Raw Foundation is working with environmental consultant and writer, Julia Hailes to raise awareness about E-waste and its impacts. These include the:

• Scarcity of many raw materials used in the electronics industry and the environmental degradation caused by their extraction.
• Toxicity of e-waste which has become the fastest growing hazardous waste stream on the planet.
• Design for disposability, which promotes a throwaway consumer culture
• Corruption and malpractice that is commonplace in the recycling and disposal of E-waste.

Rapid advances in technology in recent years have produced a multitude of products that we depend on. Increasingly, it's clear that they come with a cost, both to human health and the environment. Here are some of the problems:

Scarcity

To keep pace with growing demand, the scale and speed of resource exploitation for scarce raw materials has accelerated. Many key materials are in danger of running out, whilst mining and extraction on a vast scale is causing unprecedented environmental degradation.

Toxicity

E-waste contains thousands of toxic materials, including heavy metals and harmful persistent chemicals. These can be damaging to both human health and the environment. It's also an impediment to recycling.

Disposability

Explosive sales in consumer electronics and shorter product life-spans means more waste as products are being dumped at an alarming rate. Flatter TV screens, faster laptops and newer multi-functional mobile phones result in technology up-grades long before existing products are worn out. This design for disposability has led to a throwaway consumer culture that is supremely wasteful and environmentally destructive.

Recyclability

The development of appropriate re-use, recycling and recovery systems is not keeping pace with the sheer quantity of material produced. Huge volumes of usable, workable products are simply discarded or just partially recycled. And, even waste classified as recycled is being illegally exported from Europe to Asia and Africa.

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