What is really going to astound you now are the statistics associated with e-waste. Do you know that close to 1.7 billion smartphones were purchased in the year 2020 alone? This number is going to increase by multiples by the time 2022 begins. We will have produced more than 52.2 million metric tons of e-waste by the year has ended.
The majority of the people in the US upgrade their smartphones and mobile phones almost every 2 years. This means that there is a rising amount of electronic waste that we produce and there is probably no effective way to get rid of it all efficiently. Part of the problem is that we are choosing to turn a blind eye to the hazards electronic waste is putting our environment through at the moment. There is a lot that we still do not know about end-of-life hardware destruction and electronic recycling as a whole. The following section aims to explain a few important considerations when opting for electronic recyclers:
1. Your Negligence Can Cause Data Breach
It is not a surprise that if we fail to delete all the data on our hard drives and computers, laptops, and smartphones, we run the risk of incurring heavy financial losses. Perhaps one of your employees has left their username and password negligently written down somewhere or at a spot that is accessible to anyone who passes by; this will put their data and important company records at risk. The information that you want to keep safe and secure in your servers and systems will be out in the open for anyone to exploit. You cannot let sensitive company data get into the hands of unreliable and untrustworthy individuals at any cost. This is a major consideration when going for electronic recycling. Mitigation of risk attached to data breaches resulting from callous e-waste management is something that we still haven't been able to ensure.
2. Beware Of Electronic Toxicities
This is also a factor that you have to be aware of whenever recycling electronics. All the personal tech that we own contains some kind of chemical and harmful compounds within them. The level of mercury and chromium that our environment gets exposed to the moment we discard our electronics is significant. These chemicals and harmful compounds can easily reach us through our water supplies and food. The crops that we grow can get polluted with these chemicals if we do not recycle our old electronics correctly. Yes, our smartphones, computers and printers, and tablets can be very dangerous to us if we do not contain the harmful effects of these gadgets and discard them off in the most environmentally friendly manner.
3. Reusing Usable Devices
The leading electronic recycling providers are of the opinion and even strongly recommend that you should try to find uses for old and obsolete gadgets within your home. Your iPod or perhaps your old iPhone and computer and tablets can be given a new lease of life if you are only able to find original equipment manufacturer-supplied batteries. You can make them usable all over again and prevent them from reaching your landfills a little too early.
Final Thoughts
We can't be just sitting around and waiting for a miracle to happen. We are constantly releasing several dangerous chemicals into the environment by the way of exposing them to electronic waste that we produce every year. We cannot afford to be negligent with the only planet that we have. It is time we started preserving it by curbing the amount of electronic waste that we produce and also finding better ways to utilize older technologies.
