Why E-Waste Should Be Kept, Recycled in U.S. Rather than
shipping unloved laptops and TVs to the Third World for a dirty
form of salvage, advocates call for keeping e-waste at home for
recycling. As laptops, flat screens and smart phones grow ever
more ubiquitous, so does the problematic trash they ultimately
become. It’s a quandary for the Information Age that seldom gets
the attention of the cool tech tools themselves. Individual
communities in the U.S. have been struggling with how to dispose
of electronic waste, who should pay for its recycling and
whether companies that manufacture electronics should be
responsible for their full life cycle. But much of this e-waste
is never disposed of anywhere in the U.S. — whether at local
municipal dumps or corporate facilities. It winds up, of all
places, in Africa, or the Philippines, where it’s mined for
valuable components as small as copper wiring. And conscientious
consumers trying to hand off their old electronics seldom
realize this. “That’s the infuriating p