A close look at the way we are living now is already alarming when we think about the world our children and grandchildren are going to inherit from us.
In the USA there are over 76 computers for every hundred people, and the number is growing, making the USA a country which has the potential to generate more e-waste than any others in the world. In 2005, Congress and about two dozen legislatures introduced e-waste bills. In February 2005 the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit “dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government” released a report on electronics recycling. It claimed that “a single 120 foot-deep, 44 square-mile landfill could accommodate the United States’ garbage for the next 1,000 years,” and that modern landfills can safely handle e-waste.... Still, any comprehensive system for electronics recycling in the United States seems a long way off (Grossman, p.256).
Accumulating hazardous materials generated by and used in high-tech manufacturing and e-waste risks undermining the ecological sustainability --safe drinking water and food, clean air, safe and healthy working conditions, long-term health and biodiversity of fully functioning ecosystems, communities slip into disadvantaged, impoverished, unhealthy, socially unstable conditions (Grossman, p. 263).
In 1981 the California State Health Department found a highly contaminated well in south San Jose, Well 13, that belonged to the Great Oaks Water Company. Lorraine Ross, whose daughter was born with a heart defect, and her neighbors who lived in the neighborhood and had similar problems filed a series of lawsuits for compensation for those whose children had been harmed. They demanded a law to prevent what had been happening from continuing to happen. The discovery of this contamination and community concern about the related health impacts led to the birth of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition in 1982(Grossman,p.77).
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lists groundwater pollution
by solvents, particularly trichlororethylene (TCE) and trichlororethane (TCA),as toxic to the nervous, respiratory, endocrine, and reproductive systems, as well as to liver and kidney function. TCE and TCA are volatile organic, chlorinated compounds which do not occur naturally in the environment. TCE is also considered as a probable carcinogen. Some studies have indicated there is a link between exposure to TCE-contaminated well water and children born with heart defects. TCE is not very soluble, so it enters and remains in the groundwater for a long time. Because of its volatility, it often passes from ground water to soil then to groundwater again. TCE vapor can even pass from soil to the air, and can travel indoors. When contaminated soil comes into contact with cracks in basement, cellar, and foundations. Toxic pollution comes from high tech electronics and semiconductor manufacturer industry in various communities in Silicon Valley, Arizona, New Mexico, New York, Texas, and elsewhere around the USA and the world. The pollution comes from leaks and spills of volatile organic compounds such as TCE, TCA, copper, Freon, and lead(Grossman, pp. 76-78). No matter what amazing innovations the next decades of high tech bring, one thing is certain: e-waste is not going to disappear, neither is the prodigious use of chemicals in high-tech manufacturing, nor will we see an end to all natural-resource extraction (Grossman, p.253).
The multiplication of world population, and the expansion of the consumer culture have increased trash and solid waste production year after year. From 1970 to 1993 recycling programs increased domestic waste recovery from 7% to 22%, while solid waste production in the USA increased from 3.2 pounds per person per day to 4.4 pounds per person per day. That means the trash that had to be dumped or burned increased from 3 pounds to 3.4 pounds per person per day. Instead of the “paperless office,” we have more computers with more printouts. We keep buying more computers, but not knowing what to do with the old ones (Strasser, p. 290).
The consumer culture continues to thrive on taking in natural resources and excreting refuse, in what industrial ecologists describe as an open system, where waste does not get used. The refuse of the wealthy endangers the living spaces of the poor. And consumer trash is only part of the refuse problem, which in itself probably creates less damage to the global environment than automobile emissions, air-conditioning, and the production of consumer goods(Strasse, p.291).
In December 1998, the enormous Fresh Kills landfill in New York nearly full, NY began making arrangements to ship refuse to New Jersey. The plan met protest from officials there. A month later, a contract to ship it to Virginia provoked a challenge from that state’s governor. New York’s mayor declared that people from other states should accept the trash because NY provided cultural benefits to tourists from all over America. But visitors to NY were not the ones living near the landfills that finally took the city’s trash. Waste Management Inc. of Houston operated a 934-acre landfill in Charles City County, among the poorest in Virginia, nearly two-thirds African American. Like poor people elsewhere, they did it for the money to build schools and cut property taxes (Strasse, pp.291-292).
People of the developed economies show no sign of giving up their status objects and handy products, nor will those from less developed ones give up their desire for the popular consumer goods of the twentieth century. “Today we have a natural right to new objects,” writes Gilles Lipovetski, “we know nothing but the ethic of consumption.”
Recycling and composting programs have gradually been recognized as viable options. Activists have pressured both government agencies and corporations to create recycling programs and to reduce waste at the source in the service of global, regional, and local environments. Green research and development is encouraged. Some people are willing to give up some level of personal convenience in their daily life. A few businesses may start to be willing to risk profits, in order to foster solutions to environmental problems, or to avoid contributing to them. Sorting trash for recycling has become a moral act, a symbol of care for the environment. Americans and Western Europeans have responded to environmental problems by returning to reuse and recycling, sometimes in high-tech versions.
But we need to change our lifestyle with new ideas of morality, and utility. With common sense, universal responsibility, and the value of life and labor we should replace the consumer culture for a better world(Strasse, p. 293).
Sources:
Elizabeth Grossman. High Tech Trash. (Washington, D.C.: IslandPress, 2006).
Susan Strasser. Waste and Want –A Social History of Trash. (New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, 1999).
