Electronic waste recycling
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Transcript of Electronic waste recycling
Electronic Waste RecyclingElectronic waste or e-waste is a term
employed to describe all manner of electronic gadgets and
equipment, for example TVs, radios, refrigerators, microwaves,
electronic watches, computers, printers, scanners, cameras,
laptops, light bulbs, cell phones and their accompanying
peripherals that are rendered unusable for one reason or another
and end up being dumped into the environment.Electronic Waste
Recycling is becoming a common trend to recycle electronic waste
instead of just disposing it because first, this ensures that
resources in the environment are reasonably and cost-effectively
conserved. This is because some of the parts and components of
electronic waste are usually reusable, for example plastic parts,
metals in the micro-circuit boards, glass in the cathode ray tubes
and so on.Secondly, electronic waste is one of the main causes of
environmental pollution. Apart from visual pollution some of the
parts and components of the electronics, for example cathode ray
tubes, contain harmful substances like lead which if left
haphazardly in the environment may find their way into human
consumption leading to ill effects on health. Recycling thus stops
this from happening and goes a step towards creating a cleaner
environment less prone to the risk of harmful substance exposure to
humans.Recycling electronics is generally done in a two step
process; sorting and treatment. Sorting is the thorough separation
of the mass of electronic waste into distinct material categories,
for example: plastics, metals, glass, wood, rubber and so on.
Another way of sorting is according to particular components which
undergo a particular treatment, for example: hard disks, cathode
ray tubes, mother-boards, cell-phone circuitry, camera lenses,
batteries, flash disks, CDs, DVDs, cables, switches, processors and
so on. Treatment is the actual processing of the groups or
categories of sorted electronic waste, usually by different
processing entities for each category of material or
component.Plastics are melted down and remade into other useful
articles. Glass from cathode ray tubes is usually reused in making
of new cathode ray tube monitors. Mercury, a prevalent toxic
substance is usually extracted and reused in dental practice while
phosphorus obtained from bulbs is used to make fertilizer. Wood
from older generation electronics (speakers, radios and television
sets) is usually shredded and used in agriculture or to make fuel
material. Component parts like hard disks which are made of
aluminum are smelted and the resultant metal ingots used in making
vehicle parts.There are also certain machine parts that are
expressly sent back to the manufacturer for recycling electronics,
for example printer toner cartridges. Here we see that recycling
does not necessarily mean actively doing the treatment of the
electronic waste, but may also be about categorizing and sending
off the components back to the manufacturer. Some metals such as
barium are extracted via electrolysis and reused. Likewise
extracted nickel and cadmium are reused in the making of fortified
steels and dry cells.About: Potomac eScrap LLC deals in recycling
computer scrap and other electronics like mobile phones, CD and DVD
disks, Hard Drives etc.