When you intend to discard a hardware component or even your old PC , what should you do with it? In this article, we are going to explain why it is essential and extremely important that you leave your old PC or any hardware component in a clean place , and why you should never throw it away .
It really is logical simply because of the size of a PC, but there are many people who leave them next to the garbage containers. In addition to being fined for this, you should know that it is very important that any hardware component you want to throw away must go to the clean point so that it can be properly treated, since if you throw it away, it will be managed as if it were waste. more organic and could have a serious impact on the environment.
Why should you throw your hardware or PC to the clean point?
During the manufacturing process of many hardware components, liquid residues considered dangerous are generated (these are: corrosive, toxic, flammable, reactive or infectious). These are liquids that are used in the manufacture of PCBs, for example, as acids for the treatment of copper oxidation, and that are impregnated in some parts of the components.
The list published in June 2016 regarding hazardous waste includes more than 700 components used in the manufacture of hardware components considered to be harmful toxins. For example, the plastic shell of a PC case is covered by a layer of a flame retardant that is toxic, or a monitor screen may contain up to 1 kg of lead . Batteries, batteries, and even some parts of PCBs contain cadmium , and excessive contact with this material can cause poisoning.
If these substances came into contact with the blood (imagine that you get a wound, that you breathe toxic vapors when burning, etc.) they would penetrate to the nervous tissue of the brain, and in the most severe cases they could even lead to a functional disability due to life
What happens if you throw your PC in the trash
If you throw these hardware components or your old PC in the trash and not a clean point, the components will not receive proper treatment and will be stored in landfills. When rainwater comes in contact with these buried wastes, chemical reactions will occur, forming leachate (seepage) in the landfill, and the heavy metals in the components in the groundwater will cause serious contamination. If humans drank these polluted waters, or if they were drunk by animals and plants, they would be poisoned and could result in death .
In 2007 residents of an area in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, began to experience varying degrees of headache, dizziness, nausea, and other symptoms. According to a United Nations Environment report, more than half of the city’s population was poisoned by drinking water containing heavy metals, causing blood poisoning and respiratory problems, all due to a pile of electronic waste. that was not adequately treated.
How do you manage waste at the clean point?
Take for example the world’s first e-waste processing factory, Ecological Electreonics Company, located in northern Finland. The treatment method is similar to that of smelting in a mine, which consists of crushing and classifying electronic products by materials, filtering metals such as silver, copper, aluminum and gold, and then sending them to a smelting furnace and so we can reuse them.
For starters, these electronic components are not stored or buried in a landfill, but rather are located in a covered industrial warehouse, thus eliminating the possibility of coming in contact with rainwater. The operations of waste treatment from electronic devices follow the following order:
- Repair / Reuse : Whenever possible, appliances are checked to see if they can be repaired for later use. When it is not, the elements will be taken to a treatment plant where the materials that can be recycled and used to manufacture new products will be located.
- Disassembly and decontamination : the light bulbs, LEDs, batteries, cables and the rest of the electrical components are eliminated at the beginning of the process. Subsequently, substances considered dangerous such as mercury or cadmium are removed, as well as polychlorinated biphenyl condensers. These hazardous materials are processed by authorized managers (some are incinerated and others are reused).
- Crushing : once the hazardous components are removed, the rest of the waste is crushed and divided into four sections: iron metals, other non-ferrous metals, glass and plastics.
- Use of recyclable materials : Materials suitable for recycling (metals, plastics and glass) are used to make new products.
- Recycled : appliances are disassembled and hazardous substances are decontaminated if they contain them. The process involves the recovery of materials such as plastics, metals or glass for subsequent recycling.
- Energy recovery : this step consists of looking for other energy uses for the materials of electronic devices. For example, some plastics that cannot be recycled can be used as fuel in cement plants.
- Disposal : When an electronic device cannot be reused or recycled, it goes to another waste reduction plant for disposal.
Do not throw your PC in the trash, always to the clean point
The summary of all this is that almost all hardware components and complete PCs (even more) contain certain substances that, although they are not dangerous in themselves, they can be so in some situations, such as mixed with water (creating heavy metals that are very toxic) or burning. For this reason, if you throw them away, they will go to a conventional landfill, where they could cause environmental disasters like the one we told you about before Nairobi in 2007.
On the contrary, if you throw your hardware or old PC to a clean point, you ensure that it will be treated properly so that it has no impact on the environment, and in fact, you also ensure that the materials that can be reused or recycled, They will be, thus collaborating with the maintenance of the environment.
You have to be responsible and take care of what we have, so do not hesitate for a moment: never throw hardware components or your PC in the trash, leave it in a clean place.
