E-Waste

It takes nothing more than a glance at every child and teenager’s holiday Wishlist to recognize our growing dependence on electronic gadgets and technology. Within the course of a few months, if not shorter, a gadget can go from the latest, greatest new technology to completely and totally obsolete. One only needs to look no further than one of the most popular devices, especially among my generation- the iPod. Since the original iPod was released in 2001, there have been over a dozen variations released, averaging a new model produced every six months or so. For those who feel they always need to have the newest and best, this can be costly not only to the wallet, but the environment as well. Until recently the issue of electronic waste, also known as e-waste or WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipments), has not been an important topic in the global consciousness. However, it is quickly becoming a major environmental problem worldwide, affecting not only the environment but the health of millions of less-fortunate people. This is not to say there aren’t reasonable solutions to this problem out there. Efforts are being made by both worldwide governments and corporations who are responsible for the production of these products. The next step towards curbing the negative environmental impacts of our technology is raising awareness and making responsible recycling centers and information more readily available.

To truly understand how large of a problem e-waste has become it only takes one look at the numbers. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) estimates that in 2009, over 40 million metric tons of e-waste was produced worldwide. That number is staggering enough, but even more outrageous is the fact that UNEP also predicts that number will jump 500% to over 200 million metric tons by 2020. That adds up to over 600 pounds of electronic waste per person in the world each year, of which only about 10-15% is recycled. To me, the fact that less than a quarter of this waste is recycled properly is unacceptable. Obviously, big companies and corporations “generate [the most] electronic waste including computers and peripherals, telephones and TVs” (Hennepin County) Another troubling fact is where the majority of this waste is going. There is no definite number, but the UNEP believes that almost 60% of all e-waste is being exported to third world countries rather than local landfills, some of it illegally. This adds to the desperate conditions already found in many underdeveloped countries, as most electronic devices contain at least one of the following harmful substances: lead, cadmium, beryllium, or mercury. The obvious health and environmental concerns to the citizens of these regions should be enough to bring people to action.

However the issue of e-waste, as is the case with most environmental issues, is filled with controversy. Many people believe this is an over exaggerated, over hyped issue that isn’t as bad as it is made out to be. Many scrap industries, and even the EPA, feel that the issue is inflated by groups hoping to gain profit from increased regulation(The Controversy).

There are some groups attempting to do something about this growing problem, and our local government was one of the first. As early as 2000, Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura teamed with the local division of Sony electronics to help reduce the company’s and state’s electronic waste. Sony called it “Extended Producer Responsibility”, and participated in this program completely voluntarily. The idea of this program was that “…if products are designed for reuse rather than disposal and innovative methods of use are developed, cost savings will be realized by manufacturers and new jobs will likely be created” (A Step Towards Zero Waste). By promising the collection of its own e-waste from consumers, Sony forced itself start engineering its products for re-use, and there began to view the collected waste as a source of raw materials, saving them money in production while enhancing their image as eco-friendly. This campaign was very successful and gained popularity nationwide, and within a year was active in 5 more states.

Corporations wishing to gain financially the way Sony did in present day need the approval of one of the two widely recognized programs. E-Stewards and Responsible Recycling (R2) each have standards set, and when a company or corporation complies and meets these standards, they are allowed you apply the stamp of approval on their packaging or logo. Critiques of these programs argue that this is just another form of green-washing; an easy way for companies to cheat their way into being “eco-friendly”, especially because a high stipend is also charged for the stamp of approval. This raises the suspicion that companies meeting the minimum requirements and having the capital to pay are the only ones awarded this stamp, rather than the companies who truly deserve the recognition and rights to the stamp of approval.

The United States EPA (yes, the same EPA that claims this is an over
exaggerated issue) has made its efforts to raise awareness and propose solutions for e-waste, along with countless local governments. The EPA, in addition to backing the R2 program mentioned above, has multiple resources available on its website regarding the proper disposal of e-waste, along with links to local government pages where local depositories can be found (The Controversy).

However controversial and debated the topic of e-waste is, it soon will be at the forefront of the environmental debate. Our dependence on technology, and the increasing speed that each device is becoming obsolete, will force it onto the political scene. While there is debate over its seriousness, there is no doubt that putting these hazardous materials into landfills is not the solution, and will continue to catch up to us.



