Gadgetory

not too long ago you probably weren't thinking all that much about electronics disposal but nowadays there's a veritable glut of inexpensive portable electronics available around the globe in fact they're so common that some countries are starting to treat Internet access as a human right and like anything else our electronics wear out over time or at the very least become embarrassing when something better comes along which can take a surprisingly short amount of time I mean think about how often smartphones get updated so what happens to all this stuff when we're done using it does it all go to some retro tech museum in the sky when we throw it away unfortunately no much of it simply gets buried in landfills when people throw out their old modems or whatever else along with banana peels and that clown toy that Sally never wanted to play with for some reason but as you might guess most electronic waste or e-waste is it biodegradable and even contains toxic metals like mercury and cadmium as well as other not-so-good chemicals that can leach through landfills and end up in groundwater not a great situation I mean even if you don't think of yourself as a tree hugger you're probably not a big fan of mercury flavored coffee so lots of folks then opt to recycle their waste instead of just tossing it in the trash but how exactly does electronics recycling work well sorry to bust your happy carbon neutral bubble but the inconvenient truth is that it often doesn't although there are lots of places that advertise electronic waste disposal much of it doesn't actually end up disposed of properly at all instead much of it is shipped off to poorer countries for reclamation where things like circuit boards are literally set on fire or dunked into acid so the workers can go dig through it afterwards and recover useful materials such as copper and gold so as you might be able to guess then there are lots of talk SiC fumes that get released when electronics are burned which has created serious health problems in impoverished areas that are economically dependent on this kind of dangerous manual labor nevertheless it continues to happen because shipping a waste to a less fortunate part of the globe is cheaper than processing it at home of course this isn't meant to be a socio-political lecture so let's talk then about how reputable electronics recycling and disposable services deal with your unwanted ghosts from Black Friday's past some places like free geek Vancouver rely on manual volunteer labor to separate plastics and metals and the different kinds of plastics and the different kinds of metals so they can be reused and/or recycled but there are higher tech facilities that actually automate this process by using automatic shredders that will shred your old processors motherboards and electric toothbrushes without releasing the same kinds of harsh chemicals into the air that burning does after shredding the bits of e-waste are sorted sometimes using optical sensing for increased accuracy according to the types of materials which are then sold to other companies that use these reclaimed metals and plastics in other products everything from car batteries to furniture of course if you have something that's outdated but still functional it's usually better to find a way to reuse it rather than recycling it so you can sell or donate it to an organization again like free geek here in Vancouver that specializes in refurbishing old electronics and computer hardware with that said sometimes it's just broken so if you do have to recycle it make sure you're taking it to your reputable recycler and not a place that will just ship it offshore or you could just sell it to the script Kitty down the street in exchange for your very own botnet yes speaking of selling things do you have a small business are you racing against the clock as a freelancer doing like computer work or like running a dance studio out of your garage or whatever it is that you're doing it's challenging but thanks to the power of the Internet and fresh books you can spend more time doing your work and less time figuring out how complicated accounting software works fresh books has been redesigned for the way you work and it's the simplest and easiest way to be more productive more organized and perhaps most importantly get paid more quickly you can create and send professional-looking invoices in less than 30 seconds you can set up online payments with just a couple of clicks and get paid up to four days faster and you can even see when your client has seen your invoice and put an end to the guessing games so FreshBooks is offering a 30-day unrestricted free trial to our viewers to claim it just go to fresh ebooks.com slash tech quickie and enter tech quickie and how did you hear about us section thanks for watching guys like dislike check out our other channels leave a comment with in your suggestions and don't forget to subscribe