Developing World Will Produce Double The E-Waste Of Developed Countries by 2030

For once I'd like to see one of these gloom-and-doom articles authored by the "eco-conscious" get retitled with a headline that's much more worthwhile... A much more fitting headline would be: "Outstanding Improvements in the Standard of Living for Citizens of Third World Countries is Marked by Impressive Rise in Ownership of Personal Computers." Are we seriously supposed to bemoan the idea of poverty stricken people's prospects of getting computers--and all that that means with respect to the ending of poverty in their lives--because the computers might get thrown away someday? Seriously? What kind of man-hating curmudgeon dreams this sort of study up? These poor people need computers far more than whatever lofty-headed fool believes this to be anything but wonderful--this chance for the poor of the world to improve their lives through technology. Humans survive and thrive by augmenting their environment. It's high time we accepted and celebrated that truth--ESPECIALLY as Engineers--we play such a central role in improving people's lives, by reshaping the Earth to improve our standard of living!

I think we, why not I'll say we, are bemoaning the "developed" world's short sighted practice of planned obsolescence becoming the whole worlds business and design paradigm. I'll wager a contentious analogy: Most of the Europeans that introduced alien diseases to the west intended to improve lives. Ignorance (at best) being the tie-that-binds.

Perhaps we could agree on something, the millions of tons of toxic electronic waste produced each year poses a complex engineering problem relevant to the quality of life of everyone.