E-Revolution - The biggest environmental hazard of the future ?
Millions of computers are getting disposed every day across the world and now in a big way in our country too thanks to the IT boom. There exists no stringent laws on the recycling and reuse of these toxic items such as cabinets, motherboards, chips and monitors. And as a result the local recyclers try to extract precious metals (read gold) and recycle these in all sorts of hazardous ways thus putting themselves in danger and propagating serious environmental pollution. The LCD in the monitors are toxic chemicals and the alloys and fumes out of burning other such chemicals and polymers and plastics could be deadly thus polluting neighbouring areas too. The illegal disposal and sale of these is even worse - the toxic materials are dumped into our country from the US apart from those that we ourselves generate - China has banned this but we have not because it provides a large number of people with their only means of livelihood. But just imagine the kind of risk these workers and recyclers put themselves into and you know why there must be a more organised way for disposal. Actually organisations that manufacture the products are the ones who are supposed to take care of proper disposal, this is yet to come into picture out here in India, this also requires that organisations and individuals who use these know of the consequenses of such careless disposal and contact the manufacturers. But to inculcate such behaviour in a market driven by PC assemblers and cheap products will be very difficult, until then the environment and we inturn suffer.
These thoughts are based on facts and figures shown in the environment related programme Bhoomi - at 11 am every sunday on Doordarshan National Channel (DD National).
Just Finished : The Great Indian Dream - Arindam and Malay Chaudhuri
(Happy capitalism and people friendly yet practical economics, is the focal theme of this well written book though sometimes it seems the author does not believe in the theme 'Practice what you preach')
Reading :
Macbeth by William Shakespeare (My first experience with the Bard's originals)
The Chamber by John Grisham (His pacy style and skills are good - he was a lawyer and all his books centre around lawyers and criminals of course...)
Rereading : Swami Vivekananda - A Biography by Swami Nikhilananda (Well researched and concise)
Millions of computers are getting disposed every day across the world and now in a big way in our country too thanks to the IT boom. There exists no stringent laws on the recycling and reuse of these toxic items such as cabinets, motherboards, chips and monitors. And as a result the local recyclers try to extract precious metals (read gold) and recycle these in all sorts of hazardous ways thus putting themselves in danger and propagating serious environmental pollution. The LCD in the monitors are toxic chemicals and the alloys and fumes out of burning other such chemicals and polymers and plastics could be deadly thus polluting neighbouring areas too. The illegal disposal and sale of these is even worse - the toxic materials are dumped into our country from the US apart from those that we ourselves generate - China has banned this but we have not because it provides a large number of people with their only means of livelihood. But just imagine the kind of risk these workers and recyclers put themselves into and you know why there must be a more organised way for disposal. Actually organisations that manufacture the products are the ones who are supposed to take care of proper disposal, this is yet to come into picture out here in India, this also requires that organisations and individuals who use these know of the consequenses of such careless disposal and contact the manufacturers. But to inculcate such behaviour in a market driven by PC assemblers and cheap products will be very difficult, until then the environment and we inturn suffer.
These thoughts are based on facts and figures shown in the environment related programme Bhoomi - at 11 am every sunday on Doordarshan National Channel (DD National).
Just Finished : The Great Indian Dream - Arindam and Malay Chaudhuri
(Happy capitalism and people friendly yet practical economics, is the focal theme of this well written book though sometimes it seems the author does not believe in the theme 'Practice what you preach')
Reading :
Macbeth by William Shakespeare (My first experience with the Bard's originals)
The Chamber by John Grisham (His pacy style and skills are good - he was a lawyer and all his books centre around lawyers and criminals of course...)
Rereading : Swami Vivekananda - A Biography by Swami Nikhilananda (Well researched and concise)
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