5.2 Environmental Issues

Question 1

What are hard disks made out of?

Answer 1

Aluminium
Steel
Fibreglass
Plastic

Question 2

What are gaming controllers made out of?

Answer 2

Plasric
Rubber
Lithium

Question 3

What are usb cables made out of?

Answer 3

Copper

Plastic

Question 4

What are CPU’s made out of?

Answer 4

Fibreglass
Aluminium
Gold

Question 5

What are heat sinks made out of?

Answer 5

Aluminium

Question 6

What are RAM’s made out of?

Answer 6

Fibreglass

Gold

Question 7

List all the components on a motherboard

Answer 7

Power connector
Northbridge
Southbridge
RAM slots
PCI Express slots
PS/2 slots
VGA/HDMI
Network socket
NVME
SATA

Question 8

Give the lifecycle of a smartphone

Answer 8

Mining for raw material
Manufacture
Purchase and Use
Recycling centre
Reprocessing plant

Question 9

What environmental damage doesna phone’s life cycle cause?

Answer 9

Contamination and erosion directly caused by digging machines
Un-recycled plastic from phones damage environment
Gas and coal are needed to power factories for electricity for batteries and machinery

Question 10

Give some non renewable materials

Answer 10

Plastic
Steel
Gold
Aluminium
Fibreglass
Diesel

Question 11

Give some renewable resoueces

Answer 11

Water

Trees

Question 12

What problems can lithium batteries cause when recycling?

Answer 12

They can catch fire and be hard to recover

Question 13

Why is sealing batteries into devices a problem for the environment?

Answer 13

Batteries degrade over time and this means they can’t be replaced easily decreasing the performance of the phone causing people to buy new phones discarding their old phones.

Question 14

How much waste in the UK is thrown each year?

Answer 14

1.6 million tonnes

Question 15

What is the percentage of electronics thrown away that are still working or have minor issues?

Answer 15

23

Question 16

How much gold does each mobile phone contain?

Answer 16

24mg

Question 17

Worldwide throwaway for gold silver and steel

Answer 17

300 tons of gold (9 billion quid)
1000 tons of silver (400 million quid)
16 million tons of steel (6.5 billion)

Question 18

What is fairphone?

Answer 18

A modular phone design which is designed so that the user can replace the parts inside it

Question 19

What are the benefits of fairphone?

Answer 19

Phone lasts longer and creates less waste

Question 20

What are some changeable parts of fairphones?

Answer 20

Battery, vibration mechanism, rear camera

Question 21

Give some impacts of e-waste on the environment

Answer 21

Very harmful to humans and the environment if not processed correctly
Lithium batteries can catch fire and may be hard to recover
If components cost too much to recover they go to landfill
Mining materials damages the environment

Question 22

Give some ways to reduce the impact of e-waste?

Answer 22

Make devices that can be fixed with modular components
Use removable batteries
Use modern recycling facilities