Weblog post 9/20 E-waste in the United States

The article I have selected is from Forbes.com and is about E-waste in the United States written by Phillip Fava who works for an E-waste recycling corporation, Suffolk Industrial Recovery Corp. This article is from December 2011 so it is somewhat recent. This article explains how E-waste is being increased every year due to technologies rapid advancement. Technology is being advanced much quicker than in the past and we as a country have much more E-waste because of it. This could help our economy in the next couple of years Fava argues, and I agree as well. In 2002 the E-waste recycling industry contributed less than $1 billion dollars and 6,000 jobs to the United States economy. In 2010 the recycling industry generated $5.2 billion dollars and 30,000 jobs to the United States economy. About $4.2 billion dollars of extra revenue is due to the recycling industry. This is a large increase in only 8 years and is a good addition to the economic growth of America. In 2002 only 600,000 tons of E-waste was recycled. In 2010 a whopping 3.5 million tons of E-waste was recycled. I think this is a significant increase and it is good that there are companies in the United States who are recycling E-waste. A part of this article that surprised me was only 26% of E-waste originated from households. I thought this number would be much bigger, the other 74% came from businesses, which also surprised me.

Link to article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/philfava/2011/12/20/new-study-on-e-waste-in-the-united-states/