The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [140]
3. Software upgrades: Often new software can’t run on older machines because they lack the memory or processing speed. Out with the old, perfectly functional computers! For example, when Microsoft released its Vista operating system, it caused a spike in the e-waste stream.64 The tight mix of plastics, metals, and glass in computers makes them really hard to recycle.
4. Can’t change the battery: Sometimes it is so hard to access and replace batteries in products that people just replace the whole product. When my daughter was younger, she loved a Sesame Street book that included a phone on which she could call the book’s characters and hear recorded messages. When the battery ran out, I had to pay more than the book originally cost for a replacement battery at RadioShack. Apple’s iPods pose the most infamous battery challenges; unless you’re an electronics whiz, you can’t change the battery yourself but must return it to Apple for a new one, which requires paying a fee and deleting anything stored on the device. With the price of iPods declining, why bother? Out with the old!
5. Disposable printers: Printers are so cheap, sometimes they’re even free with the purchase of a new computer. They’re often less expensive than a cartridge of replacement ink! Even reaching a real human on the manufacturer’s customer service line to ask about a malfunction can be more of a hassle than just getting a new one. Out once again with the old!
“Let’s just get a new one” has become the default response when electronics or appliances break or need some kind of replacement part. As a result, about 400 million electronic products are chucked in the United States each year. In 2005—the most recent year for which we have data— it amounted to 4 billion pounds of e-waste, much of which was still functioning!65 And this Stuff is highly toxic: today’s electronics contain mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, beryllium, and brominated flame retardants, among other nasties. Yet rather than segregating and handling it carefully and responsibly, as is necessary with this level of hazard, in the United States we still dump 85 percent of our e-waste in landfills66 or, even worse, burn it in incinerators.
In 2009, I visited a huge e-waste recycling facility in Roseville, California. The first room looked like a Costco store, with floor-to-ceiling shelving lining the walls, but rather than being filled with products to be sold, the shelves were filled with products waiting to be destroyed. There were pallets full of printers, piles of TVs, and pallet-sized cardboard boxes (called gaylords) full of cell phones and MP3 players and BlackBerries. Staring into one of these gaylords full of BlackBerries, I realized that many still had the protective plastic film that’s on the screen when you buy it. “They’re new,” our guides explained.
Every product in the place was there to be dismantled. Some were smashed first by hand, by workers with mallets and hammers on an assembly line. I watched as a series of identical printers went by, each adorned with one of the blue tags that you have to pull off before use: all new. Smash, smash, smash! I asked one guide what percent of products coming in here were brand new. “About half,” she replied. I was aghast. What kind of economic system makes it more sensible to destroy perfectly good electronics rather than sell or share them? Why not put them on Craigslist? Or in the parking lot out front, labeled with “Free” signs? Our very forthcoming guide Renee explained: “The companies don’t want this Stuff coming back to them through their warranty programs and then have to be responsible for it. It’s easier for them to just destroy it.” And then there’s all the Stuff that’s not new but still perfectly functional. What a waste!
The products travel along a series of conveyer belts, past other workers who pop them open to remove the batteries to dispose of them separately, as the hazardous waste they are. This step isn’t actually required by law but is vital to keeping the hazardous chemicals in the batteries