Computer Recycling - UK: Wake Up To Your Responsibilities
Computers and IT have heralded, the dawn of a new era of technological supremacy for the human race. Now we can ever proudly proclaim that we are the sole in apparent of the universe. There are talks of setting colonies, in Mars and trading points on the moon. Humanity, it seems is all set to scale hitherto unthought-of heights of industrial and scientific pre-eminence. All this however, sounds like a whole lot of hogwash when we consider the sate of our own planet. Why are we, so intent upon destroying the bounteous gifts of Mother Nature? Ever since the early 1990s when technology became cheap and affordable, we have been indiscriminately littering our environment with the relics of bygone technology. Each new day brings with it a new invention, a superior technology, and more of the older products get thrown away into the landfills.
This is especially true in the case of computers. Computers, these wonderful machines have enabled us to make our lives so much more meaningful and profitable. It is for this very reason that every new improvement, in the computers is greeted with wonder and joy. Personal computers have also become cheaper and more accessible than ever before. So now every time some exciting new hardware is launched, it immediately replaces the older ones. Let's take the example of the monitors. Ever since plasma and LCD screens became affordable, people have started replacing their cathode rayed TV and monitors with LCD and plasma. But where do the unwanted TVs and monitors go to.
They are more often than not get dumped with other regular garbage into huge land fills. These TVs contain more than five pounds of poisonous lead, which seeps into ground polluting everything from the crops that we grow, to the water we drink. There are a number of several other poisonous chemicals and harmful metals like mercury, nickel, barium, chromium etc. that are found in electronic goods. When they are simply dumped away, they enter the human food cycle and poison our lives.
Many developed countries including the United Kingdom, have initiated projects for recycling electronic waste. In the USA, the state of Florida has been very successful with it's computer recycling initiatives. Howver in the UK, computer recycling still hasn't seemed to have taken off the way it was expected. Though a number of private and non -profit organisations are actively involved in collecting old computers, refurbishing them and then shipping them away to third world countries, recycling of old computers in the UK, is just not being taken up as a cause. Lest just consider the statistics. In the 1980s, USA was recycling 23% of the waste that they produced, which rose to 60% in 2001-2002. As compared to this, UK recycles just 10% of its garbage, which is the lowest in the whole of Europe. And here we are just talking about traditional waste. If UK is so ill equipped, to deal with traditional waste how will tackle electronic waste, which is so much harder to recycle. Computer recycling UK needs to be taken up by the Government in earnest. People need to be sensitised about how a safe used computer disposal can go a long way, in protecting the natural recourses from becoming riddled with toxins. Only when citizens of this great nation wake up to their responsibilities, with the union government take up computer recycling in UK seriously.
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