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Catalyst: E-waste, recycling, and sustainability

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Catalyst: E-waste, recycling, and sustainability

SUBJECTS:  Geography

YEARS:  9–10


What happens when you try recycling electronic waste (e-waste)?

Watch this clip about the physics of recycling and find out how useful materials are captured from waste at a local materials recovery facility.

Presenter Tanya Ha investigates e-waste, the products it comes from, and the recycling and sustainability challenge it poses.


Things to think about

  1. 1.Recycling is the process of collecting useful materials from waste and producing new products from them. What kinds of useful materials can be saved from landfill? What do you know about the recycling of electronic waste such as discarded computers or televisions?
  2. 2.Listen as presenter Tanya Ha discusses Australia's consumption of televisions. How many TVs were dumped as waste in 2008? What materials that e-waste contains can be re-used? Listen as Tanya discusses our love affair with electronic gadgetry. Why does a significant volume end up in landfill? At the end of the clip, Tanya describes three sustainability benefits of recycling. What are they?
  3. 3.How important an issue do you think e-waste is in Australia? What are some of the environmental challenges surrounding the consumption of electronic goods. Is the consumption sustainable? Recycling of e-waste is one way to manage environmental impacts. Suggest other ways to manage e-waste and other types of waste.
  4. 4.Research a large Japanese or North Korean electronics company's environmental sustainability policies. How well does it manage the impacts associated with making products and disposing of wastes? Look at such things as its e-waste recycling programs, renewable energy policies and toxic chemical elimination. Find at least one independent website that compares electronic companies' performance in the area of 'green electronics'.



Date of broadcast: 8 Jul 2010


Copyright

Metadata © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia Ltd 2012 (except where otherwise indicated). Digital content © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). Video © Australian Broadcasting Corporation (except where otherwise indicated). All images copyright their respective owners. Text © Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Education Services Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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