What is e-Waste Recycling?
The exponential growth in electronic devices, combined with the torrid pace of technological advancement, means that more and more electronic devices are reaching the end of their useful lives. These devices contain both toxic substances and valuable materials – and they also contain confidential corporate and personal information that should never get into the wrong hands. Effective e-waste recycling is the process of disposing of these obsolete electronic devices in a way that destroys the data, recovers all the valuable elements for reuse, and ensures that all toxic substances are handled to the highest environmental standards.
How does e-Waste get recycled?
Electronic waste such as old cellular phones, computers, printers and televisions are delivered to a certified “primary processor” where the data and the device are destroyed.. Discrete streams of the various elements that made up the electronic device are then directed to downstream processors that further refine and recover material such as plastic, base and precious metals to be reused in the manufacture of the next generation of electronic devices.
How does recycling e-Waste make us more sustainable?
Electronic waste is a major global problem. Unfortunately, the vast majority of e-waste continues to be either directed to domestic landfills – or shipped off to developing countries in Asia or Africa where impoverished workers use very crude processing techniques in dealing with the e-waste. This results in both environmental and human atrocities, and an endless amount of cyber-crime and identity theft. Fortunately, there is a very ethical and effective alternative. When local certified facilities process e-waste in a manner that ensures that all the toxic materials are managed to the highest environmental standards and that all the valuable materials are recovered and reused in new manufacturing applications, thus reducing the dependency on virgin materials… e-waste goes from being a major environmental problem to one of the best examples of sustainability.
