E-Waste Recycling

Recycling can be described as the assembling, developing, promoting or buying of products which are prepared from waste products. Recycling process is majorly practiced in all parts of the world owing to the depletion of naturally occurring raw materials and increase in energy consumption, decreasing landfill space and ultimately its adverse effects caused on the environment.

Recycling comes into picture for those commodities that are used extensively by almost everyone in the world. It is important to reduce the wastage and increase the re-usage of such items to maintain a good balance in the environment. One such commodity that has found increasing usage in the past decade is the computer. Computers are largely in demand in all walks of life, be it for personal use or for other businesses. Although, since these gadgets get outdated pretty soon and require replacing every now and then, it poses a problem in increasing the disposal of such electronic waste, also known as e-waste, into our landfills. e-waste recycling is a method of retaining operable parts and components from unusable electronic devices and having systems dismantled in a way that allows for safe extraction of certain constituents from the original to be reused in other products.

Computers contain toxic and carcinogenic chemicals such as lead oxide, mercury, nickel, zinc, cadmium, dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chromium and radioactive isotopes which are extremely perilous to human health and the environment. Some of these materials like tin, silicon, iron, aluminum and a variety of plastics can be reused in the construction of new systems thus curbing the costs of manufacture of fresh raw materials. They may also contain valuable components like lead, copper and gold that can be retained successfully. Although this comes with a drawback. The lead that is contained in the lead glass of the cathode ray tube and the lead contained in the circuit boards in the form of lead-solders have the tendency to leach into groundwater or create air pollution through incineration. Another drawback is when retaining the valuable metals via incinerations and acid treatments, they may release and synthesize further toxic by products.

So the best possible way to reduce accumulation of e-wastes is to donate used computers to schools and non-profit organizations or you can send it to a recycling facility that recycles metals, glass and plastic like articles. The parts of the computers that can be recycled are the glass monitor, keyboard, CD Rom drive, plastic case, cathode ray tube, cables, copper in power cord, metals from the circuit board, printer cartridges and batteries. You can also take a step ahead while ordering new computers by cross checking if the manufacturers offer recycling services. Most major brands and companies offer some form of recycling. Certain manufactures also offer a free replacement service while purchasing a new computer of a specific brand. They take back the old computers, refurbish them and re-sell them in the market. There are also online auction sites like eBay where one can resell their computers for a reasonable price.

The only thing to be taken under consideration for secure recycling is that the private data on the hard drive is destroyed because we do not want to encourage illegal activities like identity thefts that can cause major businesses to lose more than just money.

Tagged as: Ewaste, recycling