Indonesia E-waste
We consumed goods that created waste after use lifetime, or life-cycle. It may plastics, air pollution, sound pollution, water pollution.
Have you every think about where will your unused cellular phone ended up? or perhaps your broken fridge, or non-LCD TV from the old days? Or your old computers motherboard and monitor?
Indonesia, with more than 230 million people will create plenty of used consumer electronics. Sooner or later, these -once precious- electronic device will become unusable and outdated. That when these electronics become a waste.
E-waste, or electronic waste in Indonesia is recycled. In different way with European country. In Indonesia we extract gold from the Computer’s CPU, ICs. We also extract copper from its cables, tin from the soldering terminals, copper from the refrigerator pipes and tubes, selling working part to other merchant.
In east Java, we found a big collection point of these e-waste. The waste collected in 5 major collection point, separated and then processed in the other facilities to extract its valuables. Creating a e-waste economy effect for people who collecting from people, the merchant, and the recycle facilities.
Not this without problem. To extract gold from the CPUs, the need of using mercury are sometimes without any mercury-waste treatment. It sometimes just dumped on bare soil or river, creating environmental effect.