Learn how a “constructed wetland” system can treat waste water.
Category: Waste
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DW Planet A: How India wants to (literally) fix e-waste
Our throw-away culture is creating mountains of electronic waste that is simply toxic to the planet and ourselves. Small (extremely small) efforts are underway to try to and make changes, but a huge effort is needed to change our mindset and manfucturing approaches to electronics to make them more robust, last longer and easier to repait.
DW’s report examines the issues around this in India. It’s an excellent overview of the challenges we face when trying to reduce e-waste and change our relationship with electronics.
From DW: “Electronic waste is one of the fastest growing types of rubbish on the planet. India, which is becoming ultra digital, is trying an old trick in new ways to deal with its growing and dangerous dump yards.”
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Wired: How to Responsibly Dispose of Your Electronics
Get rid of old, broken, and unused devices—even Lightning cables—without adding to the e-waste problem.
https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-responsibly-dispose-electronics/
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Furniture waste: Popular in the pandemic, mass-produced furniture could soon be clogging landfills.
Americans bought piles of furniture during the pandemic, with sales on desks, chairs and patio equipment jumping by more than $4 billion from 2019 to 2021, according to a market data company. And a lot of it won’t survive the decade.
Many of the Ikea beds and Wayfair desks bought during the Covid-19 lockdown were designed to last about five years, said Deana McDonagh, a professor of industrial design at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. “I relate to fast furniture like I do to fast food,” Ms. McDonagh said. “It’s empty of culture, and it’s not carrying any history with it.”
Fast furniture, which is mass-produced and relatively inexpensive, is easy to obtain and then abandon. Like fast fashion, in which retailers like Shein and Zara produce loads of cheap, trendy clothing that’s made to be discarded after only a few wears, fast furniture is for those looking to hookup but not settle down. It’s the one-season fling of furnishings.
Read ‘Fast Furniture’ Is Cheap. And Americans Are Throwing It in the Trash. on NYTimes.com
What to do?
- Well-built furniture lasts longer and is repairable, but it costs more
- Recycling and refurbishing furniture to give works a new life makes sense
- Some people are working to rebuild and refinish old furniture for resale and to keep it from the landfill