Toys, leisure equipment, and sporting goods: electric trains or racing car sets, video games, and sports equipment with electric elements. The EPA suggests that only12.5% of electronic waste is properly recycled. E-waste profiteers can harvest substantial profits owing to lax environmental laws, corrupt officials, and poorly paid workers, and there is an urgent need to develop policies and strategies to dispose of and recycle e-waste safely in order to achieve a sustainable future. During the recycling process in the informal sector, toxic chemicals that have no economic value are simply dumped. For more information on multibins contact UHS Facilities/Housing Conservation Services. E-waste is a popular, informal name for electronic products nearing the end of their "useful life." The complex composition and improper handling of e-waste adversely affect human health. The majority of the world’s e-waste is recycled in developing countries, where informal and hazardous setups for the extraction and sale of metals are common. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. If you live on-campus you can dispose of your electronic waste easily and conveniently by creating a Fix It Ticket or contacting your college maintenance office. A recent study about the rising electronic pollution in the USA revealed that the average computer screen has five to eight pounds or more of leadrepresenting 40 percent of all the lead in US landfills. Additional information on disposal / recycling of e-waste and other regulated items can be found in all college mailrooms, Graduate Student Housing Mailroom and the Village Laundry Community room. Consumer equipment: radios, televisions, video cameras, video recorders, stereo recorders, audio amplifiers, and musical instruments. Although e-waste contains complex combinations of highly toxic substances that pose a danger to health and the environment, many of the products also contain recoverable precious materials, making it a different kind of waste compared with traditional municipal waste. When not recycled properly, the resources put into the production of electronics is lost. They process 475,000 tonnes of electronic waste (e-waste) each year. There is also significant illegal transboundary movement of e-waste in the form of donations and charity from rich industrialized nations to developing countries. Electronic devices such as smartphones and laptops may also contain confidential information that can be stolen from e-waste, which makes proper disposal even more important. Electronic waste (e-waste) products have exhausted their utility value through either redundancy, replacement, or breakage and include both “white goods” such as refrigerators, washing machines, and microwaves and “brown goods” such as televisions, radios, computers, and cell phones. THE STEP INITIATIVE The Solving the E-waste Problem (StEP) Initiative is a network of e-waste experts and a multi-stakeholder platform for designing strategies that address all dimensions of electronics in an increasingly digitized world. Home / Services / Waste Management / Recycling and Disposal Guide / Electronic Waste Disposal. One of the most widely accepted classifications is based on European Union directives that divide e-waste into the 10 following categories: Please select which sections you would like to print: While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Receiving Services is the UCSC campus-designated outlet for the disposal of e-waste. Protect your privacy: The City is not responsible for personal information contained on your electronic devices. https://www.britannica.com/technology/electronic-waste, How Stuff Works - Electronics - How E-waste Works. Even worse, most electronic waste is simply shipped to developing countries, where they are picked for parts. According to a January 2019 report from the World Economic Forum, E-waste is now the fastest-growing waste stream in the world, with an estimated waste stream of … Besides the waste we create at home, school, and other public places, there are also those from hospitals, industries, farms, and other sources. You will also hear people refer to it as e-scraps. UHS Facilities/Housing Conservation Services, City of Santa Cruz Resource Recovery Facility, Sexual Violence Prevention & Response (Title IX), TVs, computer monitors, printers, scanners, keyboards, mice, cables, circuit boards, lamps, clocks, flashlight, calculators, phones, answering machines, digital/video cameras, radios, VCRs, DVD players, MP3 and CD players, Kitchen equipment (toasters, coffee makers, microwave ovens), Laboratory equipment** (hot plates, microscopes, calorimeters), Broken computer monitors, television tubes (CRTs). There are a number of specific ways in which e-waste recycling can be damaging to the environment. Electronic waste, also called e-waste, various forms of electric and electronic equipment that have ceased to be of value to their users or no longer satisfy their original purpose. E-waste is a worldwide problem that has many solutions to solving it, but there is only one truly environmentally friendly solution to solving this epidemic. StEP, UNU, and UNEP IETC have been working extensively on e-waste issues and made an attempt to look into the future of the problem in order to initiate policy level discussions on the challenges and opportunities ahead. Such materials are better reused when they are recycled as against allowing them to be buried under the earth. State e-waste recycling laws cover 65% of the U.S. population, and some states, including California, Connecticut, Illinois, and Indiana, e-waste is banned from landfills.