E-waste is an environmental problem

If you didn't already know that e-waste is a serious and growing environmental problem you only have to look at the EU guidelines that have been imposed to stem the growing e-waste mountains being dumped in landfill but also the 24billion Euros that have been made available by the European Commission and European Investment Bank (EIB) to encourage the development of circular business models to understand the importance of this problem.

And the reason it is so important to governments, banks and businesses is because waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), commonly known as e-waste, is already having a seriously detrimental effect on the environment worldwide. Both at home in landfill sites but increasingly in poorer countries where we are shipping our e-waste for unregulated disposal on massive landfill sites that are contaminating the land and water supplies and damaging the health of the people who work at the landfill sites. This is because electrical and electronic equipment contains toxic chemicals and heavy metals that should be ethically handled during disposal.

It is only by understanding the environmental impact of e-waste that we can truly grasp the urgent need to re-use and recycle electronic gadgets and electrical equipment. WEEE is any item with an electrical plug or that runs off a battery such as mobile phones, laptops, tablets, PCs, printers, TVs, MP3 players, washing machines, fridges, toasters – the list is endless when you think how many of these items the average family home contains.

Unfortunately many societies now have a "throw away" culture where we simply throw away a gadget once it is 2 or 3 years old and upgrade to the latest model – encouraged by the manufacturers who are constantly creating "better" models and encouraging us all to think we need those better models but also by companies who a developing products that are cheaper and easier to replace that to repair.

A result of this growing electronic waste problem is that the EU have implemented new laws in the form of the WEEE regulations to tackle the problem. A welcome consequence of the EU WEEE Directive is that other countries around the world have put in place their own rules and many manufacturers have begun labelling products so that consumers know they should be disposed of in a certain way.

Here are some reasons we need to take e-waste serioulsy

1. Dangerous compounds – Electronic products contain toxic chemicals and metals such as nickel, barium, copper, mercury, and lead which can pollute the earth making it impossible to grow crops.
2. Wasting valuable metal – Silver, gold, copper and palladium are just some of the valuable metals found in electronic gadgets and we are simply throwing them away when they could be reused.
3. Poorer Countries are taking the hit – E-waste is shipped to developing nations, like China, and contaminating their environment and harming the people who live there.
4. Wasting energy – It uses more energy to create new electronic items than to recycle or reuse components from old ones.
5. We could help underprivileged families in our own country – Finally, there are many people in our own country who could benefit from an item that is still functional but we are just upgrading.