Tag: consumers

ALBA E-Waste in NUS and Singapore

Recycle your electronics right in your neighbourhood

Having read so many posts on responsible recycling practices, you might be thinking—okay, I’m on board! But where do I begin?

It’s simple. Ever seen one of these gigantic white boxes in your neighbourhood? You might not have noticed them previously, but they can be found all over Singapore.

Here’s a list of all the e-waste recycling collection points around Singapore (NEA, n.d.). You can also take a look at ALBA’s map on their website, which also includes a list of all their bin locations. Use these maps to locate your nearest collection point!

The e-waste collection point in NUS, located on the ground floor just outside the Central Library at FASS (Author’s own, 2022).

There’s also one located in NUS itself, if you prefer dropping off your electronics on your way to class. But remember to be careful with what you put into the bins, as not every bin is the same and certain bins only accept certain types of electronic products.

NEA’s rules regarding the type of e-waste accepted at the various types of collection points (NEA, n.d.).

The rules are pretty straightforward. 3-in-1 bins accept most products, such as all the different types of bigger ICT equipment like laptops and mobile phones. The 2-in-1 bins only accept batteries and bulbs or lamps. Batteries-only bins are, as the name suggests, strictly for batteries.

ALBA and the NEA have made it really easy and convenient to do your part in recycling your unwanted electronics. Next time you think about getting rid of that unwanted old laptop gathering dust in your room, why not give one of these e-waste collection points a try?

References

NEA. (n.d.). Where to Recycle E-Waste. Retrieved 10 April 2022, from https://www.nea.gov.sg/our-services/waste-management/3r-programmes-and-resources/e-waste-management/where-to-recycle-e-waste.

How China Uses Tech to Sort Its Waste

An app to do it all: Baidu Recycle

What if recycling e-waste could actually be as easy as clicking a few buttons? That’s what China has achieved with their Baidu Recycle app (Baidu Huishou Zhan, lit. “Baidu Recycling Station”).

The Baidu Recycle opening press conference (Baidu, 2015).

In response to the growing challenge of e-waste pollution, UNDP China collaborated with internet company Baidu to develop a smartphone application known as “Baidu Recycle” (UNDP, n.d.).

The app helps users price and recycle their unwanted electronic products by generating nearby e-waste pick-up services. It was introduced in hopes that it would streamline the recycling process, making it more convenient and hassle-free. In doing so, this would also reduce the number of informal recycling stations.

User guide to the Baidu Recycle application (UNDP, n.d). 

The Baidu Recycle app is an example of how technology can be harnessed to simplify the e-waste recycling process for everyday consumers. One of the major barriers to recycling was identified to be consumers’ lack of knowledge regarding their disposal options (Islam et al., 2021). Apps like Baidu Recycle thus ensure that the recycling process runs smoothly, taking care of everything up to your doorstep.

China is not the only one that offers apps like Baidu Recycle. Similar apps can be found in other pockets of the world, such as MyGizmo in Cincinnati or RESQ in Singapore (Hicks, 2010). However, they have yet to take off thus far. Personally, I didn’t know that RESQ existed in Singapore prior to writing this post. Though these apps are amazing inventions, they can only truly be useful if a high proportion of the population actually utilises them to dispose of their e-waste. Perhaps marketing tactics, such as offering incentives for new users, would help such apps gain popularity where they are located. This has proved successful for other apps such as Healthy 365 under the Live Healthy SG programme, which offered free Fitbit Inspire HR health trackers to users who signed up for their programme.

References

Baidu. (2015). Baidu Recycle. Retrieved 5 April 2022, from https://gongyi.baidu.com/dist/action-recycle.html.

Hicks, R. (2010). Could this app ease Singapore’s e-waste problem? Eco-Business. Retrieved 5 April 2022, from https://www.eco-business.com/news/could-this-app-ease-singapores-e-waste-problem/.

Islam, M. T., Huda, N., Baumber, A., Shumon, R., Zaman, A., Ali, F., Hossain, R., & Sahajwalla, V. (2021). A global review of consumer behavior towards e-waste and implications for the circular economy. Journal of Cleaner Production, 316, 128297. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.128297.

UNDP. (n.d.). Baidu Recycle. Retrieved 5 April 2022, from https://www.cn.undp.org/content/china/en/home/ourwork/our_campaigns/e-waste.html.