Works Cited

Scholarly Journals

"A STEP TOWARD ZERO WASTE." Environment 43.4 (2001): 4. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 9 May 2010.

Lim, Seong-Rin, and Julie M. Schoenung. "Human health and ecological toxicity potentials due to heavy metal content in waste electronic devices with flat panel displays." Journal of Hazardous Materials 177.1-3 (2010): 251-259. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 9 May 2010.

ZELLER, Jr., TOM. "A Program to Certify Electronic Waste Recycling Rivals an Industry-U.S. Plan." New York Times 15 Apr. 2010: 3. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 9 May 2010.

Hogue, Cheryl. "GROWING PILES OF TOXIC TRASH." Chemical & Engineering News 88.9 (2010): 15. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 9 May 2010.

Dwivedy, Maheshwar, and R.K. Mittal. "Estimation of future outflows of e-waste in India." Waste Management 30.3 (2010): 483-491. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 9 May 2010.

Chancerel, Perrine, and Susanne Rotter. "Recycling-oriented characterization of small waste electrical and electronic equipment." Waste Management 29.8 (2009): 2336-2352. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 23 Apr. 2010.


Internet Sources

"How to Manage Electronic Waste from Businesses — Hennepin County, Minnesota." Home — Hennepin County, Minnesota. Web. 10 May 2010. .

"The Controversy: E-Stewards vs R2." Web log post. http://www.sustainelectronics.illinois.edu/

ESPN's 'Green Game'

http://www.sustainability.ku.edu/greengame/ESPN_GREEN_GAME_LOGO.jpg

The global concentration on ‘greenness’ and becoming eco-friendly has become an obsession among the tree-hugging types for many years, and slowly over the last decade has become an issue of mainstream prominence. Only recently has it become a daily topic in the mainstream media, and even then it is often put on the back-burner on account of more immediate news that is seen as more interesting because it is in the moment. However, for the people like myself who tend not to watch the nightly news or CNN on a daily basis in favor of the daily Twins game or ESPN push the environment even further into the back of our minds, as it is an issue rarely presented to us during timeouts or between innings. However, this winter that all changed, at least for one Saturday afternoon. This is because of an initiative made by ESPN, in cooperation with Kansas University, to incorporate environmentalist concepts into its broadcast of a college basketball game. It was called, simply, “The Green Game” and took place on December 19^th, 2009. Its goal was mostly to gain attention to the cause of environmentalism, but it also did its share in preservation.

This project is aimed mostly at informing the audience of environmental issues and tips on how they can pitch in, however there are a few things the network and school did to make this broadcast more “green”. In addition to on screen visuals with tips on recycling and reducing your carbon footprints, they showed clips of both school’s campus-wide efforts to reducing their carbon footprints. Also thoroughly discussed throughout the show were the efforts ESPN, Kansas University and the city of Lawrence, Kansas to make the broadcast of this game as environmentally friendly as possible. This included the purchase of electricity from a local hydroelectric plant to be used to help produce the show, reusable batteries in a majority of the electrical devices used on-site, additional recycling units available throughout the arena, and the use of hybrid rental cars by the crew. Also, eco-friendly cleaning supplies were used, warm up shirts were made out of 100% recycled material, and energy efficient lighting was used on the set.

Clearly, ESPN was making a valiant effort to present the issue to a demographic that likely isn’t overly informed on this topic. Whether it was receiving pressure to become more eco-friendly, did this in order to gain credibility in this area, or simply did it out of good will is a question that remains unanswered. But I do not think it can be denied that, at least for this one game and one day, they did their part to help. It is a good first step for the network, and sports in general. While watching this game, and the advertisement of it leading up, it definitely sparked my interest in the project and got me interested enough t watch the game when I probably otherwise wouldn’t have. However, after doing the research on how much they really did, I feel like they could have done more. The advertisements leading up to it gave me the impression that the game would be entirely self sufficient, or at least more so than it was. Only a portion of the energy used came from a hydroelectric plant. A broadcast powered by completely self-sufficient, or at least energy efficient electricity would have been much more impressive. As I said before, it was a good start to something they can take a lot further.

