Barium, beryllium, cadmium. Anyone who is not a chemist knows little about these elements—except, perhaps, that they were part of the old periodic table, from high school. Although they seem exotic and unusual, these and other heavy metals are used in the majority of electronic devices that abound in our daily lives. They make cell phone batteries last longer or prevent computers from exploding.
While they are new, machines and other technological tools usually cause us little damage—nothing much more than stress and annoyance. But when they become obsolete, pile up in landfills or are incinerated, we can see features of our electronic devices that were not specified in the user’s manual: their heavy metals decompose and contaminate the soil, the air and the water. This may bring about health problems that range from fetus malformation to serious neurologic consequences, kidney failure and cancer.

Behind those computers financed in 24 installments, free cell phones, increasingly powerful MP3 players and other electronic gadgets sold by next to nothing there is a cheap, disposable and toxic technology. To give you an idea of the problem, according to Greenpeace, every year, 50 million tons of chips, circuits, boards, computers, cell phones and other cyberparaphernalia are thrown away. This is such a huge number that it is almost unimaginable. If all of the electronic waste we generate every year were put on a train, its railway cars would circle the world—and even so, it’s hard to imagine so much waste.

The useful life of electronic gadgets is lessened in inverse proportion to which the increase in their consumption. In 1997, a personal computer used to last for over half a decade. In 2005, a computer was already considered obsolete after two years of use. Today, after only a few months any device can be considered an antique.

Throughout the world, technology companies are trying to change their image as polluters and struggling to decrease their environmental impact. Since 2005, many of them have started collecting their own used equipment in order to reuse raw-materials on the assembly lines. This is a modest move, but it involves a radical change in the way they think about their business.

*Full version of the article written in collaboration with Bruna Menegueço, reporter, published in Gestão Empresarial magazine.

Read this post at the Guindaste blog: Technology in the green trend