My computer
& the environment

• What my computer is made of - silicon chips
• My computer's effect on the environment
• What should I do?

I work at my computer for 40 hours a week ...

What my computer is made of:

It's made of plastics, metals, glass and silicon.

Silicon chips are the most important part of my computer. They weigh almost nothing, but making them produced more waste than making any other part of the computer.

The process was very complicated and required the use of precision machinery. There were 400 separate steps that used many different chemicals and minerals. It involved factories in Oregon, California (USA ) and Malaysia.

In the Malaysian factory, workers were paid two dollars per hour for cutting silicon-chip wafers.

SILICON CHIP: Part of a computer that stores and processes information. It is made mostly from the element SILICON (Si).

WAFER: A very thin disk.

What effect does my computer have on the environment?

My computer weighs 25 kilos. However, the factories that made my computer produced 63 kilos of waste. They also used 27,700 litres of water and 2,300 kilowatt hours of energy.

By the year 2005, about 150 million personal computers in the USA will have become trash. They will have been buried in landfills: that is enough computers to fill a piece of land the size of a football field one mile deep.

LANDFILLS: places where waste is buried..

What should I do?

• Upgrade the memory when needed, instead of buying a new computer.
• Switch the computer off when it's not being used.
• Use a computer with a flat display panel (like a lap-top, for example): they produce half as much waste when they are made and run on a third of the power.

UPGRADE (v): to improve.

LAP-TOP: a small computer you can carry with you.