Franklin, Massachusetts-Based Self Storage Facility Warns Consumers of Unethical e-Waste Recycling Practices Amongst Greedy Organizations

e-waste recycling

Old cell phones, old televisions, old computer monitors, old printers, old digital image scanners and several other types of electronics, all of which bear incumbent toxic chemicals or elements that are dangerous to our environment if disposed of improperly, more frequently end up in landfills and trash disposal areas every day, with an increasing threshold for toxic pollution of our atmosphere growing more and more possible along with it.

Consumers these days are flooding to staged e-waste recycling events, which have sprung up in more than 1,000 communities over the past four years in the United States.
However, environmental activists warn that these events may be setup to do nothing more than fool the consumer. Items collected at free events are sometimes destined for salvage yards in developing nations either way, where toxins spill into the water, the air and the lungs of laborers paid a few dollars per day to extract materials. This is their idea of e-waste and Electronics recycling.

“E-waste,” or electronics trash, is piling up faster than ever. According to the reports by the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans were responsible for discarded mass totaling 47 million un recycled computers in 2005, up from 20 million in 1998. Factor in other forms of electronics, and EPA estimates specify that the nation now dumps between 300 million and 400 million electronic items per year.
E-waste disposal rates are poised to accelerate in the run-up to a nationwide switch to digital television signals in February. Less than 20% of all electronic waste is recycled, according to the EPA. The rest ends up in landfills.
Still, recycling rates are rising. Free drop-off events, designed primarily to keep lead, mercury, barium and other e-waste toxins out of local landfills, have attracted overflow crowds in the past year.
When recyclers cart away e-waste, what happens next can vary widely. Some separate glass, metal and plastics, and then make sure that most reusable materials find their way into new products. Others bring their loads to brokers, who ship contents overseas to salvagers, who pay to mine mountainous piles for precious metals and other valuables.
This tapestry of approaches is possible because recyclers don’t have to be certified. U.S. law (unlike Europe’s) permits the export of electronic waste to developing nations.
The challenge for consumers who use free drop-off events is to know when to be concerned and when to feel at ease about their gadgetry’s final resting place.
Sometimes these events are organized by corporations or businesses as eco-friendly fundraisers, or as local non-profit events, which is great, but people really should ask questions about where the material is going.

Being responsible about e-waste disposal isn’t as simple as making sure a recycler does no exporting whatsoever. For instance, recovering certain types of electronics is too labor-intensive to be practical in the USA, where labor rates are substantially higher than in China. Analysts admit that if that market did not exist due to the demand for this material in China, all this recyclable plastic would end up in landfills.
Trust the efforts of Guardian Self Storage to responsibly dispose of old electronics and otherwise hazardous post-consumer electronic materials. Based in Franklin, Massachusetts, Guardian Self Storage drives home the environmental awareness that all organizations should conduct business while mindful of daily.