E-Waste-“Whacha Gonna Do with All That Junk?”

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“Whacha Gonna Do With All That Junk?” Can you remember your first cell phone? It was huge wasn’t it? No wonder they’re now referred to as bricks. Nowadays cell phones are thin enough to fit into your skinniest skinny jeans back pocket! But even though the cell phones are smaller, lighter and flashier, the features they can accomplish go way beyond the purpose they were originally intended for. Life nowadays has become so fast and luxurious that we cannot imagine it without the sophisticated electrical and electronic items. Every few months there is a new model of some type of technological device reaching the market and the old is being discarded as it is unable to keep up with the fast paced society. A good example of this can be the film “Slumdog Millionare” that portrays the life of Jamal, a child from the slums of Mumbai who surprise viewers of India by winning the Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” .The main characters are constantly surrounded by the hardships, greed, and violence of Mumbai living in the trash dumps of India. The reason for my association with electronics comes with the fact that the city Mumbai is one of the largest cities in India. The demand of work in the city attracts a number of people for those living in rural areas. Migration into the city of Mumbai continues to grow at exponential rates each year. As a result, there has been rise of slums and overcrowding in the city. Why the concern? Demand for work forces people to go into the industry of e-waste. Workers smash and burn old electronics to gain access to the metals inside, which they recover for money. Electronic waste, or e-waste, is a term used for electronic products that have become unwanted, non working or obsolete (Heimbuch). Because technology advances at such a high rate, many electronic devices become “trash” after a few short years of use. For example, old

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