Recycle CD’s & DVD’s!

You’re making a copy of your favorite tv show or music, then something goes terribly awry…do you throw it away?  NO!  Throwing away any electronic item away will contaminate our soils & water.  Now I don’t know every dangerous element contained within our electronics, but I do know of one from some recent research I did for personal reasons.  Arsenic is one of several hazardous elements contained in electronic products and there is a lot of areas (if not all-since the water cycle is a continuous cycle throughout the planet) who’s water contains arsenic.  Using water filters, R/O systems or bottled water will not protect you from arsenic.  Some R/O systems can, but only if you buy a special filter made for filtering out arsenic.  We’ve lived in 2 areas of the country in the 7 years my daughter has been alive, always had city water & either a good water filter or R/O system & used bottle water when out.  She has recently had blood & hair analysis done for a variety of things & much to my surprise, her tests showed high levels of arsenic in both her blood & hair!  What that meant was not only has she had long term exposure to arsenic, but also recent exposure.  The doctor stated that the most common cause was the drinking water, but that pesticides in/on our foods can also expose us to arsenic.  Since we eat an organic diet, that only left the water.  Both states we have/had lived in had arsenic in the drinking water!  Ugh!

So what do we do with our damaged or unwanted CD’s & DVD’s (like all of those that come in the mail)…mail them to Back Thru the Future,a woman-owned electronics recycling and data destruction company.  They also will take your old hard drives!  While you do have to pay for shipping, the recycling service is free and the benefits to the environment numerous.  Besides protecting our planet from soil & ground water contamination here are some other reasons to recycle:

CD/DVD Recycling Facts:

• A cd/dvd is considered a class 7 recyclable plastic
• To manufacture a pound of plastic (30 CDs per pound), it requires 300 cubic feet of natural gas, 2 cups of crude oil and 24 gallons of water
• It is estimated that AOL alone has distributed more than 2 billion CDs. That is the natural gas equivalent of heating 200,000 homes for 1 year
• It is estimated that it will take over 1 million years for a CD to completely decompose in a landfill

Hard Drive Recycling Facts:

• Each hard drive contains over one pound of recyclable aluminum
• Recycling one hard drive saves enough energy to:
  • light a 100 watt bulb for 134 hours, or
  • run your television for 102 hours or
  • the energy equivalent of 1.5 gallons of gasoline
• Recycling aluminum is 95% more energy efficient than producing aluminum from ore
• Recycling aluminum results in 95% less air pollution and 97% less water pollution than producing aluminum from ore

 

 

~ by digitalpoetry on October 6, 2008.