ENVIRONMENT
Getting our environmental legacy right
“We have very little relationship to our garbage here in Australia. We throw it away, and my point as an environmental geographer, is to say: Where is ‘away'? Away is here for someone.” [Darrin Magee] by Mardi Brown
Y
ou know that sharp moment when a light goes on in your mind? When a neuron has just
fired and you’ve literally and physically just learnt something new – and a whole new perspective unravels? I watched this play out in real-time the other day, and it was pretty cool stuff! My business partner and I had been
invited into the IT hub of a large business by a lovely man; let’s call him John. John wanted to discuss how they might be able to reuse some of their devices which had been superseded. Several ‘bleeps’ and pass-codes later, we found ourselves in the belly of the beast. We were in a room that could only be described as a labyrinth of devices and tech; wall-to- wall, floor-to-ceiling. Organised chaos.
John explained to us – with the type of confidence that comes only with years of experience in his profession – exactly how the items had been catalogued. He explained how the items lining the walls were in storage ‘in case’ they were needed in the future. As we walked through the room to get a better look at what was there, I thought to myself: “the only place this tech would possibly be needed was in 2006.” Our environmental legacy is a hot
topic of global debate. We’re currently living in a micro-bubble moment, where climate change skeptics still have a seat at the table. Our environmental legacy, for business anyway, relates to the impact our industrial operations has had on our water, soil, and air. And it relates
developing countries, meaning a more affordable and accessible solution is available.
Devices can also be erased, donated, and sold for reuse in
to the ongoing impact this can have on our health and our ecosystems. The EPA tells us to keep it simple: avoid > reduce > reuse, before we even think about recycling or disposal. So how can we, as general consumers and businesses, play a positive part in reducing our environmental legacy? It’s human nature to collect and keep
things, to put things in drawers or into storage. It gives us a primal sense of comfort – a sense of preparedness for ‘ just in case’. The impact our ‘tech hoarding’ is having on the environment, however, is immense. When we realise eventually that
something (or a whole labyrinth of something) can no longer be used because it’s just too old, a common pattern has been to send it to landfill. This then leaches toxic chemicals into the soil and waterways. In Australia alone, we send more than 20 million tonnes of e-waste into landfill every year! E-waste is responsible for 70% of the toxic chemicals, such as lead, cadmium and mercury, found in landfill. From the 1970s through the 1990s,
when electronics were made in the U.S., tech manufacturing giants poisoned not just workers but local communities. From one plant after another, thousands of gallons of cancer-causing chemicals leaked into the groundwater, poisoning neighbourhoods across Silicon Valley. The public only found out when children started being born with serious birth defects, and cancer clusters sprang up in one neighbourhood street after another. More than a generation later, these same carcinogens are still travelling through the soil and up into people’s homes and offices.
28 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
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