Why IT Recycling is a Correct Approach for Economy and Environment

The reasons to recycling aren’t unknown. It addresses several issues starting from the problems of a growing population and each new individual adding to the amount of waste in our planet. Just in the New York City alone, enough amount of trash is generated every day to fill up the Empire State Building, and this isn’t a small construction we are talking of!

Making the difference with small acts doesn’t take much but can do a lot of good. Currently, if every subscriber of The New York Times, would repurpose one single edition of the newspaper, more than 75,000 trees could have been saved from being axed down!

Related: Deforestation: A Global Threat

Among the trash we are generating every day, IT trash is among the most dangerous. It includes everyday products like printing cartridges, damaged mobile phones, used batteries, copper wires, monitors, and any gadget or gadget component that has gone defective. Most of this IT trash goes on to landfills creating a situation that puts our complete environment in danger.

Leaking chemicals from cartridges, mobile phones and other gadgets seeps into the soil and gradually pollutes our groundwater. Lead poisoning, arsenic poisoning and other serious epidemics have been reported around IT landfills in several countries. It’s the water that is getting harmed as well as our soil and air as well. IT landfills won’t ever become suitable for growing crops or any plants and leaking chemicals also get added to our environment and polluted the air we breathe.

While some would say that recycling old computers aren’t quite the best way to go about things, it certainly is the first step to growing the consensus about the idea. The responsibility of IT recycling lies with local governments, but every single individual must come forward to force on the right initiatives. The practice of IT recycling can deliver huge profits to any city, its commodity prices and the country budgets. Recycling is not cheap, but it certainly is cheaper than manufacturing a fresh good from fresh raw materials.

In the general scenario, people would throw aluminum, plastic, paper, glass in the same way – throw it in the bins and forget they ever existed. Now, each of these materials has a unique value determined by the raw material it comes from. Well, known metals like gold, silver, palladium, platinum and other scarce metals like gallium and indium form a part of modern technologies like photovoltaic and flat screens. Mercury, cadmium, lead, polyvinyl chloride, bromine are among the most dangerous substances in these landfills and can cause brain impairment, nervous failure, cancer, kidney failure, liver damage, impaired reproductive system, and even behavioral damage.

Compared to the cost of Computer disposal, the health effects are far more intriguing and expensive for an economy to bear. Apart from this, there is always the added advantage of recovering the valuable components that can do a lot of superior for the economy.

Thus, IT recycling brings about a number of different benefits that include:

• Elimination of health and environmental hazards
• Adds to energy efficiency
• Contributes to a city’s economic growth
• Reduced exploitation and pressure on natural resources
• Saves land space that would have been lost to landfills
• Create more jobs and new markets in the economy

All of it will start when you use your trash bin more wisely. It’s time to act now and make the world a safer place.

Guest Author: Katie Baker, Ecogreen IT

 

Read also: Brexit and Pollution