Wednesday, February 24, 2010

eWaste: What can we do?

eWaste.  Not just the daily spams and ads (and your fb buddies' daily rants). "Electronic waste is increasingly filling up landfills in China and South Africa," - engadget.  The UN pointed out, improper recycling of electronic wastes (yes, those tv and computers included you replaced recently) by incineration or by merely throwing it directly to your ever loyal garbage can is harmful.  Discarded electronic items contain hazardous chemicals like lead and mercury and should not combined with regular waste.  To date, there is no formal eWaste collection and segregation in place in the Philippines.


Picture Above.  Quick view of who's who in the "green" electronics marathon. (source: GreenPeace)

A similar news in the electronics manufacturing industry, just today, IBM annnounced that they have developed fluorine-free photo-acid generator (PAG) for use in 193-nm lithography.  The chemical is more environmentaly friendly than the commonly used fluorine-based perfluorooctane sulfonate and perfluorooctanoic acid.  The new chemical for the 193-nm lithography has been tested to equal the performance of 45-nm litho. (source: EE Times)

Some processors using the 45nm technology
Intel's Pentium Dual-Core, Core i7, Atom
AMD's Quadcore, Dual-Core, and mobile Dual-Cores
and the Cell Broadband engine on PS3 Slim

Bottomline: In the near future, once semiconductor foundries adopt the IBM's "green" litho process, future electronics will no not only become smaller but "greener."

Don't buy surplus electronics appliances.  They're not just unreliable, they're other countries' eWaste.  Buying them creates demand for more surplus electronics.  Should you replace any electronic appliance, put it up for sale or better yet, donate them for charity's sake. 


When purchasing (or replacing) your next gadget, consider the environment.  Consider brands that offer trade-ins and take-backs.  They either have their own eWaste management system or partners with NGOs for proper eWaste disposal.


Be more thoughtful especially when buying third party electronic products, they're dangerously cheap to trigger an impulsive purchase.  Think twice before queuing-in at CD-R King.

Be wise and practical.  Be a choosy pinoy and help the environment.

Do you know any organizations or businesses into recycling electronic wastes?

2 comments:

  1. Great post here, dude... I checked out the image above, seems like Nokia and Samsung are really doing better on its campaign to a greener Earth. I recall last year's WMC in Barcelona where Samsung launched Blue-Earth mobile. The same thing on the latest WMC, still in Barcelona, a few days ago...

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  2. i'm not exactly sure about the details, but they could be like apple, they are using less non-environmentally harmful plastics on their housings.

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