Ending the Problem of E-waste
For our project, we became interested in the problem of electronic waste after watching the 60 Minutes segment about the problem. Today our generation is on the constant lookout for the next technological innovation or advancement. We want our technology and gadgets to be improved, faster, stronger. When we are updating, upgrading, and turning in our electronics we are not always thinking about where our old electronics are actually going. Today e-waste is the fastest growing component of the municipal waste stream worldwide. E-waste and E-waste dumping are causing harmful health, environmental, and security risks for e-waste importers and exporters.
Some states are passing laws to prevent e-waste from simply going into the trash, but still most E-waste ends up in landfills and incinerators. Additionally over 30% of e-waste is being exported to developing countries causing a global trade in electronics. American’s electronics are dismantled and burned, releasing toxic chemicals into the environment and bodies of low-paid workers. Most of this trade is done through smuggling and is illegal. Project E-Liminate was developed as a platform to help spread awareness and information about the harmful effects of e-waste and e-waste dumping. The goal of Project E- Liminate is to make this issue as important and make the public as aware of electronic waste as other more commonly known wastes such as plastic or paper.
We were so inspired by the 60 Minutes segment on e-waste that we wanted to further spread the word. We loved how the piece was able to portray so much information, but we realized not everyone would have the time to sit down and watch the entire thing. We decided to come up with a visual element to accompany it.
In terms of choosing the medium we wanted to use for our project, we knew it had to fulfill a specific set of criteria. First, it had to be shareable. A viral campaign is nothing without it’s ability to be easily shared. If something is to go viral, not only does it need a link, but it should also be embeddable in most websites. It is like the question about trees in the forest. If a piece of content isn’t able to be shared…does it really exist? It’s debatable. Secondly, the artifact needed to be simple. None of us knew much about coding or web design, so we were essentially at the mercy of whatever free online platforms we could find. We were all comfortable with wordpress, but wanted to see if we could expand our boundaries. Finally, it also had to be visually appealing. A good campaign must be simple to use, but also command attention.
After various google-searches related to this criteria, we stumbled upon newhive.com, a fairly new “multimedia publishing platform.” As we paged through some of the featured newhives, the group agreed it would satisfy our need for interesting visuals. While we noticed it is mostly being used for very avant-garde art, we saw great potential for newhive to be utilized as a storyteller. Not only was newhive itself a great tool, but it’s embedding features allowed us to pull various content from even more sources. The addition of youtube videos, flickr photos, and the possibility to use soundcloud clips and other media was extremely appealing.
We know we are not the only ones who have experienced the high hopes and idealism that can come with new media. Like the commercials we saw about the internet in class, we had an idealized image of what newhive could do for us. Reality wasn’t as kind, but we do like our final product. The real issue was that of certain platforms being “walled gardens,” meaning they don’t essentially support or work well with the others. Thinglink, another interesting multimedia aggregator involving images and popup videos and music would not embed properly in our newhive, meaning it had to be removed. Our newhive would not embed properly into our Wix site, which required extra tinkering on our part. This just goes to show that the internet isn’t always the “user friendly” place it can be advertised as. Among these hurdles though, we were able to make a product that still fit our criteria, even if it wasn’t our initial perfect image.
While there are many online resources about e-waste , our goal was to consolidate this information into an easy to read, interactive, and sharable platform. The general population has neither the time nor interest in reading detailed articles with lots of technical terminology. At the same time, we did not want to “dumb down” the information for our audience. NewHive allows us to present condensed information in little visual snippets that can easily be browsed through and shared. Wix gives us a more user-friendly platform for our NewHive collection and also allows us to add context and additional information and resources to our project. Context is extremely important in creating successful digital artifacts. Without the context Wix allows us to provide, this NewHive collection would be yet another image slideshow floating around on a site most people have never heard of. Combining Wix and NewHive allows us to reach a wider audience more effectively and to ensure that our audience actually understands what we are trying to show them. We hope that our project will educate people on the basics of e-waste, open their eyes to the current global situation, and direct them towards other resources regarding the issue.
Douglas Rushkoff mentions in his book, “Our digital networks are biased towards social connections- towards contact. Any effort to redefine or hijack those connections for profit end up compromising the integrity of the network itself, and compromising the real promise of contact.” Through this quote alone, we can justify as to why informational artifacts such as ours need to exist. The Internet is a social place, and is most commonly used for social interactions: whether that is by direct communication by messaging or by using media to send one another articles and useful information. Wix and Newhive being used together create a more cohesive final artifact to accurately portray the many issues of improper elimination of e-waste due to their social and shareable formats.
Creating a multitude of places in which information about our project is stored creates a web of connections. Someone could share our Wix webpage through their Facebook, and from there any of their 400 friends could read it and find out more information through our Newhive or any other pages we referenced during our research. Utilizing the social aspect of the Internet is the best way to achieve awareness. Simply creating a video or webpage is not enough. One has to spread the word through shares, likes, posts, and tweets. The web, if utilized correctly, is one of the most powerful tools for communication.
Sharing our artifact through our network of friends and followers is the best way to spread the word on the issue of e-waste that we researched. Awareness is the first step towards making a change, and our artifact brings awareness to this serious issue. If every single one of our Facebook friends or Twitter followers would see, read, and share our artifact we will impact thousands of young people. We are the next generation entering the workforce and beginning to vote and make differences, and through awareness we can make a definitive change in our world. Educating our fellow peers on the dangers of improper e-waste disposal will lead to changes in behavior. Through the sharing of the information in our artifact we can convince thousands of people to think differently about how they use and dispose of electronics.
Young people consume technology more than any other generation at the moment, and because of this we are the ones responsible for what this technology is doing to our environment. A cracked iPhone screen doesn’t mean it needs to be tossed in the trash and replaced; you can get a repair, save money, and contribute less waste. When laptops stop turning on for good, instead of chucking them into the nearest dumpster people can think of our artifact and spend an extra half hour finding the closest e-steward near them to properly recycle their computer. Our artifact was created in order to change how people think about their electronics, and the fact that we can use these electronics as a tool to share information only helps perpetuate the message.