Dumping Technology

There is always a good reason for buying a new electronic device and I had a good one! Grandchildren were coming to stay and the room they were to sleep in is small, not helped by the huge, almost redundant television set in the corner. The huge, almost redundant television set in the corner had been replaced by a big flat-screened one that was compatible with some new feature about going digital.

Anyway, another flat-screen set was bought to replace the old dunger, which would allow the kids to watch DVDs and free up some space. The old, huge, redundant television went into the shed with my old, redundant computer – made redundant because Microsoft were not going to support XP anymore. With these two once prized possession were three printers, one replaced because it could not scan, another because it supported XP, and the other dumped on me because I had ‘space’. Assorted other bits were cords, keyboards and mice that had been replaced because they had failed.

After the family had gone, a general clean-up meant that I should address the problem of what amounted to my E-waste.

We have a local rubbish dump, but not so called. It is a Resource Centre where garbage is put in one bin to go to a landfill, green waste becomes compost, there are categorised recycle bins and a there is a shop that sells reusable stuff.

Locals manage the dump on behalf of a corporate.

It turns out that my E-waste is not recyclable and they don’t want it. They will take it, at an exorbitant fee (to put you off) but it goes into the garbage, destined for the landfill!

The charge at the dump for garbage, only $4 per black bag, is a good service. There are charges for other bulky things but I haven’t used the facility so do not know the prices.

The helpful local guy advised me that by pulling all the E-waste apart and putting it into black plastic bags would work out much cheaper for me.

Of course it is always good to save money, but that’s not where I was at. I thought and expected that television sets and computers with their wires contained copper and other valuable metals that could be recycled.

I returned home with it all!   

I’m lucky enough to have an area of land that has no neighbours for a kilometre or so and I have been burning heaped gorse and odd branches over the past few weeks.

Reluctantly I decided to take the dump-man’s advice and dismantle my E-waste but instead burnt the plastic stuff. I don’t like burning plastic! It releases dioxins into the atmosphere as well as other nasties.

The smoke was not as black as I had expected and I kept downwind of the smoke – I didn’t think I endangered anyone.

Later I sieved through the metal bits that were left and put them in a black bag for later dumping. Dumping copper seemed wasteful in the extreme!

The television screen is heavy glass and I presumed there were bits of nasty stuff inside, so I did not smash it but instead buried it in a hole I had excavated for clay some time ago.

So I managed to rid myself of my E-waste albeit in a way that I did not favour. The worrying thing there is an enormous amount of E-waste worldwide!

All this stuff has a relatively short life because of the advances in technology and judging by the weight of it, perhaps there is not so much copper in the new television as the older one.

Few are able to dispose their E-waste in the manner that I did and I wouldn’t want to dispose of mine like that too often!

Elsewhere there may well be better systems in place but my little cynic button is activated because if recycling it is not economical here, it is not likely to be elsewhere.

Recyclable plastics have that little icon, and on all the stuff I dealt with, there was no such icon, so what is an effective method of disposal?

If there’s no profit in it, maybe dumping costs should  rise to compensate for losses– it won’t happen because nobody like to pay for such charges so it will find its way into landfills.

Add the disposal costs in the cost of new items? Unlikely because that amounts to a tax and politicians don’t get re-elected when they do unpopular things.

I would like to say that I will not buy any new electronics unless the store is prepared to take the old – but that won’t happen either because of the euphoria of buying new stuff!

E-waste is yet another unpleasant legacy we are leaving for the young!