How E-waste Works

transitions intros and and one of my classier ones. Yeah, this is uh, this is a rough topic we're about to talk about. We're gonna talk about electronic waste today, which is a very serious issue. Um, and it's more serious now, I guess than ever before because just when you think about how how the electronics industry kind of works. If you've bought a computer in the last five years, then you know this already. As soon as you get at home and you hook it up, you find out

your computer is obsolete. And the commercials on computers and seem to indicate that you know, you're a complete loser unless you go out and buy the next great computer. Well, what do you do with your old computer? You know, even if you resist that urge and you wait a year or two, eventually you're gonna build buy a new machine.

I mean, you're probably not just gonna keep upgrading your old one, because eventually you will get to a point where you can't you can't go any further with the equipment you have, and you want to stay current, especially if you're an early adopter. Um, so you go out and you you buy a new machine, But what do

you do with the old one? And? Uh, this is becoming a really important question because that turns out there's a lot of stuff in these machines that we should not allow to get into the environment because they're very, very hazardous both to humans and to to other animals and to two while you know, just plants and uh,

water supplies. I mean, it's it's serious stuff. Yeah, you want to talk about some of those are Writer Jessica Toothman did an article called how e Waste Works, and in it she says that these things are all to

be found in electronic waste. You already we got lead, we got lead, mercury, arsenic cadmium, copper, beryllium, barium, chromium, nickel, zinc, silver, and gold, and uh, you know a lot of those things, especially things like lead and mercury, are definitely not something you want in the even cadmium, yeah, you don't want. And none of those is particularly good for you. You know,

there are some that are worse than others. And of course, if you go older electronics, you know, pre you know, the mid seventies or so have PCBs worry about that serious stuff too. I Now, granted you don't find that in electronics nowadays because of their their actual regulations against it. But these are all chemicals and toxins that can be very hazardous and they're in your tronics now. While they're

in your electronics, they're they're pretty much inert. You don't really need to worry about lead sneaking out of your laptop and strangling you as you sleep, unless you're Stephen King, in which case I would probably be a pretty good book. But at any rate, uh, you know, you don't need to worry about that. But but when you throw things away, uh, you know, things get crushed, things get broken, Uh, stuff

leaches out. I mean if it's if it's in an open environment, it's it's subject to the elements, so rain and can leach out harmful chemicals and a lot of these places, the landfills, they'll actually burn the waste, which makes the things that are in your computer are even more toxic and harmful. Yeah, now when we're we're talking about throwing stuff away, um, that that's probably let's go

step number one. Don't just chunk in the trash when you're done with it, because that's exactly what's gonna happen. It's gonna get churned up by by a giant crushing machine and uh, you know if they camp out, Yeah, exactly a furnace either way, right exactly. And and so that's you know sep Number one. You need to find someplace to recycle it, and a lot of computer manufacturers will take back there there merchandise or even computers from

other people. Um. For example, my wife and I just got new iPods because hers was no longer functioning as it should and they offer Apple offers to take back the old iPods and will give you a discount um towards the new iPod, which is which is a nice thing. But the question is and you know this goes for all the manufacturers. Where does it go when they take it away? Are they actually getting recycled or are they

getting dumped in a landfill? Right and and sixty minutes did a really good expose a on this issue recently, UM. And one of the things that the group of journalists did was they actually went all the way to China to go to a massive landfills supposed to be a recycling center, but it turned out to just be a gigantic landfill, and there was this enormous pile of electronics just smoldering. You can see the smoke rising from the pile.

