"High Tech Trash" by Elizabeth Grossman is an eye-opening account of the mounting environmental costs of living in a technology-dependent society. As Rachel Carson had once sounded the alarm about the dangers of chemical contamination to a prior generation, Ms. Grossman succeeds in exposing one of today's most underreported environmental problems in a persuasive and compelling manner. The author's carefully structured thesis is invigorated with skillful writing and narrative flair, creating both an intelligent and accessible work that should appeal to a wide audience. Through her careful research and analysis, we understand that greater regulation of the production and disposal of high tech equipment is urgently needed in the U.S. if we wish to avoid poisoning ourselves with the detritus of our wasteful consumerist culture.
Ms. Grossman points out that our blissful ignorance of the underside of high tech may be partly the result of years of carefully crafted industry hype about the supposed immateriality of our modern world. Ms. Grossman methodically debunks such claims while vividly and memorably describing her sometimes harrowing visits to mining sites where raw materials such as copper, gold and other minerals that are essential to producing electronic products are extracted from the ground using highly destructive and polluting practices. The author visits several semiconductor manufacturing sites where water is withdrawn at unsustainable rates and discharged into local rivers in a fouled condition. She goes on to travel to so-called 'clean room' facilities where the legacies of soil and water pollution have led to illness and financial hardship in a number of communities. Discussing the probable link between increased cancer incidents among factory workers and the innocent people who happened to live near some of these plants, Ms. Grossman argues forcefully for the U.S. to adopt the precautionary principle while demonstrating how nearly all of us may be vulnerable to exposure.
We learn that the problem of dealing with obsolete and broken electronic equipment, or 'e-waste', has been recognized by some industrialized countries but not by the U.S., whose patchwork of local laws are woefully inadequate to the task even if they are not well understood by citizens. Ms. Grossman compares and contrasts the practices of recyclers both in the U.S. and overseas; these range from the primitive conditions that sometimes exist in poor countries such as China where materials are often dismantled under hazardous conditions to modern, state-of-the-art facilities in Sweden and the U.S. where used electronics are handled under safe and controlled conditions. We come to appreciate the important role that responsible recyclers can play in recovering precious metals, plastics, glass and toxic materials from discarded equipment, which in turn can help us reduce the adverse effects of disposal on the environment and ourselves. Indeed, the author's common-sense arguments are presented with such clarity and power that inaction seems absurd: one concludes that there is simply no good reason for the U.S. not to implement a cradle-to-grave producer responsibility system for electronic products that includes easily accessible and affordable recycling options for consumers.
I highly recommend this important book to everyone.
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High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health
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