E-Waste Sin

In yet another sign of the hazards from the opulent society we live in comes the indicator of death by success in the form of electronic waste, commonly referred to as e-waste.  Once again the consumer and the members of the global society are required to deal with the garbage of multinational corporations that insist they are just trying to meet increased demand and new requirements from their gleeful customers for new computers, cell phones and digital TVs.

Giles Slade has written a new book Made to Break that details the numbers on the amount of e-waste:  315 million working personal computers trashed in 2004, just in North America.  100 million cell phones thrown away.  And these unwanted items that still work are not going to third world countries as donations for schools or business start-ups.  No way! They are gong to third world countries to be scavenged by the poorest of the poor, at incredible cost to human health and environmental contamination.

One element not usually associate with e-waste is computer rage.  So many people are unplugging from the natural world and plugging into high technology lifestyles that a new economy is exploding to calm the stressed out consumers, even luring away suicide hotline workers to work on the phone with the most panicked ones. Academics are studying the issue and some have suggested ways to beat computer rage.

Let me tell you how I know made this connection.

I have experienced computer rage myself.  I have a two-year old laptop that has been operating without a flaw until the new high speed videos and pod casts started becoming the norm online.  Of course I was interested in viewing the new forms of information but my computer couldn’t keep up because it was built before some of the new technology was developed. 

I went to the PC-friendly computer service shop in my neighborhood to find out what could be done to bring my laptop into the present.  “Well” the techno-geek began “we could upgrade the system by installing” and I heard no more that I understood because “Geek Greek” is the language of choice for computer techs and I am totally non-conversant.  All I could do was say, “OK” and leave the laptop to be upgraded.

This experience happened several times to the point that I was experiencing some kind of computer simulated techno-groundhog day adventure.  I would take the laptop back to the church, fire it up and within hours it would freeze or crash. That was the beginning of the end.  Of course I didn’t back-up my hard drive. Of course I didn’t save anything important on a CD.  But I did feel the rage.

What I discovered was that laptops are a bit heavier than a standard discus but with the right spin and a smooth release they can fly over twenty yards and still go through a plate glass window of a computer repair store. The total cost was much less than therapy or on-line computer rage counseling and even though I had to buy a new laptop my rage is totally gone. 

Part of the settlement with the computer store involved me creating an electronic waste collection program for my community.  I have established a number of drop-off locations around the city and I am going to spend the next year sorting the waste by company and then returning all of the electronic material to the appropriate company. 

Maybe this small effort will help motivate our country to begin being accountable for all of the e-waste we produce and establish a take-back policy like 28 other countries have right now.

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