry. Even a person like me did not know that 80 percent of the electronics was dumped illegally and still dumped illegally in a developing country.
The biggest hurdle to electronics recycling is cost. Green Citizen’s solution to high labor costs is to fix and sell reusable and often much needed parts and gadgets, like a new display for a broken laptop or even a replacement TV remote.
When items come to Green Citizen we divide them into what is more valuable or more useful as for scrap and what would be more useful and more valuable for resale.
We track all items to the brand name’s new ID. We monitor and control and manage that quality to make sure there’s no problem.
To be one of our reuse tech stations, here’s a phone with a cracked screen, we would take two products that are partially working, combine them together to make one product that is useable and reusable.
We even reuse up to 30 percent of the items for responsible reuse.
And once an item is ready to be posted, that information would be transmitted to one of our online retail sites like eBay or Amazon.
It could be an IC Board for a MacBook Pro or it could be a cleanly wiped iPhone. So we track all that items down in the hope to be able to provide that information to environmental organizations so they can say how many units of a certain brand is recycled responsibly. We also want to make that available to manufacturers so now they can decipher that information to figure out what product to make next.
All of this tracking creates data and data creates accountability. That could eventually shame or even encourage companies to build greener products overall. And as for what you can do, you can find responsible eRecyclers near you. Some good options are Best Buy, Staples, Dell, and there are even these things called ecoATM that let you turn in a cell phone and get cash on the spot.
There’s a huge amount of people demanding electronics so we just can’t keep digging the Earth to get the traces that matter. We really have to recycle everything. I’d like to say the iPhone 6 need to be become the iPhone 10. Then, you know, then you have to recycle. That’s necessary.
I would straight up buy this on eBay. Look at the wood. Old iPod dock, but still.
1 two million tons
2 the percetage of electronics illegally dumped
3 cost
4 sell reusable parts and gadgets
5 items for scrap and items for resale
6 the percentage of reusable items
7 hand in a cell phone and get cash immediately
