New Scientist Tech
PC population reaches a billion as e-waste piles up
* 13:27 23 June 2008
The number of personal computers in use around the world has surpassed one billion, research firm Gartner reports.
Mature markets such as Western Europe and the US account for 58% of the first billion installed PCs, but will only account for about 30% of the next billion the report says.
Emerging markets such as India and Brazil are driving rapid growth that will see the number of PCs double to two billion by 2014, thanks to both continually falling prices and the perception that computers are indispensable for economic advancement, says Gartner.
But the rapid growth in the number of new PCs also translates into fast-growing numbers of obsolete computers. Gartner estimates more than 180 million will be replaced this year. Some will be sold on or recycled but large numbers will simply be buried.
'Toxic content'
"Some 35 million PCs will be dumped into landfill with little or no regard for their toxic content," said Gartner analyst Meike Escherich. "It will become an even more pressing issue, especially in emerging markets, as the number of retired PCs grows with the continuing expansion of the PC installed base," she said.
Seventy per cent of the world's discarded phones and computers are exported to China. Earlier this year it was shown that dust in areas near Chinese e-waste recycling centres had raised levels of lead, with some school grounds harbouring levels that would be illegal in Western countries.
Last year it was found that dioxins from Chinese electronics recycling centres were finding their way into breast milk.
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- Toby Miller
- I study the media, sport, labor, gender, race, citizenship, politics, the environment, and cultural policy. My books includee: The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture, and the Postmodern Subject (1993); Contemporary Australian Television (1994); The Avengers (1997); Technologies of Truth: Cultural Citizenship and the Popular Media (1998); Popular Culture and Everyday Life (1998); SportCult (1999 – edited); A Companion to Film Theory (1999 – edited); Film and Theory: An Anthology ( 2000 – edited); Globalization and Sport: Playing the World (2001); Sportsex (2001); Global Hollywood (2001); A Companion to Cultural Studies (2001 – edited); Cultural Policy (2002); Television Studies (2002 – edited); Critical Cultural Policy Studies: A Reader (2003 – edited); Television Studies: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies (2003 – 5 volumes – edited); Spyscreen: Espionage on Film and TV from the 1930s to the 1960s (2003); Global Hollywood 2 (2005); Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism, and Television in a Neoliberal Age (2007); Makeover Nation: The United States of Reinvention (2008); The Contemporary Hollywood Reader (2009); Television Studies: The Basics (2010).
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