INTERN BLOG “E-waste” by: Laurie Hakes One of my favorite parts of my job is having the opportunity to learn about things I’ve never thought about before. This week I spent some time reading about landfills. I knew landfills existed, of course, but my understanding of them pretty much started and ended with the movie WALL-E. Now I have a better sense of how they work, and also what goes into them. Electronic waste, or e-waste, is a growing concern in the US and abroad. In 2010 alone, the US produced 1.6 million tons of e-waste. Most of it was discarded cell phones, but TVs and computer monitors make up a large chunk of the total, too. Some of that waste was shipped overseas but the vast majority stays here – usually in landfills. Although it’s a small fraction of the total waste generated in the US, e-waste already accounts for 40% of the lead and over 75% of the heavy metals in landfills, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. That can be an issue because acidic conditions in landfills can cause those metals to leach out of the devices. If the landfill’s liner ever breaks, those toxic compounds could cause serious problems like groundwater contamination. Aside from making sure we’ve got great landfill liners, we can minimize this risk by recycling old electronics to keep e-waste out of landfills in the first place. Many of the materials in electronics can be recovered, reducing the need for resource-intensive mining. Your typical cell phone contains more than 40 elements, including the usual suspects like lead and copper but also rarer substances like cobalt and cadmium. Fun fact: according to the EPA’s recycling site, one million cell phones contain around 75 pounds of gold. If you have some old electronics lying around, the EPA has a list of companies with recycling programs that you can find on the agencys website.
Posted on: Fri, 02 May 2014 18:53:41 +0000
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