Why should we care about E Waste?
What is E Waste?
Burn them, shred them, throw them into landfills, throw them into the oceans, put them in vats of acid, send them to space, anything but recycle them properly. That’s right. We’re talking of E waste. When I say E waste, what do you think of? Most of you would think of piles and piles of electronics thrown into random ditches in Africa. And while that is a sad reality happening in our world, there is much more to E waste than just landfills. According to Britannica, Electronic Waste is electronic equipment that consumers no longer want, or can use, and it is one of the fastest growing segments of the world’s waste stream. E waste is categorized and classified on the basis of its composition and components.
Where does E Waste actually go?
We, as consumers, are led to believe that our E Waste is being safely recycled in our own cities. The harsh reality is that, according to the United Nations Environment Programme, only 12.5% of all E waste gets recycled! The other 85% is being sent to landfills or incinerated, releasing harmful toxins into the environment. However even recycling E waste can be detrimental to the environment, especially since the toxic materials in the electronics are impossible to actually reuse. The discarded E - waste is sent to developing countries where workers extract the precious metals from the discarded electronics. Those countries don’t have the capacity to properly recycle or dispose of the electronics or their hazardous components. The workers burn and break the electronics, looking for precious metals, and as a result they get exposed to many toxic substances. According to theworldcounts.com, workers on E-Waste sites are paid an average of $1.50 per day.
How does E Waste affect the environment?
Soil
First of all, E waste can pollute the soil from many different sources. One of them is that effluents and waste products which are used in order to recapture precious metals from electronics can seep into the ground. These effluents tend to contain mercury if the process of amalgamation is used, or cyanide if cyanide leaching is used. Another way that contamination can occur is when the E waste is burnt, shredded, or dismantled, particles can be produced(similar to how the ashes of a campfire are produced) , later the ashes will settle on the soil and then redistribute themselves through it. Lastly, the soil can be contaminated from direct contact with e-waste, as broken E waste in landfills can slowly leak chemicals into the ground as they break down further. Unfortunately, this contamination does not tend to degrade due to their non-organic nature, staying in the soil for a very long period of time, and possibly evolving into even more toxic toxins, leaving the soil contaminated for longer. This contamination also happens to affect almost everything around it, as it kills the microbes in the soil, is accumulated by plants, which can make them sick, and to make matters worse, these chemicals can also pass on along the food chain, entering humans and causing many maladies, such as brain, kidney, lung, and liver damage in the case of heavy metals. These chemicals can also leach from soil to water as my partner will cover.
Water
The heavy metals and toxins from E waste leach into the soil, contaminating it, and the life around it. However, the soil is not the only thing affected. I’m sure everyone here has heard of the water cycle. As you know, all water is in the water cycle, just in different ways. Water travels through the atmosphere, bodies of water, living beings, and the soil. When we dump our E-Waste into landfills, or burn them, or shred them, throw them into the oceans, put them in vats of acid, send them to space, or do anything but dispose of them properly, they make their way into the water. Yes, even the space thing. Some methods of recycling E waste actually still leads to leaching and evaporation of harmful chemicals. Groundwater gets contaminated from landfills, acid and burning release chemicals into the atmosphere, and space debris falls from space and burns up in the atmosphere. I’m not even going to get into how dangerous it is for E waste to be in space. Eventually the contaminated water runs into bigger bodies of water, dilutes, and toxifies it. During its path, the contaminated toxic water poisoned plants, animals, and humans that consumed it. The heavy metals also lead to acid rain, which I will touch upon later. How is that? Mini science lesson! An example is a heavy metal like mercury. Mercury converts into methyl-mercury inside bodies of water. The methyl mercury bioaccumulates in wildlife in the ocean, and travels up the food chain until it reaches us. Methylmercury impairs neurological development, causes kidney problems, affects the immune system, alters genetic and enzyme systems, and damages the nervous system, including coordination and the senses of touch, taste, and sight, especially in tiny children like you guys. If we don’t stop, eventually all drinkable water on earth will be chemically polluted.
Air
Lastly, E waste can also contaminate the air through many channels. First of all, e waste that is being dismantled and shredded can release large particles and dust into the environment around it. These dust particles are known to cause serious and chronic respiratory illness
Another way the air can get poisoned is through the process of recycling precious metals to retrieve precious metals from circuits, as their methods (like acid bathes and desoldering) burn away and dissolve the remaining material, releasing it as dangerous fumes.
