Toxic Trash
Hi everyone!!
In today’s post, I will be talking about another impact that digital music can have on our environment. In the last post, I focused on its impact through energy consumption, but in this post, I will be talking about how digital music causes environmental pollution through its accessory technologies.
Just like how vinyl records require a record player and CDs require a CD player to play their music, digital music also require devices and accessories for someone to be able to listen to it. Some examples of such accessories would be ipods, headphones and earbuds.However, like all electronic devices, these accessories don’t last forever. Eventually they end up getting improperly disposed of and contribute to the problem of electronic waste (e-waste). E-waste is defined as electrical and electric equipment of any kind that has been discarded. Improper disposal of e-waste results in major negative environmental impacts including both air and water pollution.
Electronics contain many toxic components including Mercury, Lead, Cadmium, Barium and Lithium. When discarded improperly, e-waste ends up in landfills where they are incinerated. In doing so, cancer-producing dioxins are released into the air and enter the soil where it leeches into the groundwater. Therefore, the burning of e-waste releases toxic chemicals that pollute both the air and water.
Currently in Singapore, we produce abount 60,000 e-waste a year, and according to a global UN university study, the massive amounts of e-waste produced by us found us to be the second largest e-waste producer in Asia in 2014. When e-waste is improperly discarded of in Singapore, it ends up in the Pulau Semakau Landfill where it is incinerated and contributes to environmental pollution.
The problem of e-waste is a modern one that continues to grow each year as we get increasingly reliant on electronics in our daily lives. As such, there have been attempts to try and limit its impact on the environment through means such as e-waste recycling. However, e-waste recycling does not always benefit the environment as much as we would like it to. In countries like the US, their electronic waste is often shipped to less developed countries to process and extract the precious metals to recycle. Since these less developed countries do not have access to much technology or equipment to aid them in this process, they have to resort to other means of extraction such as burning the plastic off the wires and devices to get to the important metals inside. In doing so, they are also contributing to air pollution through the toxic fumes that are released.
All in all, while we are trying to lessen the blow of the impacts e-waste makes our environment in terms of pollution, the bottom line is that it is very hard to monitor and control where the waste will go and how it will be handled. As the world has moves into this digital age, this issue of e-waste is becoming even more pertinent with digital music being a great contributor. Therefore, I hope that this post has made you aware of the impact you have on the environment and make you more conscious of how you dispose of your electronic devices in the future.
References:
Boh, S. (2018, February 02). Singapore’s mountain of e-waste. Retrieved November 10, 2020, from https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/environment/singapores-mountain-of-e-waste