And this releases tons and tons of carcinogens into the atmosphere, which means all the people that work in and around that area are all at risk of of of getting cancer just for living near there because these chemicals are being released into the atmosphere. Yes, I was actually reading an article on grisp dot org, which is a very

cool environmental site. UM. And from from what I understand a lot of times, what they'll do recycling outfits will pay villagers in countries in Africa and Asia, UM, and what they'll do to get the metals and things. They'll actually stick circuit boards over a fire or over a burner and try to get the metal smell. So that's

releasing toxins into the air. Um. You know, they're probably touching some of that stuff with their hands, is leaching through their skin, you know, getting to the groundwater, and they're just sitting on vast heaps of this stuff. Um. But yeah, as a matter of fact, that that sixty minutes are report that you were referencing a moment ago, they actually some of the people attacked the journalists who

had come to from CBS to do the reports. It turned out that that some of the local businessmen who were in charge of this, uh, this landfill, had employed well, I guess there's really no other word for it other than gangsters to kind of act as muscle to keep people away from this landfill. They don't want the information getting out because this is a huge money maker for them and UM. As a result, the journalists were harassed and pushed and essentially told that if they didn't leave

they were going to get beaten up. UM. And they were able to keep the camera that the gangsters did try to wrestle the camera away, but they the journalists got away with it. They did lose a soil sample. They had taken a soil sample to test and a laboratory later, but that was taken by the gangsters. So yeah,

I mean, this is like serious business. And and here's the thing is that China can offer, like people in China can offer these these services, these so supposed recycling services for a much lower price than say a legitimate recycling center can because recycling is expensive. It's not it's not a really cheap efficient process. There's a lot of work that goes into recycling something safely, so it's less profitable for the person who has to recycle something. It's

it's more expensive for them to do it. There's less of a profit margin there. So from a revenue perspective, it's more attractive to go with one of these shady recycling outfits because you're gonna save more money that way. But in the end, you really are just doing more harm than good. So more and more companies are trying to be more responsible about this. I mean, it's for one thing, it's good press. For another, a lot of them, I think genuinely have a desire to make sure they

don't impact the environment in a harmful way. So I don't think it's just them saying, hey, we don't want this black mark on our records. We want to actually do the right thing. So you have more and more centers that are are taking these steps to make sure that the recycling has done in a responsible way. But it does mean a lot more work, that's true. And you might be asking where the federal government is coming in on this. The e P, a environmental protection agency

that is UM, has been criticized for not doing enough UM. Recently, they came out with a document called Responsible Recycling Practices for Use in Accredited Certification Programs also known as are

too for Responsible Recycling UM. It's pretty neat because it uh, it basically takes into account the workers health and safety, UM, the environmental environmental mobile practices like the abominable as it is exactly UM and basically it says, anybody who's disassembling or recycling used electronics, these are guidelines that they can follow. The key word in there is can. It's a voluntary practice.

So UM, really there's nothing that uh. You know, obviously, environmental groups UM are going to be more interested in a you know, restrictive piece of legislation, a set of guidelines. Um. But there are some things that you can do UM to reclaim this. I actually saw an article in the New York Times on on November twelve that was talking about a group in New England. And let's see the name of it is UM on one second, the name of it is E Scrap Destruction there in New York.

And uh. The people who founded the company, father and son team, had actually been paper recyclers and they we're trying they were looking at the problem of e waste and what they do. They actually treat it like they would paper. Now, when you recycle paper, you shred it, destroy it, you know, break it down, uh, and then basically reform the paper. Well uh, for they're sort of taking our que from that because they had a giant

shredder built. So they run the electronics through the shredder and then use you know, the stuff that comes out. And this you know, obviously, if you run a hard drive through a shredder, you're also completely uh destroying the hard drive to make it the data any data left on it's safe, it's nonrecoverable in that case exactly. So

this this is an added benefit of this. But what they'll do is they'll take out they run magnets over it, and that pulls out anything that's ferriss um, and they send it to another organization that can pull out the bits of glass and other things. And they they separated out piece by piece, sort of like a single stream recycling go through and pick got all the copper and all the lead and all the glass which can be reused and recent and their their policy is that nothing

goes into a landfill. Everything is reclaimed, which is a pretty neat way. This is the first time I've actually seen anybody do this, so, um, it's pretty awesome stuff.

