1000 Flowers for the Planet - #316 Avoid E-Waste

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #316 Avoid E-Waste

Electronic waste is a huge problem worldwide, with waste being transferred from some countries into poorer countries where it pollutes the environment. The best thing we can do is to avoid waste in the first place. Some people simply have to have the latest gadgets, at any cost, but the cost is that these gadgets eventually become waste that is difficult to deal with. We seem to live in a culture of everything never being ‘enough’: we have to have more or better or faster or bigger or smaller. At what point do people learn to be happy with ‘enough’? Why buy a new mobile/cell phone if your current phone is working fine? Why buy a bigger television for a room that hasn’t grown in size? Ask yourself if ‘more’ is actually making you ‘happier’. Then think of the waste that is being created by this voracious appetite for constant renewal of electronic gadgets. Electronic waste ends up in landfill. Some of it contains toxins that leach into the land to then enter our water systems. Space for landfill is diminishing. Landfill never goes away – it stays where it is put, preserved forever. One way of reducing this every-growing problem is to avoid e-waste as much as possible. Hold onto your electronic gadgets and look after them to ensure they last as long as possible, and if you can’t hep out by following this Flower #316, please try Flower #318.