Male: Here is something I hate about trash, not too long ago you paid a lot of money for some of it. Like your computer, in fact especially your computer.
Brian: Statistics say that there is 133,000 PC’s that fall in to this use daily. Now we think that amount be daily, that is a lot of PC’s.
Male: In the United States we generate 4.5 billion pounds of electronic waste a year.
Male: Electronic waste or E-waste is the fastest growing kind of trash in America, it is a sleeping giant and it is going to be a trouble when we wake up to it. Not just for the sheer of physical volume dumped in landfills. The scary part is what is inside them.
Male: This thing is an extremely toxic item. You got leaded glass and the cathode ray to appearing. You got leaded glass in the front. You got lead in the circuit boards, you got mercury switches. Electronic waste account for 70% of the heavy metals in landfills.
Male: America’s problem is becoming the world’s problem, literally.
Brian: A large part of what passes is recycling it out for electronic waste in the United States is shipping things and container loads to developing countries where very poor communities get the stuff the dumped on and then are dismantling these things in extremely toxic conditions.
Dr. Bill Rathje: It is the responsibility of both the sellers and the buyers and the government to find a safe way to recycle that kind of material.
Male: What is needed is a homegrown solution and in Chicago, a company called intercom believes it has one.
Brian: Intercon Solutions has a process that generates no waste from e-waste that is shipped to our facility. We are able to turn all components of our process in to recyclable base materials.
Male: Plastics are separated from aluminum, steel you name it everything is they remanufactured to get it to the point where it can be recycled properly.
Male: Every tube is actually remanufactured or pulled from the monitor and then just melted down for lead value. This mother board here, will be crushed and then refined for gold, silver, lead, copper you name it anything that can be reclaimed at that point.
Male: According to Bryan, the hardest part about recycling E-waste safely is convincing companies to do it.
Brian: If someone really cares about it, whether it is an individual or corporation, it is as easy problem to solve.
Male: The industry spends billions of dollars and researching development every to come up with new chips and new circuits and new technologies and they can spend a fraction of that money to figure out how to make better, safer, cleaner, longer lasting, more environmentally responsible products.
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