Recycling E-waste Is Important

With our advancing technologies, it is only obvious that we soon have a dangerous problem called E-waste. And E-waste is very dangerous; did you know that your computer has a lot of lead, cadmium, brominated fire retardants and plastic in it? For those of you who went like ‘what the science...?’ here’s what it means: these materials have toxins (a waste material that has harmful elements that can cause death) and carcinogens (a substance that can directly give you cancer) in them, and disposing of them incorrectly would mean that the above mentioned poisonous materials could work their way underground into your water system.

When you are thinking about disposing of that old computer, or that used-up cartridge, you can’t just throw it away. There are so many ways to do so instead of it being in the garbage. Make sure that you don’t leave any of your data on the hard disks, which means going beyond just deleting it out of the recycle bin. There are specialists who extract the deleted data and misuse them. There are disk erasing programs out there which overwrite all of your data, it’s quite safe. You can just send your old electronics back to the manufacturer – they get the things that are working and make new (refurbished) computers out of them. Some even pay you for doing this, though you might have to pay for shipping.

You could look for a place to donate your computer to, like a school that’s definitely in need of computers. Corporations can make use of companies who ensure green disposal and data security. You can use them too. There are also websites which pay you to sell back your old computers. Your laser or ink-jet cartridges can be given back to the buyer, who will re-use them. If you’re buying a new computer of the same brand, you can give your old one and get a new computer for an extremely cheap price. Or you could just erase all the data and sell it to a thrift store nearby. They will sell it cheaply to the poor people who can’t afford new ones. Just don’t leave your monitors or computers lying around in the sidewalk, or put it in a landfill.

With the growing concern for saving our planet, you should be concerned too. It is almost too late for our planet, and recycling E-waste is one of the most important things we can do.

By: Louisa Coan

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Louisa Coan is writing on behalf of Millrace IT, who buy any IT and telecoms equipment that still has economic value. They also offer IT recycling Essex and Recycling IT