Recycling is an easy way for all of us to help protect the environment and conserve natural resources. While recycling plastic, glass, and paper has been widely adopted in the United States, many people don’t recognize the importance of properly recycling their electronic waste (e-waste) or do not know what to do with unwanted electronics.

E-waste is the fastest growing segment of the municipal waste stream in the U.S. with over three million tons of electronics generated each year of which only 14% is recovered for recycling.

The rest typically ends up in landfills. Electronics should not be disposed of in one’s household trash because most contain heavy metals such as lead (an average older computer monitor, for example, may contain 4-7 lbs. of lead) batteries, mercury, and cadmium.

In observation of America Recycles Day on November 15, 2011, ECOvanta, a state-of-the-art recycling facility that properly recycles electronic waste such as computers, monitors, mobile phones, printers, and televisions, offers the following tips for handling consumer e-waste:

REUSE & RECYCLE

• First, figure out what you want to be done with the equipment. If you want to provide a community service and don’t have any data security needs, donating may be the way to go. If your equipment is not in working order or you want it destroyed for security reasons, you will want to have it demanufactured and recycled.

• Donating used (but still operating) electronics for reuse extends the life of valuable products before they need to be properly disposed. Before you donate, make sure the equipment works and someone can use it. Many organizations that accept donations may be limited in what they can repair/upgrade and put back into service, so ask first.

• Over 1,000 or more counties and municipalities across the U.S. offer computer and electronics collection programs as part of household hazardous waste collections, special events, or other arrangements. Depending on where you live and the amount of equipment you have, contact your county or municipality or go on their website to see when the next electronics recycling event will take place.

• State Departments of Environmental Protection websites are also a good resource to see who is a licensed electronics recycler within your state and where they are located.

• Some large box stores (online and off-line) also accept electronics for recycling whether you purchased the item from them or not. Some even offer credit rewards!

• Whether you decide to donate used electronics for reuse or turn components in for recycling, always remember to completely erase data from any electronics with a hard drive such as cell phones, smart phones, computers, and printers.

Recycling electronics helps reduce the environmental impact that would be generated while manufacturing a new product and the need to extract valuable and limited virgin resources from the earth. It also reduces the energy used in new product manufacturing. According to the U.S. EPA, recycling one million laptops saves the energy equivalent to the electricity used by 3,657 U.S. homes in a year

ECOvanta safely manages end-of-life electronics using a combination of manual disassembly and an automated shredding system to separate materials into commodities for recycling. The facility also offers secure destruction services for customers who require assured and certified destruction of their electronic equipment.

For more information on how to responsibly handle e-waste, please visit ecovanta.com.

The article America Recycles Day: Proper Recycling of Electronic Waste appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

China’s environmental regulators say they are planning a campaign that will target dumping and improper storage of hazardous materials. Special attention will be given to heavy metals and electronic waste.

Deputy director Zhang Lijun, a representative of the Ministry of environmental protection, mentioned in early September that the situation in Qujin city, in the southern province Yunan, was deteriorating. A local chemical company dumped more than 5,000 tons of chromium in June.

The case is not a singular one, as China has been confronting a crisis of heavy metals poisoning after years of lax policies regarding safety standards. This has led to a rise in the number of reported pollution emergencies, usually involving lead and other various toxins from chemical and electronics factories.

According to Zhang Lijun, the situation in Qujin, and many other similar cases, reflect “widespread inadequacies in handling and disposal of hazardous waste in the country and pose a threat to public health.” Zhang also added that companies handling chromium, polycrystalline silicon used in solar cells, sewage sludge and electronic waste would be facing closer scrutiny in the future.

The Qujin case caused national alarm after the chromium dumped by Yunnan Luliang Chemical Industry in June killed livestock and tainted rivers supplying drinking water for cities situated in the densely populated Pearl River Delta. The amount of chromium slag stockpiled at the chemical plant in Qujing reaches more than 140,000 tons, the environmental group Greenpeace reported.

The figures released recently by the government also point to the gravity of the situation. According to China Daily, the country produced 45.7 million tons of hazardous waste in 2007, an amount expected to increase by 5 percent to 7 percent a year in 2011-2015.

China’s environmental regulators have said they plan to clean up contamination of the soil and water supplies from factories scattered across the country, a side-effect of the concentration of so much of the world’s industrial production in China. Implementing efficient measures is also hindered by a lack of compliance at the local level.

In Qiujing the drivers who were meant to haul the chromium waste to a processing plant in a neighboring province, instead dumped the hazardous loads near a reservoir. According to media reports, rains washed some of the toxins into the lake, killing livestock.

After news of the incident surfaced, authorities in Yunnan initially denied complaints, voicing the fears of a public health hazard caused by inappropriate handling of toxic materials. In such instances, local officials heavily dependent on tax revenues from big factories usually try to downplay or cover up such problems.

The article China Targets Hazardous Waste Dumping, Stockpiles appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.