It's a terrible word. I've been admonished for using it. I should always use "quotations". Some tell me I should pretend it's not there, as if people never search or research the term.
Here's a suggestion.
"E-waste is to electronics as Litter is to newspaper." Litter is bad. But banning newspaper is overkill.
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| Waste Management, Recycle America, & Asset Recovery Group |
Some of us have tried definining "E-WASTE" to mean, specifically, the electronics which really
did actually get thrown in a landfill. "ewaste residue" is redundant. You don't call a sick person a cadaver... and you shouldn't call something which will be recycled or repaired a "waste". A bale of newspaper is not called "litter". Banning used computers to people who cannot afford new ones is like the
communists accusing newspaperboys of being litterbugs.
ISRI and others struggled with the words "waste paper" in the late 80's and early 90's, saying it left an opening for waste regulators to over-reguate commodities. I agreed... but I also noted that
the people who most re-used the "waste paper" words were the people in the scrap paper business. Why?
