E-Waste Management: Exploring Literature Review and Discussion Points

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of e-waste management, beginning with a literature review that highlights the increasing proliferation of electronic waste due to factors like market liberalization and globalization, particularly in third-world countries. The essay discusses the adverse environmental and health impacts of uncontrolled e-waste dumping and recycling, including rising cancer rates and waterborne diseases due to heavy metal contamination. Furthermore, it proposes several remedies, such as the 're-use, recycle, reduce' strategy and the implementation of effective e-waste management legislation and corporate policies, to mitigate the harmful effects of e-waste on the environment and public health. The essay references various studies and reports to support its claims and recommendations.

English Assignment 1
ENGLISH ASSIGNMENT
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English Assignment 2
1 LITERATURE REVIEW
Several literature has been written on the subject of e-waste management in an attempt to
enlighten the general population on the emerging issues presented by the e-waste. This section
provides a review of such literature.
According to (Johri, 2008), the recent fall in the computing devices prices have let to
mushrooming of these devices in the market thanks to the liberalization of trade which makes
cheaply produced electronic equipment to flood the third world markets. The overall effect is
they end up proliferating the environment since management of their growth is not controlled.
Lack of adequate e-waste management policies has made corporation easily dump these waste
products of computing into the environment without following due processes (Krishnamoorthy et
al., 2018).
The general effect of these hazardous metals is related to health complication witnessed in the
third world countries. According to (Zheng et al., 2008), several health complications such as
inhalation problems are attributed to the rise in the toxic chemicals from the heavy metals that
make up the e-waste. The uncontrolled recycling of these waste products has caused such
chemicals to be left free in the environment making them a potential environmental hazard
(Jagran, 2015).
Several factors have been attributed to the lack of this vital policy. According to (Köhler, Hilty
and Bakker, 2011), the lack of political goodwill can be attributed to this fact. Several third
world leaders have not taken the necessary steps to enact legislation that provide the regulatory

English Assignment 3
frameworks for ensuring that corporation abides by the international laws of e-waste
management.
2 DISCUSSION
E-waste has been a hot issue in various ICT discussion forums as it has finally emerged that to
serve mother nature, several laws and regulations have to enacted by various jurisdictions to
ensure the impacts of the e-waste is greatly reduced. In this research, attempts have been made to
elaborate the causes of the continuous sprouting of e-waste phenomena in most third world
countries. From the literature, it is evident that market liberation and globalization have open
doors for various ICT device manufacturers to step in third world markets (Tansel, 2016). The
zero quotas have led to the importation of cheaply produced ICT devices such as the mobile
phones which have flooded the third world countries. (Welz, Hischier and Hilty, 2011)The
overall effect is turning the third world countries into dumping sites for the electronic wastes.
These dump sites have adversely affected the mother nature to the point where the global leaders
have seen the potential hazards if this sorrows state is to go by. Such hazardous is greatly linked
to the health complications witnessed in these countries. Cases of cancer have been on the rise in
these countries. Researchers have found a link between the proliferation of this e-waste onto
their environment and the sudden rise in health complications such as lung cancer due to
inhalation of contaminated air which is derived from the e-waste. The heavy metals which form
part of the electronic circuit of this wastes also get exposed to humans. Their adverse effect on
the environment can't is underrated (Hilty and Hercheui, 2010). The heavy metals have found
their way into the runoff waters which are the main source of water for most of this third world
citizens. The overall effect of this well-connected contamination is the rise in water-borne
diseases such as cholera in these worlds (Robinson, 2009).

English Assignment 4
The research has put forward several remedies that can be adopted by various individuals and
corporation to reduce the effects on their e-waste on the environment. The first notable approach
would be the use of re-use, recycle, reduce strategy to ensure before e-waste is dumped, attempts
should be made to re-use them (Coroama, Hilty and Birtel, 2012). If their nature makes it
extremely difficult to re-use, recycling strategies can be adopted to ensure parts of the device that
can be put to use don’t get dumped. The last strategy should reduce the impact the waste has on
the environment by making them less harmful through a chemical reaction. The second
promising method is to have legislation on e-waste management and having corporation adopt e-
water policies to have the regulatory framework to deal with this menace (Arjun, 2015).

English Assignment 5
REFERENCES
Arjun, J., 2015. E-Waste And Green Computing. [online] Available at:
<https://www.slideshare.net/arjunjinachandran5/ewaste-and-green-computing?next_slideshow=1>.
Coroama, V.C., Hilty, L.M. and Birtel, M., 2012. Effects of Internet-based multiple-site conferences on
greenhouse gas emissions. Telematics and Informatics, 29(4), pp.362–374.
Hilty, L.M. and Hercheui, M.D., 2010. ICT and sustainable development. In: What kind of information
society? Governance, virtuality, surveillance, sustainability, resilience. Springer, pp.227–235.
Jagran, J., 2015. Types of e - Waste. Environment and Ecology, [online] 1440681505(1). Available at:
<https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/types-of-e-waste-1440681505-1>.
Johri, R., 2008. E-waste: implications, regulations, and management in India and current global best
practices. The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).
Köhler, A.R., Hilty, L.M. and Bakker, C., 2011. Prospective impacts of electronic textiles on recycling and
disposal. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 15(4), pp.496–511.
Krishnamoorthy, Y., Vijayageetha, M., Sakthivel, M. and Sarveswaran, G., 2018. Emerging public health
threat of e-waste management: global and Indian perspective. Reviews on environmental health, 33(4),
pp.321–329.
Robinson, B.H., 2009. E-waste: an assessment of global production and environmental impacts. Science
of the total environment, 408(2), pp.183–191.
Tansel, B., 2016. From electronic consumer products to e-wastes: Global outlook, waste quantities,
recycling challenges. Environment international, 98, pp.35–45.
Welz, T., Hischier, R. and Hilty, L.M., 2011. Environmental impacts of lighting technologies—Life cycle
assessment and sensitivity analysis. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 31(3), pp.334–343.
Zheng, L., Wu, K., Li, Y., Qi, Z., Han, D., Zhang, B., Gu, C., Chen, G., Liu, J. and Chen, S., 2008. Blood lead
and cadmium levels and relevant factors among children from an e-waste recycling town in China.
Environmental Research, 108(1), pp.15–20.