One of the prime goals of Afterelife is to spread awareness of electronic waste amongst sections of society who are consumers of electronic goods. Apart from big organisations, corporates, IT firms who are bulk consumers of electronic goods, a huge amount of electronic goods are consumed by upwardly mobile group of the society. With increasing buying power this section of the society comprises of people who work for the above stated firms. Exposure of technology and travel leave them hankering for white goods and electronic goods as soon as they are launched. What remains to be seen is what happens at the end of life of gadgets/goods that we surround ourselves with. This is, what is, increasingly being referred to as 'homegrown' E-waste.
A small calculation will help us understand this problem better. Take an example of a upper middle class family of 4 today living in any urban area in this world.
Take a walk through a typical urban home will reveal the following list:
Year 2006 -
1. Laptop - 1
2. Desktop - 1
3. TVs -1
5. DVD player
6. Mobile Phone (2 numbers - 1 each and if the children are old enough add 2 more)
7. Digital camera -1 or 2 (depending on passion for photography)
Year 2011
1. Laptops 2 new
2. Desktop 2 new(Assuming children have grown up and need to access the PC for school work)
3. TVs - LED or LCD - 2
4. Ipod - 2
5.DVD players 2(1 for home 1 for car)
6.Mobile 4(1 each for each family member)
7. Tab or Ipad
So you see the list goes on. All the goods in 2006 would be either traded in, resold(especially old TVs can be sold off) or given off to people who need it or disposed of via kabadiwala channel or the unorganised sector or retained at home as historic E-waste.
With increasing space shortage in our homes we will run out of space to hold such items at home and they will either find its way to the landfill through the municipal solid waste route or to kabadiwalas who will selll it to units that extract metals from E-waste.
This is a good time to reflect how much E-waste have you generated over a period of say 5 years. With this note we leave you now to ruminate on this. Will come back soon with a post on why you should be bothered about this waste stream.
