E-waste

e-waste (never spelled with a capital E) is waste from electronics. It is often toxic waste. Also some types of electronics like cell phones are thrown away on average once a year. Many projects focus on electronics re-use and electronics recycling, and electronics standards to minimize obsolescence. Such choices as Java as the programming language could be affected as they require more hardware. Recognizing what are not real hardware requirements is critical to any healthy signal infrastructure - ideal minimal infrastructure is in effect already installed, already there, and requires no new tantallum.

References:

• CBC News story, "it takes at least 1.6 kilograms of fossil fuels and chemical inputs to produce a single two-gram memory chip for personal computers."
• UNU study, "weight for weight, the average computer chip does more harm to the environment than the car."
• a social ecology of wireless communication