Environmental issues Flashcards
What do electronic devices contain?
Raw materials.
precious metals
Where do Plastics come from?
crude oil
Examples of precious metals devices contain:
Gold Silver Copper Mercury Palladium Platinum Indium
How do many precious metals occur?
Naturally in tiny quantities
What r the repercussions extracting materials?
It uses a lot of energy
Creates pollution
Depletes scarce natural resources
How is most electricity made?
Using non-renewable resources like coal, oil and gas.
What does extracting resources and producing electricity in power stations cause?
Pollution including greenhouse gases
Why are the powerful servers used by businesses and the Internet a particular problem?
All computers generate heat and require cooling.
They are power hungry and require special air-conditioned rooms to keep them cool.
Using even more energy and more pollution.
Ways in which devices waste a lot of energy:
Servers only use a proportion of their processing power.
Ppl often leave their desktops, laptops and smartphones idle- using a lot of energy without actually doing anything
What are ways to reduce the amount of energy wasted by devices?
Using virtual servers
Using sleep/hibernation mode when devices are idle
Not leaving electronic devices on standby
How much e-waste does the world create each year?
20-50 million tonnes
What is a problem with modern devices?
They have a very short life before they are discarded- either because they break or people want an upgrade
How are device manufacturers and retailers apart of the problem of e-waste?
They provide short warranties (e.g 1 year)
use marketing to convince people to upgrade
Have pricing policies that make it it cheaper to replace than to repair
What does WEEE stand for?
Waste Electric and Electronic Equipment
What was the WEEE directive created for?
To tackle the e-waste problem.
It has rules of disposing of e-waste safely
To promote reuse (e.g refurbishing of new devices to use again)
Recycling (e.g. extracting the devices precious metals)