The last way that the air can become polluted is with the unregulated burning of e waste to not only dispose of E-waste of little value, but to retrieve valuable metals. This burning releases an array of toxins into the air, such as dioxins. These fumes tend to travel hundreds to thousands of miles and are very potent, increasing the risk of cancers.
In fact, there is even a real life example of the harms that this polluted air can cause, as in Guiyu China, E waste contaminated the air with dangerous amounts of lead, which caused severe neurological damage.
How does this affect the environment?
As covered previously, we know that E waste has huge effects on the air, water, and ground, and as a consequence, this can reach over to the ecological realm and cause lots of damage. First, let’s talk about how the damaged soil wreaks havoc on nature! As previously mentioned, toxins can leach into the soil in an array of ways, and it can make its way into humans, but it is also very detrimental to the health of the environment. First of all, the bacteria and microbes in the soil that are killed are essential for the survival of an ecosystem, as they help enrich the soil through the process of decomposition, and without them, the soil becomes inert and poor. Not to mention, the plants that grow in the soil not only become sick, but they also absorb the contamination through a process called bioaccumulation, which kind of works like beakers of water with food coloring. you can pour one beaker into another, but the food coloring still remains . These toxins eventually pass down into animals, causing sickness, brain damage, and other maladies. As a consequence, the entire ecosystem of organisms becomes sick, weakening the ecosystem. Not to mention, this process of weakening the ecosystem does not only apply to terrestrial ecosystems, but underwater ecosystems work the same way, with fish absorbing the toxins and becoming weaker. Last but not least, the contamination of the air. This not only poisons the air and consequently plants and animals, but it also causes natural phenomena dangerous for ecosystems. An example would be acid rain. This strange occurrence has the ability to destroy aquatic habitats, as it greatly increases the acidity of the water, which many aquatic organisms (such as bass or clams) cannot survive. This also affects the terrestrial plants, as acid rain can also remove nutrients from the soil that they need to grow, setting them back, and in certain cases, the rain can also strip trees of their leaves. Lastly, the nutrients that are leached by the rain can run off into local aquatic ecosystems, causing eutrophication, and therefore cause massive lake die offs (yikes.)
How does E Waste affect climate change?
First of all, manufacturing electronics already has a big impact on climate change. From mining the materials, to distributing them, to dumping them, the entire lifecycle of Electronics has a negative impact on the environment. Climate change is caused by emissions of greenhouse gasses that trap heat in the atmosphere and cause it to warm. Manufacturing electronics actually contributes a lot to the release of greenhouse gasses through the process needed to acquire and transport the materials. Many devices with screens such as digital cameras, watches, digital clocks, calculators, and smartphones use LCD, or liquid crystal displays, which emit fluorinated greenhouse gasses, or F-GHGs into the atmosphere. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, F-GHGs are 23,000 times more heat trapping than CO2, and the electronic manufacturing industry will account for up to 14% of carbon emissions by 2040. This means a lot more greenhouse gasses and chemical pollutants will be released into the atmosphere, speeding up our INEVITABLE DOOM. Then, once people get tired of their electronics, which happens more often than you think in a consumer based society, they throw their electronics away.
As we already talked about, 85% of E waste is burned. Along with releasing toxic heavy metals, since mostly plastic is incinerated, a lot of methane and CO2 and other hydrocarbons are released. CO2 is the primary contributor to global warming, and at least 25% of today's warming is driven by CO2 only. The heavy metals in the atmosphere buildup to cause smog, which, according to canada.ca, has been identified as the contributing factor in thousands of premature deaths across the country each year. Smog causes respiratory and heart diseases, and organ damage. Additionally, smog is the second biggest contributor to global warming. Smog in the atmosphere also contains sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide which causes Acid Rain. Acid rain destroys bodies of freshwater, poisons forests, harms buildings, and causes coral reef bleaching. Acid Rain causes cancer, asthma, and heart diseases. The impact of E waste stretches way further than you could ever imagine and it’s only getting worse.
In conclusion, we are killing the earth. We need to take action now.
