5 Reasons You Should Recycle E-Waste

Everyone has e-waste in their homes and business. Many of you are just sitting on that e-waste waiting until it gets so bad that you have to do something about it. Others might even potentially be committing a crime by throwing those electronics in the regular trash. Sadoff is here to help you do things right with our 5 reasons you should recycle e-waste.

What Happens When E-Waste Isn’t Recycled?

The best way to convince you to recycle your e-waste is to tell you what can happen to the environment when they are not properly recycled\ and end up in garbage processing facilities such as landfills or even incinerators.

Read More: Is E-Waste a Cause of Climate Change?

Toxins Enter Into the Water Table

An electronic in your home is safe It’s not out in the elements, and it’s not having constant forces and even heat applied to it. The very opposite is true in a landfill. This means that a device whose toxins were once safe and sound doing their job in your electronics now has a very high potential to leak into the environment of a landfill or garbage facility.

Landfills do have barriers in place that will attempt to restrict runoff from entering the water table, but it is not always foolproof. Tears in liners and other failures of these barriers can often go unnoticed for years, and when they are noticed, it is typically because substances have already leaked. What’s more, these barriers often do not consider natural disasters beyond what’s typical for the area. Think of all the record-setting weather events we’ve had just in the past few years.

Heavy Metals Contaminate Soil

Of those toxins that we talked about, many of them are heavy metals like mercury. I don’t think we need to tell you how bad mercury can be, but for a point of reference, just 8 micrograms can be toxic and even deadly to a human and the average cellphone contains 210,000 micrograms of mercury. Introducing heavy metals such as mercury into the soil can have disastrous consequences

Carcinogens Enter the Atmosphere

Not only can elements of your electronics end up in the soil and in the groundwater, but they can also end up in the atmosphere too. One of the primary ways that we have of dealing with garbage is still incineration, and when the wrong things—such as electronics end up in the incineration process, which will force many of those same toxins into the atmosphere.

Hurt Humans and Wildlife

Do you know what happens when you have contaminated soil, toxins in the water table, and carcinogens in the atmosphere? Even if you live nowhere near where it happens it will leach into the plants and the wildlife. Not only do we not want more plants and animals to die off and go extinct, but that’s the food you eat.

More Mining Has to Occur

Speaking of a greener world, we can all agree that we shouldn’t be mining up more resources than we need, and why should we mine metals and materials when they have already been mined and can simply be reused?  Imagine if you had to dig a ditch into your hard and you also had to fill some holes. Why would you buy more dirt and throw away the dirt you dug up? Moreover, mining means burning more fossil fuels, consuming more electricity, and destroying more of the environment than just recycling those old electronics.

E-Recycle vs Mining

Recycle Your E-Waste at Sadoff

At Sadoff, we can work with you to help you develop your e-recycling program and ensure that all your old electronics safely end up where they should go and are recycled to their fullest extent. We can also destroy your data for you and provide IT asset remarketing services as well. Reach out to us today for a quote.

Categorized in: E-Recycle