Are your getting ready for a new smartphone, television, or computer? Is it for yourself, your firm, or your children? What are you going to do with the electronic device(s) that you no longer need? Please just DO NOT just throw it away — recycle it! There are 3 key benefits of doing so.
Benefits of Recycling Electronic Waste
Free up landfill space.
Landfill space is limited, and soon it will be gone. If you throw away your old electronics, you are just taking up space in these landfills. It’s estimated that the U.S produces around 200 million tons of waste every year, and at least 1% of this waste can be classified as an electronic device. Conserve as much landfill space as possible by recycling your old electronics.
Protect the environment. THIS IS SO IMPORTANT!!!
Older electronics are made with toxic chemicals including lead, mercury, cadmium, and chromium. When you don’t dispose of electronics properly, these chemicals are released into the environment and can do a great deal of harm. One computer monitor alone can contain as much as four to nine pounds of lead not to mention other toxic substances. In fact, about 70% of heavy metals that end up in our landfills have come from electronic devices.
Conserve natural resources.
When you choose to recycle your electronic devices, materials can be recovered from the devices and used to make new products. This means fewer resources will need to be used to meet the growing demand for electronic devices. What materials can be reused? Electronic devices consist of a sizable amount of precious metals, yet little of it is recovered because people do not recycle these devices. For example, only about 10-15% of the gold used to produce electronic devices is recovered. The other 85-90% is lost, which means more gold will have to be mined from the Earth to meet demand.