Call the CI offices to recycle your corporate computer today. An adverse phenomenon of the digital revolution is the affect it is having on the environment. The ever increasing size and sophistication of software on desktop computers means that large companies often have to upgrade their equipment to handle the demands of new programs. Corporations need new equipment to keep up and maintain new technology standards. As new technology is introduced it creates the need to discard old equipment. This often poses difficulties for corporations, because it is expensive to have the equipment picked up and properly recycled. Instead, tons of toxic equipment end up in our nations landfills as well as shipped abroad — continuing to threaten our environment. Most of the computers being thrown out still work perfectly, but many are broken up and buried in landfill sites.
The problem of computer waste threatening our environment is a real one. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 86 percent of 20 million computers are considered by the EPA to be “Toxic Waste,” and by federal law, because they contain extremely hazardous materials; because they contain bio-accumulative substances like lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, and some types of flame-retardants. These 20 million obsolete computers host a laundry list of toxins – 650 million pounds of lead, 987,000 pounds of cadmium, 231,000 pounds of mercury and 2 billion pounds of plastic. Each computer monitor contains between one and six pounds of lead, a toxin linked to brain damage, in its radiation absorbing cathode ray tube (CTR).
When personal computers that are dumped in landfills crack, the materials in them leach out and contaminate drinking water supplies and the air. Potential adverse effects from the “e-waste” include DNA damage, asthmatic bronchitis, and mental retardation in children. CTRs are usually the second largest source of lead in the nation’s municipal solid waste streams, behind lead acid batteries. The National Safety Council estimates that the number of obsolete computers will hit the half billion mark by 2007.