Plenty of auction sites exist for people who want to sell off their old things that still have some market value but never has there been a site so noble as to offer to buy people’s no longer needed electronic gadgets. That would be gazelle.com. Unlike auctions sites, they’re paying consumers for sending them their gadgets that were probably replaced by newer models. The purpose is environmentally friendly because there is an incentive for people to not throw their old electronics into the trash but instead let these be reused and still stay in circulation for as long as possible.
It’s a wonderful idea but certainly not the ultimate solution yet. It will buy companies and governments enough time to figure out how to properly deal with the ever increasing amount of special wastes such as electronics. The proper disposal of these things are not yet shouldered by most companies as the technologies that could recycle or at least make components less hazardous are still very costly and impractical. We are not really mindful of the speed of our technological advances and their consequences. Where else would all the waste go? They’ll be buried in landfills. The goal of gazelle.com is to make usable old electronic gadgets stay in circulation for as long as these can while everyone else figures out a better way to deal with the ballooning garbage problem.
Space on earth would not be enough to hold all our garbage in the next centuries. It’s a waste of our resources to keep converting material that won’t even be of any value to nature itself. Untreated wastes are indeed very wasteful of our resources because there are still things of value that could be extracted such as more service life or other valuable substances that could be reused or recycled. The problem is that the process of doing so is quite labor intensive as is the case in computer parts. Millions of tons of electronic garbage are shipped to developing countries that are willing to accept these as surplus second hand items but will eventually end up in these countries’ landfills as their facilities are unable to cope with the proper treatment of such wastes. So far the prices offered by gazelle.com are reasonable and would make the resale of these items in distant developing countries unfeasible. Remember, should you choose to circulate your old stuff instead, you would have contributed to lessening the garbage problem.
