I grew up just as the internet was transitioning from an obscure scientific network to a publically-accessible information source.  At a young age, I had a PC running Windows 95 in my bedroom, which was quickly replaced with a Windows 98 PC and a noisy 56k modem for connecting to dial-up internet.  I got a very basic brick cell phone around middle school when I began to go off on my own, allowing me to place phone calls to my parents.  Soon, I had a flip phone where I could send basic texts as well.

By the time I graduated high school I had upgraded to a flip phone with a camera, then a phone with a full-sized keyboard for quickly sending texts, then the upgraded version of that phone.  Today, I have a smart phone so I can capture HD pictures and video and share it with my friends and family instantly.

The story is the same for my other electronics.  After burning through a few family PCs, I began regularly building and upgrading my own computing rigs for video gaming and programming.  I purchased laptops, video game consoles, and then regularly updated the devices as they grew old, slow, and limited in features.  At one point I had two separate computers for different purposes at home, a full-sized laptop, and a netbook.  My closet is an electronics graveyard.

These technological advancements are awe-inspiring and redefine how we interact with the world, but it comes at a cost.  The amount of energy and material required to make an electronic device is absolutely enormous.  The normal use of the device over its lifespan requires less electricity than producing it in the first place.  None of that energy and resource expenditure is recovered if it is simply thrown away after use.  As more and more of the world begins to regularly rely on electronic devices, Moore’s law becomes a powerful foe to the environment.  Yet we can easily close the loop and make electronics production far more sustainable:  sending your old electronics to be recycled or reused, where a majority of the energy and materials that went into producing the devices can be recovered and used directly in the production of your future must-have electronic gadget.

Learn more about best practices when it comes to recycling your old IT assets in our free whitepaper – The Guide to Environmental Compliance in IT Asset Disposition.