Tips on Recycling Electronic Waste

The recycling of electronic waste allows the recovery of minerals and scarce materials (which, in turn, generates an environmental damage) and reduces the impact of the degradation of these wastes in common landfills.

Electronic waste is the portion of urban solid waste that has grown most in recent decades. Mainly, by the constant technological innovation, that made possible technologies that at the beginning were expensive and oriented to a special and reduced public, are today cheap and easily usable in the daily life.

Electronic waste brings the greatest amount of heavy metals and pollutants to the environment. Sanitary landfills and open garbage dumps now receive a large part of the electronic waste we discard: cell phones, batteries, car batteries, computers, and cameras are discarded as part of urban solid household waste without any treatment.

The impact of the contamination of this type of garbage is in direct relation to the chemical composition that the electronic devices possess: a complex mixture of hundreds of materials, many of which contain heavy metals (lead, mercury, cadmium, beryllium), and hazardous chemicals (brominated fire retardants, prolibrominated biphenyls -PBBs-, polybrominated diphenyl ether -PBDEs- and tetrabromobisphenol-A-TBBPA or TBBA-). In addition, they contain valuable materials, such as gold and platinum, which should be recovered.

The disposal of electronic waste in common dumps or sanitary landfills without proper management contaminates the soil, water, air and affects the health of neighboring communities. On the other hand, thousands of resources are wasted that can be recovered.

The recycling of electronic waste has a double positive impact:

1) It allows recovering metals or materials (silicon, plastics, gold, silver, copper, etc.) that are increasingly scarce and whose production, through mining, generates a high environmental impact.

2) The impact of these wastes on the environment is reduced as they are degraded in landfills, contaminating soils and aquifers. In this sense, the need to have a management system that offers an appropriate treatment and recycling to these products becomes essential.

The speed at which this mountain of obsolete electronics is growing will generate a crisis of enormous proportions unless corporations in the electronics industry, which make a profit from manufacturing and selling these devices, assume their responsibility.

A recent report by the United Nations Environment Program warned that between 40 and 50 million tons are generated every year worldwide and "serious consequences" are expected in this decade for a large amount of "hazardous" and "toxic" "which accumulate without any control in developing economies.

Within this whole process, the companies of Computer recycling face a different challenge when having to protect the data that the computers contain if they are not eliminated completely as well as of the equipment that is not properly recycled and according to the Conservation and Resource Recovery.

Computer recycling companies acquire unwanted equipment from others companies, erase system data, and estimate the residual value of the product in many cases already amortized by the company that owns the product. In this way, these companies buy the excess of technological material and sell the restocked second-hand computers to those who are looking for more affordable options than a new computer. Companies specializing in Computer recycling use strict data removal procedures on older computers, giving a second chance to these computers and helping to improve the environment.