Understanding E-Waste Management and its Importance.
                     Understanding E-Waste 
Management and its Importance
What is e-waste?
• E-waste is any electrical or electronic equipment that’s been discarded. This includes 
working and broken items that are thrown in the garbage or donated to a charity 
reseller like Goodwill.
Source: www.ewaste1.com
Discard Electronics Products
• The ongoing challenge of how best to dispose of used and unwanted electronics isn’t 
a new one and dates back at least to the 1970s. But a lot has changed since then, 
particularly the number of electronics being discarded today.
Source: www.ewaste1.com
Leftover ‘New’ Technology
• Today, though, a growing amount of e-waste is not considered to be products that 
have stopped working or become obsolete.
• Technological advances are coming at us at such a dizzying speed that a lot of 
electronic devices that still work fine are the ones considered obsolete.
Source: www.ewaste1.com
E-waste Hides Toxic Materials
• While above ground, modern electronics are safe to use and be around. However, 
most electronics contain some form of toxic materials, including beryllium, cadmium, 
mercury, and lead, which pose serious environmental risks to our soil, water, air, and 
wildlife.
Source: www.ewaste1.com
What happen to E-waste?
• When E-waste gets buried at a landfill, it can dissolve in microscopic traces into the 
gross sludge that permeates at the landfill. 
• Eventually, these traces of toxic materials pool into the ground below the landfill. This 
is known as leaching.
Source: www.ewaste1.com
Leeching Poisons Nearby Water
• The problem is that there is so, so much E-waste that the trace amounts have 
ballooned over the years. 
• That toxic water under the landfill doesn’t stop below the landfill. It continues to the 
groundwater and the sources to all the freshwater in the surrounding area.
Source: www.ewaste1.com
Mining For New Metals
• Not only is this a problem for E-waste in landfills, but this is a side effect of mining for 
new sources of metal too.
• Having an environmentally-friendly source of recycled metal is better for the 
environment than a company digging up new sources of ore. 
Source: www.ewaste1.com
E-waste Problems
• Unfortunately, a skyrocketing amount of e-waste is being written off by owners as 
junk. There’s no more significant example of that than computers, laptops, and 
smartphones.
Source: www.ewaste1.com
The Dangers of E-waste
• According to the World Health Organization (WHO), health risks may result from 
direct contact with toxic materials that leach from e-waste. 
• These include minerals such as lead, cadmium, chromium, brominated flame 
retardants, or polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). 
Source: www.ewaste1.com
E-waste Disposal
• Since we know consumers will keep buying new devices, it’s important to keep 
reinforcing that message that we need to recycle the older models, not throw them 
out.
• The solution is to turn those devices over to an experienced firm like Great Lakes 
Electronics Corporation, which has years of experience performing environmentally 
friendly recycling of electronic products.
Source: www.ewaste1.com