Because it was a live television broadcast, it is difficult to judge the spatial use and use of pictorial images as opposed to written or even blank space. Obviously a majority of the screen was dedicated to the game. Other than that, where there is typically a scrolling bar of the day’s other sports scores included tips for becoming more eco-friendly at various points of the game. Also, during timeouts and dead ball situations, video clips of different energy-efficiency programs on both school’s campus were shown to show their part in the project. As far as symbols used, the only one found was a re-modeling of the usual ESPN logo, incorporating the very recognizable three arrow recycling symbol around the normal logo.

The fact that this program took place on campus of Kansas University also says a lot about the effort. The fact that KU is one of the most innovative colleges in the country, not to mention sports a very talented and popular basketball team, made it a great choice for this game. Not only did it give recognition to Kansas that is greatly deserved, therefore setting an example for colleges and corporations nationwide, but it kept with ESPN’s theme by keeping the broadcast as eco-friendly as possible.

I feel ESPN did take a great first step towards both becoming a more eco-friendly network and helping inform many of its viewers of environmental issues and solutions. However, it needs to continue this effort if it is to become a leader in this field. They could do this by holding events like this more often, do more to decrease the impact of these productions, or even make some of these production changes permanent and widespread. These are some of the next steps needed to help move forward into a fully environmentally conscious entity.

Experts: Australia Warming All Over

The news article I decided to analyze came from MSNBC’s website, titled “Experts: Australia Warming All Over” from Monday, March 15 2010. It deals with issues in global warming in Australia and the argument over the study putting most of the blame on human’s impact of the environment.

The headline of the line appears to be fairly straight forward. At first glance it appears to simply highlight the topic of the article. However if there was any issue that I could pick from the head from this headline, it would be the crediting only to the so called ‘experts’, while giving no acknowledgement to the opposition on this matter, which seems to be a common theme throughout this whole article. Even the subhead is completely devoted to a quote by the expert.

The sequence of this article is very easy to figure out. It clearly presents the idea of the accuracy of the 2007 report as the most important point, merely mentioning the critiques of the study in passing at the end of a few paragraphs. The article appears to be promisingly neutral in the first few paragraphs, hinting at many issues the critics of the study present. However, it fails to follow through by going more in depth into that side of the story, instead devoting it’s time to summarizing the report and giving “expert” opinions to support their accuracy.

The scope of this article is interesting, because it gives the impression of both a good, professional article with useful and interesting graphics, while also showing what I see as unprofessional advertisements right between two paragraphs, breaking the reader’s flow of the article. At the top of the article is a photograph of a fire restriction warning in Australia, due to the near decade long drought they have suffered apparently because of global warming. I felt that this photo was very helpful, and really contributed to the article. However, the middle of the article is interrupted by a fairly large advertisement for online products. To me, this undermines the authority of both the article and the entire website. I understand the need for advertising to cover costs, but by placing it in the middle of the article, it tells me they value their advertisers more than the readers and the actual article.

I feel as though the structure of this article is not very well done. As I mentioned before, it initially at covering both sides in the introduction, yet fail to follow through on it later in the article. It does extensively use a variety of statistics from the study to support the claims of the expert. However it also seems to somewhat contradict itself when it states that many of the findings of the report were false or over exaggerated earlier in the article. This does not make for a strong argument, further allowing doubt about the validity of the article’s argument.

I found it hard to determine the style of this article. It seems like it is attempting to be objective, report the facts, and be unbiased. But at the same time it fails to present both sides of the issue, and towards the end seems to clearly favor the side of the experts. So it leaves me thinking it either tried to be impartial and failed miserably, or was trying to show support the expert’s opinion but ended up shading a little doubt. Also, the insertion of all the statistics near the end of the article seems out of place and unnecessary, they don’t really add anything to the article. It seems to me the only reason to add those is as extra support of the expert’s opinion, just in case you don’t take their words for it.

The statement and slant of this article have already been pretty thoroughly described throughout this analysis, but I will recap them. I believe the article had an initial intention to objectively report the facts of both sides of this debate. However, it didn’t completely and evenly show both arguments, and in the end appeared fairly slanted towards the experts. It didn’t give fair space to the opposition, most likely because they would fall in the minority on this issue.

The conclusion to this article is rather anticlimactic, although it does leave one resounding thought with the reader: it gives a prediction of the expected temperature increases for the next 20 years, and leaves it up to us to decide whether or not this is a significant problem.