Recycling

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Notes for an eventual page on recycling...

[edit] E-waste

Disposal of 1,000 personal computers generates:

  • 12,640 pounds of plastics
  • 3,160 pounds of lead
  • 6 pounds of Cadmium
  • 3.8 pounds of Chromium
  • 1.264 pounds of Mercury

The Basel Action Network is a not-for-profit organization that focuses on "global environmental injustice and economic inefficiency" of toxic trade. Toxic trade is a term referring to the outsourcing of E-waste or electronic waste, to the developing world, especially Asia. Electronics collected for "recycling" are often shipped to China and similar countries where they are stripped of valuable materials and left to pollute the local environment.


BAN produced a 2002 report (and video) entitled Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia.


The economic inefficiency argument derives from the concept of externalities - costs that an economic activity causes but does not incorporate into its price (i.e. the cost of purchasing a product includes the cost of producing and distributing it, but not of disposing of it).


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