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Living on Earth: E-waste Youth Activist

Living on Earth: E-waste Youth Activist
Air Date: Week of January 4, 2008 stream/download this segment as an MP3 file Alex Lin (Courtesy of Alex Lin) Living on Earth interviews Alex Lin, who won the Brower Youth Award for his pioneering work on electronic waste. Lin recycled and refurbishes computers for kids in the U.S. and around the world. Transcript CURWOOD: One kid who needs no New Year’s resolutions on the environment is 14-year-old Alex Lin. When the electronic devices we use every day get taken apart or dumped, toxic substances, like lead, leech into the environment. And this year he received the prestigious Brower Youth Award for young environmental leaders. LIN: Thanks a lot. CURWOOD: So one day you’re reading the newspaper. LIN: I think what helped me choose to do this was that it’s such a little known problem, really. CURWOOD: So how many computers are you guys recycling? LIN: Recycling-wise we’re not really sure about the amount. CURWOOD: So it’s what—5,000 pounds a month or something like that? CURWOOD: Hey, Alex.

Piles of thrown-out TVs, laptops and phones pose an environmental risk Christmas gifts from past years meet a sad end at Absolute Green Electronics Recycling in California. Computers are dismantled. Their parts get sorted into cardboard bins. One bin holds nothing but hard drives. Another holds AC adapters. Bins stretch in rows across a huge warehouse. Stacked-up printers form a miniature mountain. “There are different grades of boards,” said owner and president Victor Kianipay, stepping past dust-covered TVs to poke into apple boxes filled with circuit boards. E-Waste A Global Problem This is electronic waste, or e-waste. Within five years, the annual figure may reach 65 million tons, the group estimates. A lot of companies send electronic waste to developing countries. “You see all these thousands — literally thousands — of women and young kids whose job is to cook circuit boards,” said Jim Puckett. Thirty-five nations have adopted the ideas of the Basel Convention, Puckett said. The U.S. Boosting Recycling In The U.S. The old TVs are particularly bad.

ARKive - Discover the world's most endangered species Wildscreen's Arkive project was launched in 2003 and grew to become the world's biggest encyclopaedia of life on Earth. With the help of over 7,000 of the world’s best wildlife filmmakers and photographers, conservationists and scientists, Arkive.org featured multi-media fact-files for more than 16,000 endangered species. Freely accessible to everyone, over half a million people every month, from over 200 countries, used Arkive to learn and discover the wonders of the natural world. Since 2013 Wildscreen was unable to raise sufficient funds from trusts, foundations, corporates and individual donors to support the year-round costs of keeping Arkive online. Therefore, the charity had been using its reserves to keep the project online and was unable to fund any dedicated staff to maintain Arkive, let alone future-proof it, for over half a decade. Despite appeals for support, just 85 of our 5.6 million users in 2018 made a donation.

Polar Bears and Climate Change Floods. Droughts. Heat waves. In fact, if our chief scientist, Dr. "Events like these will continue to increase in number and severity as the world continues to warm." What's causing climate change? What's causing climate change? Greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere act like a blanket that keeps the earth warm. Other factors such as deforestation have added to the problem. Do scientists agree about climate change? The laws of physics dictate that the world will grow warmer and warmer as greenhouse gas concentrations rise. Are scientists still debating climate change? The important point to remember is that natural fluctuations in the climate system will continue with global warming, but the baseline will climb higher and higher. And once we cross those thresholds, it will be bad news not only for polar bears—but countless other species, including humans. How are polar bears affected by climate change? What can be done? Humans have caused this problem, humans can fix it.

Alex Lin, Teenage Activist He's overseen the recycling of 300,000 pounds of e-waste. He's successfully lobbied the Rhode Island state legislature to ban the dumping of electronics. He's used refurbished computers to create media centers in developing countries like Cameroon and Sri Lanka to foster computer literacy. He’s Alex Lin and he’s just 16 years old. “I don’t see anything uncommon in it,” says Lin, a high school senior from Westerly, Rhode Island. “My friends and I have been doing this since fifth grade. Lin’s catalytic moment came in 2004 when he chanced upon a Wall Street Journal article. E-waste, or electronics garbage, is the fastest growing section of the U.S. trash stream. While there is no federal law banning e-waste, 20 states have passed legislation mandating statewide e-waste recycling. If only the states with e-waste laws in their 2010 legislative pipeline—Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Utah, to name a few—had an Alex Lin at their disposal. The Rise of E-Waste, the Birth of Team WIN

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