High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: tech trash, electronics recyclers, electronics recycling programs, United States, European Union, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Driven by built-in obsolescence and the desire of consumers for smaller, faster and sleeker hardware, millions of discarded plastic computer casings, lead-infused monitors, antiquated cellphones and even dead TV remote controls—the "effluent of the affluent"—are piling up annually in America's landfills, leaching dangerous toxins, including lead, mercury and arsenic, into the nation's water tables. Such cast-off "e-waste" is also being shipped to countries like India and China, where for pennies a day workers without masks or gloves boil circuit boards over primitive braziers to extract microchips (along with a slew of noxious elements), after which the silicon chips are bathed in open vats of acid to precipitate out micrograms of gold. In either instance, according to this alarming and angry study, the way in which America currently handles its cyber-age waste amounts to an ongoing but underreported environmental crisis. Grossman (Watershed: The Undamming of America) points to recycling regulations in Europe as models and demands that manufacturers of high-end technology assume more of the burden for safe disposal of discarded electronics. Her call for action is commendable and critical, but this book's often daunting jargon (pages are given over to a difficult discussion of different kinds of bromodiphenyl ethers and their varying impact on the environment) sometimes undercuts its passion. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post

Disposal bins for the cartridges used in computer printers are becoming commonplace in office-supply stores, and some manufacturers pay the postage for shipping spent cartridges back for proper handling, but what about old computers themselves? How dangerous is the material that goes into them, and what happens to it when the whole caboodle gets thrown out? In High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health (Island Press, $25.95), journalist Elizabeth Grossman issues a warning against "e-waste": plastics, batteries, flame-retardant chemicals and more. She notes that the environmental harms of the Digital Age "are now being felt by communities from the Arctic to Australia, with poorer countries and communities receiving a disproportionate share of the burden."

With its citizens using about a quarter of the world's computers, the United States should be a leader in figuring out how to minimize the harm they can do to ecosystems. But according to Grossman, as of the end of last year, the United States had "not even sketched out a national system for dealing with its high-tech trash." In an appendix, "How to Recycle a Computer, Cell Phone, TV, or Other Digital Device," she summarizes the resources now available to those with a cyber-conscience.

The Flip Side of the Digital Revolution
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: Shearwater; 2nd edition (September 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1597261904
• ISBN-13: 978-1597261906
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #708,946 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An environmentalist with a sense of optimism, January 1, 2007

By	Kain Junot (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health (Hardcover)

An eye opening account of just how much raw material it takes to make your favorite electronic gizmos and what can be done to reduce their environmental footprint. Normally books like this come off as scathing polemics; however, Grossman does an excellent job of explaining why things are the way they are, what recycling methods are working, and what can be done better. Perhaps the saddest fact of the entire book is just how recyclable modern electronic could be, and how little of them is actually recycled.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of my top ten (new list) for saving the planet, July 28, 2007

By	Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

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This review is from: High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health (Hardcover)

Fairly quickly into this book I was comparing it to Silent Spring and to Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy.

This is a brilliant elegant work. If you agree with its premises it is a fast read, ending with an appendix on how to recycle electronic waste, and a truly superb bibliography. This is a serious book, a PhD level accomplishment, and totally objective and meritorious.

I am particularly impressed that Apple accepts its computer back for recycling in Japan, something we need to demand here. Indeed, if Apple and CISCO (for its routers and hubs) were to commit to total recycling, what is called for in Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming and described in more detail in Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things I for one would immediately switch my business and my office to iPhone, MacIntoch, and Open Office from Sun (on verge of being fully implementable within Apple's operating system).

Other books on my top ten:
Where to find 4 billion new customers: expanding the world's marketplace; Smart companies looking for new growth opportunities should consider broadening ... consultant.: An article from: The Futurist (Forthcoming as a book, see my keynote to Gnomedex, "Open Everything"
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits
The Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution and the Industrial System
Diet for a Small Planet
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Thank God for Evolution!: How the Marriage of Science and Religion Will Transform Your Life and Our World

4.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive research-oriented account of electronic waste, August 8, 2009

By	K. Wilson (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I recommend this book to anyone interested in an objective, complete account of the electronic circle: raw materials, manufacturing, and waste. Elizabeth Grossman follows the trail from the mining and semiconductor companies to the third world countries where our discarded laptops and iPods end up. Although the title and first chapter have a grim tone, the book does offer a lot of hope.

High Tech Trash makes a good companion piece to Elizabeth Royte's book,Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash. Royte takes a much more personal approach to waste, writing very vivid descriptions of personalities and environments she encounters along the way. Grossman's work is more scientific and removed from the personal, attempting to fill every cranny with statistics and quotes. Although they are not exactly the same book, both cover common ground with differing styles that result in a complete picture of the US waste stream.

This makes High Tech Trash relevant to those who want to purely conduct research. I not only found out the exact chemical makeup of most motherboards but also their effects on the environment and human health. The author does a good job keeping her own personal feelings on a leash - a hard task to do when you swim through these kind of waters. Unlike the corporate demonizing that takes place in Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, High Tech Trash explores everyone's failures (governmental, social, corporate) to an exhaustive degree. This is the kind of book that will give you plenty to think about, a lot of anger over our current e-waste situation, but also plenty of ways to use that energy to improve our system and make things better.