Your Questions About Recycling

The Expert answers:

For disposal of hazardous waste, many cities and municipalities have hazardous waste collection sites or special days set aside for collection of such items. Check with your city or county Solid Waste Dept. Or Environmental Quality or Environmental Protection agency for information. If you have a computer that is still functional, consider donating it to a school or nonprofit organization in need. Also, a nonprofit computer recycling organization called Computer Recycling Center may be helpful (see sources). For ideas on how to recycle items from cell phones to used tires, or how to stay ahead of the game and REDUCE consumption of products (for example, use canvas bags instead of plastic or paper; stop junk mail), see the following sources. Did you know, for example, that 4 to 5 trillion plastic bags are manufactured each year, and that the majority of them are NOT recycled? If we reduce consumption (by using canvas bags, for example), we work toward making our earth cleaner and healthier.

The Expert answers:

Scarily enough, household waste is a very broad definition. It can be ANYTHING that comes from the household, so that kind of category for recycling isn’t a very good one.

Here’s a suggestion: Use your “household waste” bin for anything organic, or throw the “anything organic” into a compost heap for future gardening. Under this definition, kitty litter (minus waste) CAN go into one of these.

Also, find out from your community how they are defining household waste.

The Expert answers:

You would need a composting toilet to do that , composting toilets will burn the human waste and only after it is burned can it be recycled. Egg shells you can throw right into your garden.

The Expert answers:

New technology breeds electronic obsolescence, creating a growing e-waste environmental problem. Even electronic waste recycling can have negative environmental impacts.

High Tech Trash by Elizabeth Grossman, published by Island Press in 2006 states “The cathode ray tubes (CRTs) in computer and television monitors contain lead – which is poisonous to the nervous system – as do circuit boards. Mercury – like lead – a neurotoxin, is used in flat-panel display screens. Some batteries and circuit boards contain cadmium, known to be a carcinogen.”
The fact sheet “Electronic Product Management Issues” published by the California Integrated Waste Management Board in February 2002 states “When disposed in landfills, these products have the potential to contribute significant levels of toxic materials to the leachate produced in landfills. These include lead, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), mercury, cadmium, arsenic, zinc, chromium, and selenium.”

Toxic Tech: Not in our Backyard states “PVC is a chlorinated plastic used in some electronics products and for insulation on wires and cables. Chlorinated dioxins and furans are released when PVC is produced or disposed of by incineration.”

The Expert answers:

The consumer should be held responsible for the items he purchases. Maybe we would become more responsible if we had to find ways to dispose of all of the garbage we create by overconsuming.

We can Reduce, Reuse, Refuse to keep on buying more stuff that we do not need. There are many websites and other ways to recycle when we need an item or have one that still has some life.

The Expert answers:

All the e-waste in my area is recycled in my city and not by Chinese. They use all the safety equipment required.

Before when we were shipping all that stuff to other countries including China and India it wasn’t considered recycling, and who knows how many people will die because of it. Much of it was dumped in or near water and has contaminated the water supply for entire communities and it could take decades to see the results of heavy metal poisoning, increased cancers, birth defects etc. It will have lasting damage to both wild life, domestic animals used for food and the humans in the area. Not to mention those who actually try to recycle some materials, thye usually heat a circuit board over an open flame and inhale noxious gases to get the precious metals off the board.

The Expert answers:

I think you probably mean WEEE, that’s Waste Electric and Electrical Equipment.

All electrical equipment contains recyclable components, starting off with the plastics from outer casings etc. Down to the component boards which can contain gold and platinum.
These are separated and sold on to various sources for recycling, chips and circuit boards can be re-used so the aim of this is to lessen the amount of virgin (new) polymers and metals needed to continue in the electrical industry.Copper and other metals are recovered from motors, this is a valuble metal fetching close to £4000 per tonne of scrap.

WEEE waste companies in the UK are heavily regulated and the same also applies to many worldwide countries including China.
The recycling and waste industry used to send thousands of tonnes of waste plastics and electrical items to China but this has now thankfully come down to a more acceptable level thanks to the intervention of the Chinese government.

The Expert answers:

Well for the last ten years I have been composting my food scraps and separating my recycling (Glass, paper, plastic)I also wash my Styrofoam containers and recycle them. I have been recycling the plastic bags from the store but i try to use the reusable ones often. I like composting its great for my garden and i don’t feel so bad about dumping that stuff in a landfill. I used to have a plastic bin that i used but it got burnt in the brush fire by our house so now its just a big pile of yard scraps and food scraps. I think the raccoons like it too. I recycled the melted bin via waste services. I recycle the plastic cups my yougurt comes in to plant seedlings for the garden by drilling holes in them. I also use my community’s freecycle groups from yahoo. If i dont need something any more I post it on line and someone comes to my door and gets it. You can do alot b doing just a little.

The Expert answers:

Check this out-

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=e-waste+disposal