William Durham
Instructor S. Huminski
INQ 101
19 November 2013
The Story of Electronics
The video I chose to watch is “The Story of Electronics”. I chose this video because I would consider myself a tech-friendly person and loves using of electronics. In the video, the presenter discuss from the subject “Designed for the Dump”. What this means is that companies makes products to be thrown away and replaced quickly. She used a good example when she stated the here old Computer became obsolete within a single year. I can relate to that, in a sense, in October of last year I bought a brand new phone. It worked fine and perfectly up until about September of this year. This phone cost me 149.99 dollars, and now I have to get a new phone because this one is now obsolete and does not function properly.
I learned that the production to disposal method, unfortunately, is very similar to a lot of other “stuff”. It starts in mines where they collect thousands of different materials. Then those materials are shipped from all over the world to the production factories, or assembly plants. There they are combined with lots of toxic chemicals. Sadly, each year Twenty-five million tons of toxic chemicals are used to produce electronics that are made to last about a year. After it leaves the factories, it goes to the store where a consumer buys the product. After about a year, the product either is added to the local mound of electronic waste (e-waste) or sent to a plant for recycling, and most recycling is anything but green. Then this same process starts all over again. Now, the chemicals that were used during the product are released once the product is broken down and preparing for incineration or recycling. This puts bad toxins into our air and water systems. Not to mention that inside of the factories where the products are being produced, the factory workers are becoming more ill from the toxic chemical. The negative effects that the productions of these products...