>>539910
What's even worse is that they're being taken apart in third-world countries where they could be recycled in the home country where the products are sold at a lower cost.

The main victims of the e-waste is poor countries located in Africa and also the country of China.

About 70-80% of the dumped e-waste is recycable but only about 25% of all e-waste is actually recycled.

Recycle the usable parts and blast the junk into space.

Once robots are self-aware and can build themselves, this is where they will find the resources to build an army to wipe us out. I kid you not.

the e-waste is only the end of the story
the start of the story are the conflict mines often worked by slave labour in the civil war ravaged Congo supplying the Coltan/Tantalum, Cassiterie, and Wolframite required for the sensitive electronics
They suffer so your Blackberry may vibrate.

>>539943
But I like my BlackBerry, so fuck the Congo.

>>539943
>>539948
I should explain: the sale of these resources funds the militias and national army, ensuring they can keep fighting for decades more to come

AKIRA LIVES

http://www.computertakeback.com/Tools/Facts_and_Figures.pdf

Interesting facts and figures about E-waste.

>>539958

TETSUOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

So, have you lost your interest in this topic?

>>539956
Oh god. That is horrible. But what can we do? The politicians know about it and do not have the political will to do anything.

>>540008
It's actually more about the capitalistic assholes which are the companies that needs to do something about it all.
Countries are no longer run by governments, they are run by companies.

>>540008
Start organizing pressure for the manufacturers to look for alternative sources or attempt to recycle from junked products?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_minerals

Since Apples customers are all hipster doofus trendy lifestyle choice fair-trade coffee drinking carbon offset purchasing arseholes, how might they feel if while in queue to buy the new iPad a bunch of Congolese expats show up to protest and re-enact the conditions in the mines?

So, how can we solve this huge problem?

start calling every apple owner hitler for supporting the genocide.

as i understand it some 3rd world nations are happy to have our e-waste. they re-refine it and put it back on the market.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3784711.stm

Engineered obsolescence, bro. More people need to take electronics courses and become hobbyists.

>>540080

It's not really a priority. We have so much bigger problems to worry about. With all the alarmism over all the bullshit. We could recycle the copper, steel, and aluminum, but the rest of it doesn't matter. Even if heavy metals are seeping into the water supply, it doesn't matter. We're going to wreck the environment regardless. Alaska will get drilled. Rainforests will be paved. Human nature cannot be stopped. But none of that matters. Who cares about some fish growing extra eyes and going extinct? Nothing we can do to this world will last. We could kill ourselves in a nuclear apocalypse, and life would go on. It's ourselves we have to worry about.

So electonics waste is not even close to the greatest threats facing Humanity. Our own system of economics is.

>>540125
>as i understand it some 3rd world nations are happy to have our e-waste. they re-refine it and put it back on the market.
Chinese pesants hold the circuit boards over a fire melting the solder (and inhaling it, remember that shits toxic) shaking the components off for collection
I think we can come up with a slightly less degrading means of recycling

>>540021
Why not start here? Why can't we do it right now?
>>540014
That I have to agree with you, corporations control governments via influence and campaign contributions. So voting for mainstream politicians would not next to nothing.
>>540134
Why not make the products last, just replace the parts that do not work anymore?

>>540187
Not my problem. If china wants to turn it in to a real business then they can develop the infrastructure. I'm sure there'd be money in it since they make all of our electronics anyway.

>>540205
Because selling one doodad requires a larger catalog (and more overhead) than selling the thingamagigs and knowing that they will break.

See also: radioshack

I think the continuation of irresponsible manufacturing of all this shit is fucking unacceptable.

Nobody's gonna do anything about it tho.

>>540134
I think the built in non-replaceable battery ought to make that self evident, or if not then everyone screaming it at Apple and those that have copied them

Plastic and more toxic shit is our generation's asbestos and PCB.

We're gonna pay shittons of money for cleanups in the future, because we're fucking corrupt and retarded.

Read in a National Geographic that people and kids in Africa and India's coast rummage through all that junk to find recyclable metal, get maybe $5 a day for it

>>540228
Well, companies need to make money. Why waste a profit on trying to clean up a products waste?

>>540315
in business school you're taught thats an 'externality'

Only hazardous to the stupid niggers who burn the waste looking for jewgold