Digital Media and Social Justice
One thing that I have noticed that I was completely blind to before attending my First Year Seminar is the economics of electric waste. I read the article by Puckett, High Tech's Dirty Little Secret, and found it quite disturbing how we do this to countries that cannot do anything about it such as India. We are indirectly killing these Indian people with OUR problems and they shouldn't have to deal with that. I understand that the waste has to go somewhere but there has to be some type of better solution that that. This process completely defeats the purpose of recycling and after reading this article, I refuse to recycle any type of technology.
I am actually disappointed in myself for not seeing this earlier and being so blind to the fact that this is occurring. Could you imagine being one of these Indian children or even living in India for that matter? According to growingplanet.in, 44% of India lives on less than a dollar a day. Minimum wage in the United states is $7.25 and this type of work would not be done for 7.25 an hour and most defiantly would it never be taken to these extremes.
Just because the United States is more powerful than India, this does not mean that we should throw all of our problems on them. They are people also. What happened to people being treated equally? That doesn't just apply to United States citizens. It applies for everyone.
Puckett, J. (2006) "High-Tech's Dirty Little Secret: The Economics and Ethics of the Electronic waste Trade. In: Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry". Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
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