Much is made of the digital media revolution that continues to expand our ability to communicate, work together closely, learn and make more informed decisions. We are told this will improve the quality of our lives. However, there is a downside to this never ending demand for new digital products such as smart mobile phones and that is the growing consumer waste mountain of redundant and highly toxic electronic products.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has recognised the increasing problems and is giving greater priority to engaging people and strengthening government enforcement in the electronics lifecycle by focusing on the key areas of design, manufacture, handling, reuse, recycling, exporting and disposal. The EPA is expecting publishers, electronics manufacturers, bandwidth providers and other digital media supply chain players to revisit their marketing spiel and make more effort to identify, quantify, disclose and manage the impacts of e-waste arising from digital media products. If insufficient progress is made, stringent regulation or environmental catastrophe will eventually force the issue.
Disposal of electronic waste raises complex issues and this is well illustrated by the global confusion and contradictory practices found in the mobile phone recycling sector. However, if we continue to ignore the issues we do so at our peril.