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| Hunting and deforestation caused the Caspian Tiger to become extinct in the 70s. |
Did you know that right now you have gold, silver, platinum and other precious metals in your pocket? Yup you are a rich person who is using up some of the rarest minerals on earth and they are all in your phone.
Read this article and think:
1) and most importantly according to Thomas Graedel, director of the Center for Industrial Ecology at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. We have never completely run out of a natural resource...do you agree? Explain.
2) What connection to population does this have?
3) How can we slow down our use of rare metals?
4) Do you think we are doomed?
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140314-the-worlds-scarcest-material
This is my weekly post :)
ReplyDeleteSo as i was reading this article on my laptop with my phone right next to me, i really started thinking of how many other people do this too... sit on their butts looking at stuff on their computer, laptop, tablet, ipad, cell phone or whatever technological item they may own. I'd like to start off with saying that a lot of people, especially teenagers, have become addicted and reliant on technology. So much so that it's often considered a tragedy if say, we don't have a touch screen phone with a camera on the front AND back because "OMG how am I supposed to like take a #selfie with a flip phone???". Don't get me wrong, I do love my phone, but that's the problem, so many people do. Above you asked "What connection to population does this have?" and I'd say it would be that so many people are obsessed with having the latest and greatest, most up to date technology. We all contribute to this social norm of texting, calling, using social media, etc. that if we go a weekend without using our phone or computer it's practically a miracle (so we have tweet about it 3 times, of course). As a result of this we want the best for ourselves and each other. Which means we also contribute to the mass production of all these products. When the new iPhone 5 came out a couple years ago I remember hearing about people camping outside stores for days so they could get the first ones. As a whole, we just buy, use for 1-3 years and then dispose and restart the whole cycle.
This also brings me to my next point of how these items are built to break or need repairs after a few years. I say that if we are going to be obsessed, reliant and addicted, maybe more of the companies that are making these products, should produce them in such a way that they can have parts replaced. The way we have it now, it's designed to not last and therefore designed to use up our 'rarest minerals on earth'. Although apparently this is starting to happen. I did some research and as of last year, there has been a company called Phonebloks which has the same if not similar idea as I do in this post. They have built a type of phone that has different add-ons so that you can, in a way, build your phone how you want it, and if something stops working you can replace what needs to be replaced. (link: https://phonebloks.com/en ) This will really slow down our use of these rare minerals that we take for granted.
You're final question asks if I think we are doomed and I think we have the potential to save ourselves. We haven't run out of these minerals yet, and maybe we never will, but there are more ways to help than just improving the production of the products using these minerals. A simple way to help this is just by becoming less addicted to our cell phones and computers. All I'm saying is we could help out the environment and use less minerals just by, for example, going outside or staying off of our phones for multiple days and not have it be such a big deal. This way kids can learn to have fun and play without wanting to have an iPod or phone to play Flappy Bird or any other mindless (yet addicting...) game they think is so much fun.
Great article by the way, i'm surprised more people weren't as interested in it as the other ones.