Posted by Snow in
Trash Tech
High Tech Trash, by Elizabeth Grossman Hi whitebark!
This book talks about both the integration of a high tech home lifestyle with concerns for sustainable living and the technology age and its curious impacts on environmental waste management. This book travels beyond reducing home maintenance and sustainability in the home and treats a tangible waste problem where it grows: the workplace.
Flame retardents and what happens to the personal computer in its afterlife is the subject of this book. The elements that go into making a computer what is it is may not have such an equally happy unreworking when the consumer level of the population is done with it. The entire books suggest an opposite “un-manufacturing” process must be executed for responsibly sustainable computing.
The contribution to the overall stream of toxic waste from personal computing is a fact many consumer computer manufacturers do NOT want stressed.
For every user who wishes there was a way to provide an eco-friendly afterlife, the computer has filled many dumps with nonrechargeable batteries, toxic wiring, nonbiodegradeable plastics and other materials.
It’s a startling fact that elements like gold and copper are present in these former generation devices consumer nations like the United States casually throw away. The complicated set of circumstances that go into recycling even one circuit board have enough electrical complexity to fry a motherboard.
Unlike many green living tomes which urge the ability of the individual lifestyle to redeem toxic waste, Grossman visits actual factories. Not for her the croplands and he rangelands of America. The proof is in the smelting of new technologies. Where do all the dead computers go, she asks.
This books hedges some aggressive theories about where waste has come from. But Grossman also describes how the same high technology can save the waste detritus in its “aftermarket”. Scrap and waste metal as a profit making export is a curious topic. The books makes lofty claims about the responsibility of where consumeruse ends and industrial reclamation should begin.
Like many new green era books, this marries ecology watchfulness with industrial and corporate entity activism. Grossman rightly points out there are no recycling instructions to accompany the average PDA, laptop, or notebook computer.
Rossman claims that the waste age we now live in stems from the dirty white underbelly of the high costs of doing business with high tech. But does the consumer computer industry really deserve the brunt of all consumer waste? with practical considerations for handling trash. Digitial devices, Hidden Toxics and Human health.
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