Watching the 60-Minutes documentary "The Electronic Wasteland" this week really got me thinking about what happens to all of our old cell phones, computers, mps players, etc. It seems that there is always a new and better item coming out to replace what we already have, and we live in a society were everyone wants that newest, greatest thing without really thinking about the consequences.
When I was reading the paper on Saturday, an article in the Winnipeg Sun caught my eye because it was discussing e-cycling. A company called EcoATM has been operating in San Diego and is now expanding to other markets in the US and in Canada. The company makes kiosks which as place in malls and other high traffic area. THe consumer simply brings their old device to the kiosk, hooks it up to a cord on the kiosk and thekiosk will tell the consumer how much it will pay for the device. The consumer can then decide if they want to take the money (the kiosk will dispense the money like an ATM), donate the money to one of the pre-selected charities, or keep the device.
I was talking to my husband Mike about this, and his first question was "what do they do with the devices". The company claims that the re-sell a number of the devices, and the ones that they cannot resell are "responsibly recycled". Mike started to tell me about this this documentary he watched about e-waste getting shipped to China, burned and poisonous, toxic gases are released into the air and contaminate the water. It was so interesting that he had seen the 60-Minutes program, yet we had never discussed it before.
It is really hard to trust any company that is doing e-cycling after watching "The Electronic Wasteland". EcoATM makes claims that they are environmentally responsible. They make statements on their website about the environmental impact of our obsession with having the newest gadget:
"In the Making of Phones 1 Phone >3 tons mining waste
Source: http://www.ecoatm.com/eco-atm.htm
I started looking in to the other programs we have here in Winnipeg for e-cycling. The City of Winnipeg has some information on their website: http://winnipeg.ca/waterandwaste/recycle/howToRecycle.stm about National cell phone recycling program, Recyle My Cell: http://www.recyclemycell.ca/overview.php, and about Green Manitoba, which is an agency of the Manitoba Government. There is information about recycling computers and electronics on the Green Manitoba website: http://greenmanitoba.ca/cim/1001.dhtm. The e-waste that is collected in Manitoba is sent to Global Electric and Electronic Processing (GEEP) to be processed. On their website (http://www.geepinc.com/aboutus/Aboutusinfo.aspx?AboutusID=3) they state that their policy is zero landfill, and that they ultimately produce diesel fuel from the plastic derived through the processing of e-waste which they use to run their plant. Sounds really interesting... They actually have a link to "The Electronic Wasteland" on their website, as well as links to a number of other interesting videos. I would recommend watching the Daily Planet video: http://watch.discoverychannel.ca/daily-planet/april-2009/daily-planet-april-24-2009/#clip165405, as it is about the GEEP Global company. They process up to 4,000kg of e-waste every hour! The video explains how these companies make money, even when we can recycle our cell phones or computers for no cost, or even get paid to recycle them!
Here is another interesting video on e-cycling from CBC News:
Hi Kristin!
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry I didn't see your post, before I wrote mine! I hope you didn't think I was copying your ideas - it is just so interesting that we were both independently wondering about local e-waste and found similar information! I guess we think alike!
One thing that was interesting for me to discover is that GEEP's main headquarters is about 20 minutes from where I grew-up in Barrie, Ontario. Who knew?!
No worries :) Great minds think alike!
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