To Cell or not to Cell
admin June 14th, 2006
I want a cell phone. Is this part of my consumer addiction, or do I really need one?
I bought my wife a cell phone years ago so she’d be safer on the road, and she has rarely used it. I’ve resisted getting one myself to reduce my dependency on the ‘grid’, lighten the load on the environment, and not support the ‘growth economy’.
But now my car at, 11 years of age, and has 150,000 miles on it, and is a whole lot less dependable than it used to be, and it would feel a lot safer if I had a phone in the car. Of course I could always buy a newer, more dependable car but that would be a tad more expensive and even worse for the environment. So, personal safety vs. economic and environmental responsibility – what to do?
I’d love to have a new toy, and it would be convenient in case of an emergency, but then I’ve spent countless years driving old cars with no phone, so why is it now suddenly dangerous to be without one? Sure, they’re available now and they weren’t a few years ago, so why reject safety for a principle?
The reason is actually pretty compelling. We think of high tech industries as being ‘clean’ or ‘light. When we look at a cell phone or laptop we don’t notice any smoke coming out of it and no oil stains on the table and we conclude that it’s clean, but in fact they are far from it. What we don’t pay attention to is the tremendous amount of fossil fuels, water, and toxic chemicals that are used to manufacture them.
For instance, the United Nations did a study last year and found that the average desktop computer requires 10 times their weight in fossil fuels and other resources to build compared to the average car which only requires twice its weight in the same fluids – NOT a light industry. And at the rate we discard cells, computers, and peripherals, it becomes waste, often not recycled. Those that are recycled usually end up in super-dumps in Asia where the toxics leach from them creating the equivalent of Super-Fund sites. National Geographic Magazine did an article on recycling electronics several months ago and included a startling picture of kids in Asia pulling the innards out of computers and cell phones while sitting in toxic wastes that had leached into water puddles. NOT a clean or safe industry!
We need to also consider that the use of these speedy, ‘efficient’ high tech devices also has the perverse effect of dramatically speeding up the rate of economic growth, development, and environmental degradation virtually everywhere in the world. Is this also something I should support?
Obviously there are good reasons not to further contribute to this mess. But I want a cell phone!
What would you do?