High Tech Trash or stupid waste?

The article that was assigned to us was entitled "High-Tech Trash" and was written by Christopher Carroll. The article focused what truly does happen when we as consumers throw away our old computers, tv's and other types of electronic devices. As he points out so perfectly at the end of the article "out of sight, will not stay out of mind for long", and this is exactly what he has done. Probably for a good couple of years, ever since the integration of computers into households, this action of taking computers and dumping them into developing countries has been happening unknown to the rest of the world. WE as consumers in America and other well developed nations are quite content with how we are able to live and throw away our garbage without having to worry about it build up in our backyards. This is not the case for the developing nations of the world at all. It is quite the opposite for the inhabitants of these nations and they are the ones who probably produce the least amount of garbage as a whole. We living in these over developed and advanced nations dump most of our "e-waste", as Carroll calls it, into these less developed nations. The ramifications of this dumping has tremendous health effects on the inhabitants. When the products are dumped and left to rot away on the ground they will often leach out chemicals into the soil, ruining and/or potentially poisoning the people grow their own food because it is all that they have. They cannot simply get in the their cars, which they probably don't even have in the first place and drive down the block to the supermarket to get dinner. These people rely on their crops for their food and by dumping all of these products there, we are hurting them. These would be just the immediate effects felt by the inhabitants, imagine what we will find out years down the road from now what the long term health effects are of these products. What else is worse, and on a side note illegal, that these inhabitants of the third world nations do is that they will take the computer chips and other pieces of electronic equipment and burn them in order to obtain the minerals and metals that are inside. We cannot blame them for doing this, they do not know better and probably have never seen a computer before unless it is lying in a land fill in their town. But what happens from burning them is that this is another way to release toxic chemicals which they will in turn be breathing in. This is a way for them to make money but it is a never ending cycle of poor health conditions spiraling out of control for these poor people.
We cannot however place all of the blame on the waste companies, a great deal f it lies with us and the companies who make the "e-waste". WE as consumers need to be more aware of where our garbage goes, and not just simply forget about it once the sanitation worker picks it up in the morning. There are multiple ways that I have heard of online through which yu are able to safely dispose of your electronics. How reliable these sites are or not I am not sure, but it cannot hurt to look for some alternative measures to discard of your old electronics. It the beginning of Caroll's article he puts blame on the computer companies because they are the ones who constantly develop new programs and ways for the computer that you bought today to be obsolete tomorrow. And since we as the consumers are living in this technological age where everything needs to be faster, whenever a new computer comes out, we jump for it. Look at the new iPad that apple announced the other day. I can bet that there will be aline out the door and about 4 hours long at the apple store when that product is released. Al it is is a big iPod, nothing more, just new. This is what Carroll is trying to convey to us, that we must stop buying more electronics because they are at our disposal and start worrying more about how we dispose of our electronics.