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Consumer electronics or home electronics are electronic equipment intended for everyday use, typically in private homes. Consumer electronics include devices used for entertainment, communications and recreation. Usually referred to as black goods due to many products being housed in black or dark casings. This term is used to distinguish them from "white goods" which are meant for housekeeping tasks, such as washing machines and refrigerators, although nowadays, these would be considered black goods, some of these being connected to the Internet. In British English, they are often called brown goods by producers and sellers. In the 2010s, this distinction is absent in large big box consumer electronics stores, which sell entertainment, communication and home office devices, light fixtures and appliances, including the bathroom type.
Product stewardship is an approach to managing the environmental impacts of different products and materials and at different stages in their production, use and disposal. It acknowledges that those involved in producing, selling, using and disposing of products have a shared responsibility to ensure that those products or materials are managed in a way that reduces their impact, throughout their lifecycle, on the environment and on human health and safety. This approach focusses on the product itself, and everyone involved in the lifespan of the product is called upon to take up responsibility to reduce its environmental, health, and safety impacts.
The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive is a European Community Directive, numbered 2012/19/EU, concerned with waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE). Together with the RoHS Directive 2011/65/EU, it became European Law in February 2003. The WEEE Directive set collection, recycling and recovery targets for all types of electrical goods, with a minimum rate of 4 kilograms (9 lb) per head of population per annum recovered for recycling by 2009. The RoHS Directive set restrictions upon European manufacturers as to the material content of new electronic equipment placed on the market.
The Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive 2002/95/EC, short for Directive on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment, was adopted in February 2003 by the European Union.
A television set or television receiver is an electronic device for the purpose of viewing and hearing television broadcasts, or as a computer monitor. It combines a tuner, display, and loudspeakers. Introduced in the late 1920s in mechanical form, television sets became a popular consumer product after World War II in electronic form, using cathode ray tube (CRT) technology. The addition of color to broadcast television after 1953 further increased the popularity of television sets in the 1960s, and an outdoor antenna became a common feature of suburban homes. The ubiquitous television set became the display device for the first recorded media for consumer use in the 1970s, such as Betamax, VHS; these were later succeeded by DVD. It has been used as a display device since the first generation of home computers and dedicated video game consoles in the 1980s. By the early 2010s, flat-panel television incorporating liquid-crystal display (LCD) technology, especially LED-backlit LCD technology, largely replaced CRT and other display technologies. Modern flat panel TVs are typically capable of high-definition display and can also play content from a USB device. Starting in the late 2010s, most flat panel TVs began to offer 4K and 8K resolutions.
Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is a strategy to add all of the estimated environmental costs associated with a product throughout the product life cycle to the market price of that product, contemporarily mainly applied in the field of waste management. Such societal costs are typically externalities to market mechanisms, with a common example being the impact of cars.
Electronic waste recycling, electronics recycling ore-waste recycling is the disassembly and separation of components and raw materials of waste electronics; when referring to specific types of e-waste, the terms like computer recycling or mobile phone recycling may be used. Like other waste streams, re-use, donation and repair are common sustainable ways to dispose of IT waste.
Electronic waste or e-waste describes discarded electrical or electronic devices. It is also commonly known as waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) or end-of-life (EOL) electronics. Used electronics which are destined for refurbishment, reuse, resale, salvage recycling through material recovery, or disposal are also considered e-waste. Informal processing of e-waste in developing countries can lead to adverse human health effects and environmental pollution. The growing consumption of electronic goods due to the digital revolution and innovations in science and technology, such as bitcoin, has led to a global e-waste problem and hazard. The rapid exponential increase of e-waste is due to frequent new model releases and unnecessary purchases of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), short innovation cycles and low recycling rates, and a drop in the average life span of computers.
There is no national law in the United States that mandates recycling. State and local governments often introduce their own recycling requirements. In 2014, the recycling/composting rate for municipal solid waste in the U.S. was 34.6%. A number of U.S. states, including California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Vermont have passed laws that establish deposits or refund values on beverage containers while other jurisdictions rely on recycling goals or landfill bans of recyclable materials.
Rates of household recycling in Ireland have increased dramatically since the late 1990s. The Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the agency with overall responsibility for environmental protection in Ireland and monitors rates of recycling in Ireland along with other measures of environmental conditions in Ireland. The EPA, along with Repak, the principal organisation for packaging recycling in Ireland, report on recycling rates each year. In 2012 Ireland’s municipal solid waste (MSW) recycling rate was 34%, while the rate of packaging recycling reached 79%. The amount of municipal waste generated per person per year in Ireland has fallen significantly in recent years. This figure remains above the European Union annual municipal waste average of 503 kg per person, however. Each local council in Ireland has considerable control over recycling, so recycling practices vary to some extent across the country. Most waste that is not recycled is disposed of in landfill sites.
