Electronic Waste

    The article “Where Your Cell Phone Goes to Die” by Leyla Acaroglu is about electronic trash. Electronic trash is shipped overseas to some of the poorest countries where people break down the parts and sell the metal for very low prices. These people work in horrible and inhumane conditions that no person should be allowed to work in. Many of the procedures and materials these people work with are dangerous to human health. Then the article talks about how the US and companies can change this. I believe that something should be done. I don’t see why the US hasn’t done anything to help these people.

    There is so much that electronics companies can do to have better ways of recycling electronic waste then dumping it on other, impoverished countries. In Europe, electronics companies must accept all  of their customer’s used items and recycle them for free. Companies in the US are not required to do this. In Japan, electronics companies are required to establish their own recycling plants or hire third parties to recycle their products. However, the US doesn’t require any of these things, so electronic waste ends up in other countries.

    Some electronics companies are actually making their products even harder to recycle properly. Cellphone companies deliberately design their phones to be hard to disassemble so that customers have to go back to the company to get their phones fixed. The article says that by changing the way phones are glued, screwed, and soldered together could make recycling them easier. However, most of these companies seem to only be focused on their business. They don’t seem to care that their products are going to countries to be recycled by kids and adults. They appear to only care about themselves.

    There are opportunities the US could have taken that they didn’t carry out to solve the issue of recycling electronic waste. An example of this is that the United States could sign the Basel Convention which is an international treaty that makes shipping electronic waste to other places illegal. According to the article, the US is the only industrialized country that hasn’t signed the treaty yet. Also, the Responsible Electronics Recycling Act, which has been supported by both Democrats and Republicans has never managed to have been  voted on. This act would make it illegal to export toxic waste from the US to developing countries that aren’t well protected. I feel like that the US must realize that what they must be doing is wrong. However, the government  seems to be doing nothing to help this. They are actually putting the subject off by ignoring these attempts.

    The US is known for helping other countries in times of need, but nothing is being done to help  countless lives in poor countries across the ocean. I think that by having electronic garbage  recycled in the US, it would hurt the country. However, this goes against what America stands for. I feel like the government should at least think about some of these ideas as an alternative option to leaving other countries to deal with our waste. Its the right thing to do.