More e-waste from developing than developed nations

Thursday, 29 April 2010, 20:54 IST
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More e-waste from developing than developed nations
Washington: Developing countries will be producing at least twice as much electronic waste (e-waste) as developed countries in the next six to eight years, says a new study. It foresees in 2030 developing countries discarding 400 million to 700 million obsolete personal computers (PCs) per year as compared to 200 million-300 million in developed countries. Eric Williams of the Arizona State University (ASU) and colleagues cite a dramatic increase in ownership of PCs and other electronic devices in both developed and developing countries. At the same time, technological advances are shrinking the lifetime of consumer electronics products so that people discard them sooner than ever before. That trend has led to a global concern about environmentally safe ways of disposing e-waste, which contains potentially toxic substances, says a release of the American Chemical Society (ACS). The scientists used a computer model to forecast global distribution of discarded PCs. It concluded that consumers in developing countries will trash more computers than developed countries by 2016, with the trend continuing and escalating thereafter. "Our central assertion is that the new structure of global e-waste generation discovered here, combined with economic and social considerations, call for a serious reconsideration of e-waste policy," the report notes. These findings were published in ACS' semi-monthly journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Source: IANS
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