The Guardian puts together a striking photo gallery on the electronic waste that ends up on the shores of West Africa, where it can poison the people who tear it apart for precious metals they can sell.
One of the big risks, the story points out, is mercury poisoning. This may all seem so far removed, but The Oklahoman recently reported on a man in Bryan County who died from apparent mercury poisoning after he used mercury to try to extract gold from circuit boards. Officials said he was poor and desperate for money.
The Guardian’s story says you can get more gold out of computer circuitry than from a hunk of rock.
In Oklahoma City and Midwest City, you can take your old computer parts to a hazardous waste recycling centers that will dispose of them without releasing the potentially toxic components.
John David Sutter
May 9th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Great info on recycling computer parts but what about telephone books. The best way to recycle is not to get them if you do not want them. Now you can go to www.YellowPagesGoesGreen.org and opt out from getting them. This is a free service. We are all for recycling but I prefer not to have to recycle something I don’t want in the first place.
May 9th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Hey! Thanks for all the great info. I was browsing through a bunch of green websites and blogs and I came across yours and found it very interesting. There are a bunch of others I like too, like the daily green, ecorazzi and earthlab.com. I especially like EarthLab.com’s carbon calculator (http://www.earthlab.com/signupprofile/). I find it really easy to use (it doesn’t make me feel guilty after I take it). Are there any others you would recommend? Can you drop me a link to your favorites (let me know if they are the same as mine).