How many electronics do you own? If you are like me, I had three mobile phones in the last five years. I use an iPad for reading my eBooks and I own a laptop because clearly 'real' work can only be done on a laptop. On top of that, I own an iPod Nano because clearly listening to music on my iPhone while running, is just too heavy to keep good form. If this sounds somewhat familiar to you, it may be that we are constantly bombarded with the next new gadget because we want to believe that it will make our lives, well, better. The fact of the matter is that we as consumers are purchasing electronics at a faster rate than ever before.
In this day and age, it always seems cheaper to buy a new one, than to repair one, it can be very convenient to throw away old electronics into the garbage bin for municipal collection. I am for one guilty of it. Why take the extra effort in taking it to an approved recycling facility?
According to the Electronics Product Stewardship of Canada, an electronic waste can contain up to 60 elements in the periodic table. Dangerous metals such as lead, cadmium and mercury end up in our soil, groundwater, and accumulate in the food chain. Electronically well-suited metals such as copper, gold and silver require mining which have environmental consequences. Think about this: for every 50,000 mobile phones, 1 kg of gold can be recycled. In contrast, the mining of 1 kg of gold generates 10,000 tons of CO2 emission.
Now, I am not asserting that we should stop buying electronics but let's take responsibility for its after life so that our future generations can enjoy the conveniences we had. As the old saying goes, "We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; but we borrow it from our children."
Steven Shibata
Prince George
