Techno-trash: Why Should We Feel Bothered?

INTRODUCTION

I'm sure y'all are wondering what "Techno-trash" is. This is not just another word coined for poetic licence; but this is a portmanteau of "technological trash" - which refers to garbages from computers, phones, and other digital/electronic devices - like your used mobile phone batteries, chargers, screens, computer mice and whatnot, which have been seen to be prevalent in this our contemporary times. And yes; you can also refer to them as "e-waste". But why are we so much interested in these wastes lately, and how have they hampered our environment? We'll be taking some shocking revelations in the course of this post.

TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT AND TECHNO-TRASH

The insane technological revolution has affected almost the entirety of our human existence - from our communities, to our cultural and socio-political diversification; no doubt, the world has almost been turned into a global community and the gap between people in various parts of the world has almost been bridged. But come to think of this; even though we are great in rolling out new techs, how great are we in disposing them properly? When you are done using your old gadgets, how do you dispose them? As a matter of fact, some people change devices more than they change shoes - Okay I'm not kidding right now; at least I've bought a couple of devices this years, but no new shoes at the moment. Because we would always like to flow with the trend of new gadgets and keep up with upgrades, and so we would be discarding and acquiring new devices.

_{Exponential usage of digital devices in this era. Image from Pixabay. CC0 Licensed}

Maybe this might shock you, but this report made an exposition that about 40million tons of these kind of technological wastes are generated yearly; which has increased exponentially from the last decade. And humorously enough, some of these used digital devices get shipped (or rather; dumped) on third-world countries. Okay I'm not saying it's totally bad - at least, it would make the not-so-average user to afford some decent devices, but this is not even what I'm considering. In few years from now (year 2050), and according to statistical analysis of the current growth in the usage of devices, there would be about 50billion digital/electronic devices on usage in the world. Let's do a little math here - assuming there are 7billion eligible users on the planet, there would be a whopping excesses of over 7devices per person (which would also be changed from time to time) _{okay how long do you hope to continue to dump these on parts of Asia and Africa until they reach a yield point?}. Maybe we should consider the effects of these wastes on the environment and Mother Earth.

TECHNO-TRASH AND ENVIRONMENT

Let's start from the obvious: Majority of these electronic gadgets are made of synthetic plastic components, and y'all should have been aware that a piece of synthetic plastic can take as much as 500years to fully degrade. With the increased and indiscriminate disposal of these wastes, imagine what the environment would look like in the next 500years (that's if we haven't destroyed the earth ourselves by then). Asides the plastic pollution threat, how about the manufacturing processes? It might interest you to know that, just to produce a single unit of personal computer system, it would cost about 530pounds of fossil fuel _[ref]. Now this is where part of the problem lies. Have you ever stopped for a moment to ask what the by-products of the burning of these fossil fuels do?

_{Burning of fossil fuel releases air pollutants into the environment. Image from Pixabay. CC0 Licensed}

If you have ever lived in a heavily industrialized region, you would agree with me that the air around there is not too friendly. My visit to one of the areas around a petroleum refining plant here in Nigeria taught me this - the plant was constantly emitting thick fumes... Just think of other places with much more concentration of industries. No wonder it has been revealed that China (particularly the city of Beijing) has been listed among the mostly air-polluted cities on the planet _[ref]. Of course, the reason behind this is not far-fetched - they are among the heavily industrialized cities in the world. So there is a correlation between industrialization (or digitalization; as the case may be) and air pollution. That means; just for the production of our gadgets, we would be seriously hampering the air we breathe - it looks like that's one of the prices we have to pay for industrialization.

Apart from the pollution of the air we breathe, do you know that burning of these fossil fuels in industries release excessive amount of Carbon iv Oxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases into the environment? In a layman's term, greenhouse gases trap and absorb radiant energy from the sun - and these gases include; but not limited to; CO₂, Methane, Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), H₂0_(g), O₃ etc. On a moderate level, these gases are actually useful to keep the planet warm. If not, the planet would get extremely cold that "hell" would freeze. But on the flip side of it, these gases have been on the increase, which has astronomically increased the temperature of the earth. To paint a little picture for you on how powerful greenhouse gases can be: Do you know why mercury (even though is the closest planet to the sun) is not the hottest but Venus? That's because Venus has a high concentration of CO₂, which increases the overall retention of heat from the sun, thereby making it hotter than even mercury... Okay that's a little tip for you there. Over the last couple of decades, the overall temperature of the earth has increased, and global warming is almost inevitable. Maybe you should have a look at this graph of the average temperature rise from 1900 and extrapolated to 2100.

Global warming has raised serious concerns among the committee of nations, because further increase in the overall temperature of the earth would cause the polar caps to melt, and when this happens, the water level would begin to rise, and you know what would happen? Coastal cities and cities situated near bodies of water would be submerged. Sometimes very recently, one of the coastal cities in Nigeria; Lagos; experienced massive flooding that some streets became like mini lakes, and some people's houses got sunk under water. The truth is; this is just very minor compared to what will happen with further rise in water level. If you have been abreast with news lately, you would have also heard about the flash flood in Indonesia that killed many and displace many. Doesn't this pass a message to you?

I stumbled on a YouTube video recently that made a prediction of how many coastal cities would be submerged with further increase in global warming, and it is shocking that we could be saying goodbye to some major coastal cities; including Nigeria's neighbouring Accra, Ghana.

The truth is; we cannot stop industrialization, but we should also make plans to cushion the effects of advancing technology. What we just considered was just the manufacturing processes of these gadgets, but even the usage of the gadgets is another different threat, because you would still have to discard your old devices and get new ones from time to time. But at least, we can start from the proper disposal of techno-trash. Recycling has been a very valid panacea for this. Instead of discarding/dumping them on landfills, they can be collected and re-used to produce other digital gadgets. In that way, you are not only saving the environment, but you are saving costs too. That is the reason all the plastics used should be made of recyclable materials. More so, for you as an individual; that device you want to trash, someone might have need of it, why not use them as charity instead of indiscriminately dumping them on landfills? But whatever the case may be, we should always try to remember that we've got nowhere to run to, so we have to join hands to save Mother earth. And not until we achieve multiplanetary abilities, we would be stuck in earth for a very long time - so let's make the earth more habitable for the upcoming generations.

FINAL WORDS

Digitalization and the advances in technology have not left us without obvious threats. First of all, the threats from the manufacturing processes - pollution, global warming et al. And also, the usage and discarding of these devices and techno-trash is another threat, which are the pecks of technology. But the truth is; the responsibility to; at least; check or reduce techno-trash rests on the shoulders of all of us, and if you can buy a gadget, then you should also know how to discard them, and not dumping them in landfills. Meanwhile, I need to dump my phone... Lol, I'm kidding.