Electrically operated display devices have developed from electromechanical systems for display of text, up to all-electronic devices capable of full-motion 3D color graphic displays. Electromagnetic devices, using a solenoid coil to control a visible flag or flap, were the earliest type, and were used for text displays such as stock market prices and arrival/departure display times. The cathode ray tube was the workhorse of text and video display technology for several decades until being displaced by plasma, liquid crystal (LCD), and solid-state devices such as thin-film transistors (TFTs), LEDs and OLEDs. With the advent of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), integrated circuit (IC) chips, microprocessors, and microelectronic devices, many more individual picture elements ("pixels") could be incorporated into one display device, allowing graphic displays and video.
Electronic waste or e-waste in the United States refers to electronic products that have reached the end of their operable lives, and the United States is beginning to address its waste problems with regulations at a state and federal level. Used electronics are the quickest-growing source of waste and can have serious health impacts. The United States is the world leader in producing the most e-waste, followed closely by China; both countries domestically recycle and export e-waste. Only recently has the United States begun to make an effort to start regulating where e-waste goes and how it is disposed of. There is also an economic factor that has an effect on where and how e-waste is disposed of. Electronics are the primary users of precious and special metals, retrieving those metals from electronics can be viewed as important as raw metals may become more scarce
Electronic waste is a significant part of today's global, post-consumer waste stream. Efforts are being made to recycle and reduce this waste.
Mobile phone recycling describes the waste management of mobile phones, to retrieve materials used in their manufacture. Rapid technology change, low initial cost, and planned obsolescence have resulted in a fast-growing surplus, which contributes to the increasing amount of electronic waste around the globe.
Electronic waste in Japan is a major environmental issue. Although Japan was one of the first countries to implement an electronic waste recycling program, it is still having serious issues. In this day and age, e-waste disposal has become of major importance due to the increasing demand for electronics on a worldwide scale. In 2013, the Japanese government reported that roughly 550 thousand tonnes of e-waste was collected and treated in Japan, which only equates to about 24-30% of total e-waste. Not only does e-waste harm the environment if untreated, it also becomes a fiscal loss due to the material lost that could have been salvaged.
Electronic waste or e-waste in China refers to electronic products that are no longer usable and are therefore dumped or recycled. China is the world's largest importer and producer of electronic waste with over 70% of all global e-waste ending up in the world's largest dumpsites. An estimated 60–80% of this e-waste is handled through illegal informal recycling processes, without the necessary safety precautions legally required by Chinese government regulations. Processing e-waste in this way directly causes serious environmental damage and permanent health risks in areas surrounding the disposal sites. While the Chinese government and the international community have taken action to regulate e-waste management, ineffective enforcement, legislative loopholes, and the pervasiveness of informal recycling have been obstacles to mitigating the consequences of e-waste.
Electronic waste in New Zealand is an environmental issue being addressed by community and government initiatives.
As a nation, Americans generate more waste than any other nation in the world, officially with 4.4 pounds (2.0 kg) of municipal solid waste (MSW) per person per day, with another study estimating 7.1 pounds (3.2 kg) per capita per day. Fifty five percent of this waste is contributed as residential garbage, while the remaining forty five percent of waste in the U.S.'s ‘waste stream' comes from manufacturing, retailing, and commercial trade in the U.S. economy. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, Nevada produces the most waste at "[nearly] 8 pounds (3.6 kg) per person per day". Approximately 90% of all waste produced by Nevadans ends up in landfills. "Wasteful" states Michigan, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Oregon as well as Washington also dominated the list's 5-year period.
Appliance recycling is the process of dismantling scrapped home appliances to recover their parts or materials for reuse. Recycling appliances for their original or other purposes, involves disassembly, removal of hazardous components and destruction of the equipment to recover materials, generally by shredding, sorting and grading. The rate at which appliances are discarded has increased due in part to obsolescence due to technological advancement, and in part to not being designed to be repairable. The main types of appliances that are recycled are televisions, refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, and computers. When appliances are recycled, they can be looked upon as a valuable resources; if disposed of improperly, they can be environmentally harmful and poison ecosystems.
A take-back system or simply takeback is one of the primary channels of waste collection, especially for e-waste, besides municipal sites. Take-back is the idea that manufacturers and sellers "take back" the products that are at the end of their lives. Take-back is aimed to reduce a business' environmental impacts on the earth and also increase efficiency and lower costs for their business models. "Take-back regulations have targeted a wide array of products including packaging, batteries, automobiles, and electronics" and economic value can be found from recycling or re-manufacturing such products. "The programs benefit municipalities by lowering their overall waste disposal costs and reducing the burden on landfill sites". Although for certain companies, the take-back system is mandatory under legislation, many do it voluntarily.
References
- 1 2 Phuong Le (December 26, 2008). "Washington state starts free PC, TV recycling". NBC News. Retrieved March 12, 2012.
- ↑ Government, Northern Ireland http://www.doeni.gov.uk/niea/waste-home/regulation/regulations_weee/producers.htm Archived 2011-12-15 at the Wayback Machine EEE Producer Obligations