That's incredible. And and so if you are looking at recycling some of your electronic devices and whether that be you know, a computer or a handheld device, a phone, cellular phone, something like that, make sure you do a little research into the various recycling programs that are that are available to you, and uh and make sure that it's going to the right place, because I mean, what's the point otherwise you can just toss it out if if it's gonna end up in a landfill anyway, Um,

do a little legwork. See if you can find any reports on on how, um, how the recycling center handles its materials. Uh. And of course the other option is always to try and find a way to reuse whatever it is that that you have that's become obsolete. Some people convert old computers into a really you know, cheap server or just a storage device, so they keep it in use. They're just not using it as their primary

machine anymore. That's true. UM. As a matter of fact, my my wife's aforementioned iPod, the screen went bad, but it still works great as a as a portable hard drive, So you know, you strip the music off of it and it's it's still functions as a hard drive. You just can't see. You can't use as a nipod anymore because you can't see the information on the screen. UM. And uh, Honestly, what what Jonathan is saying to UM, I think is that consider what you're doing with it.

If you can make your computer or your electronics last a little bit longer, um, that's also helping keep it out of the out of the landfill. So if you can reuse it in some other way or you know, a simple upgrade, then you're you know, changing one board instead of the entire machine. Right, you could even be a hand me down, you know, you could. You could instead of just throwing away your computer, if someone else

needs it, you could always donate it to them. Um, and make sure you wipe off any information on that computer before you give it to anyone else. I just recently, for instance, as a personal example, I purchased a used Xbox to have a second Xbox at home. Don't judge me, and uh, I needed a second Xbox, and I did, and I got home and I plugged it in to make sure it worked, and it was working just fine, and I thought, hey, you know what I should do.

I should check and see if whomever owned this before me had an Xbox Live account and see if their information is still on here, because that would be irresponsible of them to do that, and I should, as a responsible person, deleted if that's the case. Sure enough, there was, there was all this information on there. There was an account information I could have possibly activated that account through the Xbox Live and and the next thing you know,

I've got free Xbox Live. Until the some realizes they're being charged for something that they're not using. UM. So yeah, definitely wipe your information before you whether you're going to recycle it, throw it away, give it to someone, wipe your information first. You don't want that getting in the hands of somebody. And and don't throw it away. Recycle it or give it away, but don't throw it away.

But and you know, I'm looking at using an old computer that I have as a possible media PC now, um, mainly as a storage device because I've got an old CPU just sitting around not doing anything. And uh, I thought, well, hey, you know that would be a good way to to put to you. So since we had our little podcast about media centers, I thought, hey, why why am I not doing this? So I may actually do that. You got inspired, did you? All right? Well? Um, oh, we

were going to mention one other update. We did talk in a previous podcast about a pretty nasty material that is found in things like plasmid displays and solar panels, even to produce the panels. Correct, Yeah, you're talking about nitrogen trifluoride. Yes, our old friend nitrogen trifluoride. That now, if you recall, if you listen to that podcast, we mentioned that nitrogen trifluoride is seventeen thousand times more powerful at holding in heat than carbon dioxide and the atmosphere,

in the atmosphere and that. But but because for the longest time, most people thought there wasn't really that much of it in the atmosphere at all. No one really thought about it in terms of global warming. They just thought it was it wasn't a player in the global warming scheme of things. Um, But it turns out that there is some in the atmosphere. And recently Fox News broke a story that there's more than we thought, four

times more of it in the atmosphere than we thought. Yeah, so four times the amount of what of a gas that is seventeen thousand times more harmful than carbon dioxide from a global warming perspective. So that's another good reason to make sure that you find a way to recycle your electronics. Also, it just means that manufacturers have to be careful and try and find different ways to produce these electronics without creating these toxic materials in the first place. Yeah,

I think you're right. Do you have anything else said for this wonderful topic? I am too. Well, if you want to learn more, you can read how e ways works at how stuff works dot com. That's live right now, and we'll talk to you again soon For more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works dot Com Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you