Every day we are trashing our planet, we are trashing each other and we are not even having fun. Our own electronic production system is in trouble until we start to understand the system we will start seeing many solutions. Design for the dump is a key strategy for the companies that make our electronics. In 1960 Gordon Moore created Moore’s law which describes the long term increasing trend in history that consumers were replacing their electronic every eighteen months. This thinking only created an unstable material of economy. The electronic that are being made now are easy to break, hard to upgrade and impractical to repair because it is cheaper to buy a new electronic rather than take it to an electronic specialist to be repair. There are about twenty five million tons of electronic dump either burned or recycled which most of the electronics are not green friendly. A study for IBM stated that about 40% of their female workers will be in the risk of miscarriages and also including all workers the risk of blood, kidney and brain cancer. The conditions in the third world countries are not any better, China one of the leading countries in recycling our electronic waste have even worst working conditions they are expose to the toxics head on because they extract the valuable metals then burn the rest which result in polluting their air quality. This called for a global toxic emergency. The objective for these electronic companies is to eliminate externalize cost, which instead of paying for better working conditions the workers will have to pay with their health. Instead of better recycling techniques villages will pay with their resources like clean drinking water. Many companies feel that because they make these electronic products for the consumer that they should deal with the aftereffects when really consumers should have an attitude of “you make it you deal with it.” The brains of the company should be on the consumer sides by demanding product take back with which in the long run will cause their products to be cheaper to make and longer lasting less toxic more recyclable. Companies should make electronics where if they do break it is easy and inexpensive to buy rather than buying a whole brand new electronic. Consumers should demand greener electronics and green laws that will protect and strengthen the Moore’s law. We should also be aware of recycling techniques and avoid export recycling at all cost. Every step for greener electronic will be a brighter and healthier future.
Robert Melchior Figueroa and Lawrence Summers discuss environmental justices, which includes toxic communities and toxic workplaces. Majority of these toxic communities and workplaces are in poor communities’ mainly in communities of color people, Robert Melchior Figueroa and Lawrence Summers conclude that environmental justices also include environmental racism. These target communities are underfunded, unequal and a land field to all the unwanted waste most Americans would not accept in their own communities. So why in these communities? This comes down to the triangle of inheritance, identity, and inequality. Inheritance boils down to what happen in the past for example many Native Americans are still suffering for what happen to their ancestors. With these poor communities many people feel that it is link to Redlining which was when houses were distribute to white and people of color after World War II, but they were in separate neighborhoods. The white Americans received houses in very nice up class neighborhoods where as people of color lived in “ghettos.” Identity ask the question “who are we talking about,” if we lose the identity of the environment we are basically losing who Americans really are. There are thousands of languages, cultures, and people that are dying out due to toxic communities. Inequality discusses the unequal reactions from the federal and state government. This includes enforcing laws on cleaning toxic communities, the time it takes for clean up, unequal compensation, unfair penalties, and deliberating targeting poor people of color communities. We do not think about the environment and how to live in the environment or even how to use it. Environment issues dates back to the 1910s but 1962 was the second wave of environmental protection movement. Silent Springs was the Uncle Tom Cabin for the environmental movement; Silent Springs was due to the use of DDT as a pesticide that killed off many birds. The readers were to imagine a spring that was silent due to the wipe out of all the song birds. Many people threw out the idea because the author was a woman and they believe that she was thinking irrational but others saw it and started to wonder. In 1970 the first Earth day and also EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, was created. Earth day was not how we celebrated Earth day nowadays the very first Earth day was a global success in the awareness of the environment. This was the beginning, people started to recognize that they must take care of the environment because the environment is a part of them, a part of their identity.
“racial discrimination in environmental policy making, and the unequal enforcement of environmental laws and regulations . . . the deliberate targeting of people of color communities for toxic waste facilities . . . the official sanctioning of the life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants in people of color communities for toxic waste facilities . . . the history of excluding people of color from the leadership of the environmental movement (Chavis 1993, p.4). Robert Melchior Figueroa: “Environmental Justice,” The Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, edited by J. Baird Callicott and Robert Frodeman, (Thompson Gale: 2008).
There are five different types of justices; retributive, distributive, participatory, recognition, and restorative. Retributive justice involves punishment the famous sang “an eye for an eye.” Distribution justice involves with economics and policies, of who get what. Participatory justices involve the institutions, are a different way of asserting rights and facilitate access to justice. Recognition justice involves a symbolic meaning and identity, like a famous figure because if people see you as important they will listen to you. Restoration justice involves transformation, if the views of environmental issues transform how people see certain things then an action can take place. These justices are the steps for a brighter and healthier future.
Connecting with the media piece above, they talk about how the brains of the companies should come together with the consumer for better greener electronic and laws that protect and strengthen green electronic. The actions that they take would result in Restoration justice because the consumer is taking into action to transform the idea of a green electronic. By doing so we can have celebrities or the top brand electronic companies to start taking action, this is recognition justice because the consumer will see that their favorite electronic brand is trying to make a difference in cleaning up the environment. Nowadays many people are going green so therefore if a name brand company starts going green there customers would follow. Also with the attitude “you make it you deal with it” contributes to NIMBY “Not in My Backyard” these attitudes would force companies to take the responsibilities of their waste, and instead of dumping it on American soil and the third world soil companies can produce longer lasting electronic which would cut down dumping costs and many health risk costs. Americans must stand up and change the master narrative in order for a brighter and healthier future.
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