UNDP. (2016). China’s e-waste recycling app goes global. Retrieved 5 April 2022, from https://www.asia-pacific.undp.org/content/rbap/en/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2016/06/02/china-s-e-waste-recycling-app-goes-global-.html.

International E-Waste Day

Education and Public Awareness

International E-Waste Day (Erion, n.d.).

International E-Waste Day falls on 14 October every year. Organised by the WEEE Forum, the event’s objective is to raise awareness among citizens from participating nations regarding the importance of proper e-waste recycling.

In 2021, during its fourth edition, 172 organisations from 78 countries including Singapore participated in the event (WEEE Forum, n.d.). The WEEE Forum put together a video compilation featuring all the different awareness activities, which can be viewed below.

The diversity in the activities is clear, with radio and TV interviews, conferences, webinars, school and street e-waste collections, lectures, social media campaigns and many more events held to raise awareness on e-waste. Spreading information through such outlets helps to get more people involved in actively recycling e-waste.

Since people are also the consumers of electronic products, raising awareness through public education is key in the shift towards more sustainable e-waste practices. This goes hand in hand with more producer-based strategies, like the EPR ones mentioned in a previous post. By tackling both the consumer and the producer sides of the e-waste challenge, this ensures that e-waste management can be more all-rounded and thus effective.

References

Erion. (n.d.). International E-Waste Day is celebrated on 14th October 2020. Retrieved 3 April 2022, from https://erion.it/en/news/14-october-2020-international-e-waste-day/.

WEEE Forum. (n.d.). About. Retrieved 3 April 2022, from https://weee-forum.org/iewd-about/.

Urban Mining

Extracting gold from your mobile phone: Urban mining

Urban mining is a new approach to recycling, referring to the process of recovering metals from e-waste (Arya et al. 2021). This is a technique introduced recently to address the global e-waste challenge, as part of the push towards a more sustainable life cycle of electronic products. You could think of it as somewhat similar to the idea of renewable energy—it’s all about the recycling of what we already have, rather than generation from scratch.

Urban mining is an alternative to virgin mining, the more traditional method to extracting precious metals. Virgin mining is comparatively undesirable, having resulted in catastrophic environmental disasters in the past such as mine explosion events and poisoning events. Virgin mining has also been proven to be an unsustainable option for our future, according to Murthy & Ramakrishna (2021). On the other hand, urban mining is cheaper in cost and just as viable for extracting precious metals.

Olympic athletes show off small electronic devices donated by people from all over Japan, instead of their shiny medals (International Olympic Committee, 2021).

Have an extra old Nokia lying around that you don’t use anymore? It could be more valuable than you think. Between April 2017 and March 2019, people from all over Japan donated over six million mobile phones to the organisers of Tokyo 2020 (Smedley, 2020). From the devices collected, precious metals were extracted and used to make 5,000 gold, silver and bronze medals for the Games (International Olympic Committee, 2021).

It’s amazing how the Tokyo Olympics were able to garner so much support for their urban mining scheme. Locally, urban mining has yet to gain much traction in Singapore. Seeing the comparative advantages that urban mining offers over virgin mining, we should continue to explore how urban mining could be adopted and promoted outside large-scale events like the Olympics.

References

Arya, S., Patel, A., Kumar, S., & Pau-Loke, S. (2021). Urban mining of obsolete computers by manual dismantling and waste printed circuit boards by chemical leaching and toxicity assessment of its waste residues. Environmental Pollution (1987), 283, 117033-117033. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2021.117033.

International Olympic Committee. (2021). Tokyo 2020 highlights the possibilities for a circular economy. Retrieved 5 April 2022, from https://olympics.com/ioc/news/tokyo-2020-highlights-the-possibilities-for-a-circular-economy.

Murthy, V., & Ramakrishna, S. (2022). A review on global E-waste management: Urban mining towards a sustainable future and circular economy. Sustainability (Basel, Switzerland), 14(2), 647. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14020647.

Smedley, T. (2020). How to mine precious metals in your home. Retrieved 1 April 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200407-urban-mining-how-your-home-may-be-a-gold-mine.

Death by Cellphone: Grauer’s Gorillas

Saving the critically endangered gorillas of the Congo Basin

A critically endangered Grauer’s gorilla (Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, 2021).

