Choose only ONE!!! option to write, word count 300:
writing instruction:
Your team has been hired again – this time by an energetic Freshman senator , named Boris A. Ersatz, newly elected from the Green Party for the state of Oregon (naturally). Mr. Ersatz, you can call him Boris, wants to prove he can make an impact at a national level with Green ideas. Their constituents are energized about waste reduction, recycling, and green energy. E-waste has emerged as an issue that has been neglected, and a coalition of environmental and social justice groups have been lobbying the senator about this. But lobbyists, while always forceful in influencing potential, are generally qualitative and devoid of any relevant science. Therefore, your Team has been hired to make a better data driven policy and to suggest that such a policy is even feasible.
The help your Team with some background research on environmental and human health issues related to E-waste disposal in landfills/dumps, use these sources:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214999614003208
https://www.sciencealert.com/asias-e-waste-pollution-may-spread-worldwide
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24515808
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412018302125?via%3Dihub
Part A: Environmental Issues
Summarize in the form of a table the overall adverse effects of E-waste on the Environment.
Part B: The Quantitative Size of the Problem
Do some research and provide a graphic (that policy people can understand) that shows the evolution of E-waste generated by the US going as far back in time as you can.
From that evolution predict, by some defensible method, what the total tons of annual E-waste will be in the year 2030
Part C: Operational Scale
Recycling E-waste requires the following steps:
- Collection
- Testing: working units may be sold as used goods
- Disassembly: non-working units should be disassembled so that glass, plastic, clean metal, circuit boards, batteries, etc are separated into streams
- Recycling by material class
- Clean glass, plastic, and metal recycling (this is where there is potential revenue- see this USGS Document (链接到外部网站。)) – also try to determine if rare-earths used in E-devices can also be recovered –> this could lead to greater profits.
- Leaded glass smelting
- Circuit board smelting
- Battery smelting
By some scientific method, estimate the number of workers need to process a ton of E-waste via the previous steps. From this, how many workers can be potentially employed in the year 2030 and what might the approximate size of an E-waste facility be if it were to do 10,000 tons per year?
Part D: The Policy Idea
Boris wants to sponsor a bill that will achieve the following goals:
- Divert E-waste from landfills, at a rate of at least 75% (current diversion is about 25%)
- Create new jobs in E-waste processing in the U.S. to make up for a shrinking manufacturing sector
- Reasonably determine the cost of dealing with E-waste and how should bear that cost (consumers, manufactures, the Federal government, individual states that export E-waste for processing?). In the ideal case, potential money made from the E-waste program could generate enough money to pay for its operation.
Some Constraints:
If this system is like the deposit system modeled after bottle deposit then the deposit rates must not be too high relative to the cost of the item, but must be high enough to encourage E-waste return.
The adopted system must not result in circumvention that results in export dumping to developing countries, currently a significant problem in the world.
Your Team’s recommendation to Boris, should consist of the following items.
- How are do the products get from the consumer to the E-waste sites? Is it better to have a few large scale sites or many small sites? like you can easily dispose of your bottle most anywhere)
- How should material tracking be incorporated into this system so that it can be monitored to ensure that purchased E-products get to the E-waste site? Do consumers pay penalty for failure to E-waste?
- Is there a market for the resulting separated material and if so, how stable is this market.? Approximate annual revenue from a Ton of e-waste (yes you will have to do some research to determine this).
- What should be the differential recycling fee be between
Gaming desktop computers
Laptop computers
Tablets and Smart Phones
Flat Screen monitors
And should this fee be based on the market value of the product or the planned obsolescence time scale? (e.g. Smartphones are disposed of a lot more quickly that Flat Screen Monitors)
Given all of this, who (consumers, manufacturers, Federal Gov’t) should pay for the Recycling Fees and/or can this endeavor be sufficiently profitable to pay for its own operation? This should be your executive summary.
Remember to tell an integrated story and to not serially approach this as consisting of N independent parts. If you need help finding resources, ask Andrea as she can provide a list of some relevant resources containing data on E-waste if you need to find it, but I found it pretty easy to find.
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