While you might laugh, the concept of electronic waste is no laughing matter. We aren’t talking about spam e-mails and the junk that fills up our digital inboxes – we are talking about genuine hardware. Every year, millions of dollars of perfectly functional e-waste is created through materialism, upgrades and a little mixture of both.

This creates massive sums of recoverable materials that we could use again, from coppers and aluminium to gold and ferrous metals. We use up so much natural resources when making electronic devices, yet we do nothing to try and capture the returns at the end of the lifespan – instead, it all goes to a landfill and creates an eyesore.

This is why the future has to be about challenging and combatting E-waste as much as it possibly can be. Recycling E-waste should be on the agenda as much as it can be in the years to come. One, we have to remove the toxic and dangerous materials that accumulate in these massive yards, from mercury and lead to beryllium and chromium. This creates a negative, dangerous environment that has to be avoided.

So, why does recycling matter? Why should you pay attention to the future of this industry?

Save Resources. All across the world, resource conflicts exist that could be avoided with diplomacy. It could also be avoided if we checked wastage. E-waste is one of the biggest problems in society, and the amount of investment that could be made unnecessary if we just re-used what is lying in dumps all across the world. We could extract less from the planet and instead start using what we throw away.

Protect the Environment. Likewise, we would start to reduce the size of large landfill sites full of old hardware. By repurposing it, at the very least we would be making room for the next batch without just adding to it. If we cannot reduce e-waste, then we have to work more to try and protect the environment by maintaining it instead.

Create Employment. This would be an industry in itself, helping to create a valuable industry for employment for those willing to do the job. It would be a lucrative job to try and make sure that we can stop filling the planet up with our old hand-me-downs we no longer need. This would help us to create an economic and environmental boost all at once.

Assist Communities. Communities would stop looking like landfill sites if we just worked to reduce the need for so much space. By creating employment and reducing the size of landfills we would be making it easier for people to make their communities stronger, safer and less damaging to look at.

All of this can be seen as clear and obvious reasons why a wholesale change has to be introduced into how we manage e-waste. If you cannot see that, then it’s likely that the continuation of a problem which is quickly growing out of hand will only escalate.

For e-waste services go to ViroGreen