You’re probably wondering what cellphones have to do with a gorilla species endemic to the forests of the Congo Basin in Africa.

They are, however, related. It’s thanks to the production of cellphones that the Gorilla beringei graueri (Grauer’s gorilla) has become critically endangered in recent years. In part due to the mining of minerals used to produce cellphones, the species has declined in population by 80% over the past 25 years (Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, 2021). Mining activities in Congo are driven by the demand for “conflict metals”,  which are used in the production of cellphones. These mining activities often take place outside regulatory frameworks and in protected areas such as the Kahuzi-Biega National Park. As a result, this threatens species like the Grauer’s gorilla as well as other endangered species in the region like eastern lowland gorillas.

This video, put together by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, is a call to action to raise awareness on the critically endangered species. Some zoos have actually capitalised on this, blending a promotion of better recycling practices with their conservation campaigns for the gorillas. One example is Zoos Victoria in Australia, which has started the ‘They’re Calling on You’ mobile phone recycling community campaign.

An Australian tourist on a gorilla tourism experience at Kahuzi-Biega National Park (Litchfield et al., 2018).

This illuminates how eco-tourism could be blended with mobile phone collection campaigns to raise awareness on the ecological impacts of e-waste pollution. According to Litchfield et al. (2018), ‘They’re Calling on You’ was highly successful—a total of 115,369 mobile phones were donated from 2009 to 2014. Close-up encounters as part of eco-tourism was also a big contributing factor to this, where one phone was donated for every four people attending keeper talks at Werribee Open Range Zoo and one phone for every 28 people attending keeper talks at Melbourne Zoo.

Though the situation for these gorillas have been dire, things seem to be looking up for the gorillas through such creative cross-themed conservation campaign efforts. This concludes our chapter on “Implications”, and we’ve also briefly discussed some possible solutions that could be undertaken. Next time, we’ll start on the “Solutions” chapter of this blog, and delve even deeper into the possible ways we can tackle the global e-waste challenge moving forward.

References

Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. (2021). Good news for Grauer’s Gorillas. Retrieved 11 March 2022, from https://gorillafund.org/gorilla-protection/good-news-for-grauers-gorillas/.

Litchfield, C. A., Lowry, R., & Dorrian, J. (2018). Recycling 115,369 mobile phones for gorilla conservation over a six-year period (2009-2014) at Zoos Victoria: A case study of ‘points of influence’ and mobile phone donations. PloS One, 13(12), e0206890-e0206890. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0206890.

Overconsumption and Irresponsible Consumer Habits

E-waste can’t keep up with consumerism trends

Every 2020 iPhone released by Apple (Gartenberg, 2020).

Though it might be a hard pill to swallow, consumers like you and I are equally guilty in contributing to the global e-waste problem.

As Aaron Blum, co-founder and chief operating officer of ERI, stated,

“In our society, we always have to have the new, best product.”

This is a clear trend observed in society today, where middle-class consumers constantly purchase new tech devices even if they are not absolutely essential. One recent viral video by TikTok user @itskeyonn prompted a wave of people using his sound to show off their unboxing of their newly purchased iPads, with the belief that buying an iPad would help organise and improve their lives in some way. Over 3300 people have since hopped on the bandwagon, posting their videos as part of this trend. Did all these people really need that new iPad? It remains to be seen.

In this day and age, many of us consumers treat our expensive personal electronic devices as though they are disposable commodities. We discard old devices in favour of purchasing the newest models—even if those new models might not differ that much in specifications or features from our current devices.  This psychological craving for novelty drives consumers in the 21st century, highlighting this innate impulse to “buy how things make us feel”. Things like social influence, brand loyalty and sometimes just sheer habit all contribute to such consumer behaviour (Lee, 2020).

The next time you place an order for the newest iPhone model, think twice before you act. Consider: do you really need a new phone? Or is it just a “fear of missing out” and peer pressure that’s enticing you to cart out your purchase?

References

Gartenberg, C. (2020). How to choose between all the new iPhone 12 models. The Verge. Retrieved 6 February 2022, from https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/21508433/apple-iphone-12-models-differences-comparisons-how-to-choose.

Lee, H. J. (2020). A study of consumer repurchase behaviors of smartphones using artificial neural network. Information (Basel), 11(9), 400. https://doi.org/10.3390/INFO11090400.