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Introduction
Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) and the Computer Take Back Campaign (CTBC) are pleased to release the 2005 Computer Report Card. The Computer Report Card, issued by SVTC since 2000, tracks the progress that computer and electronics companies are making on social and environmental indicators, including materials policy, supply chain management, take back programs, and end-of-life management of their products. By providing this information to the public, and to the companies themselves, we hope to improve the social and environmental performance of the brands. We believe that these companies must set and achieve the highest performance standards for labor rights, environmental protection, and human rights; just as they do for computing speed, functionality, size and product innovation.
e-waste collection as part of World Earth Day
DH News Service BANGALORE (21 April 2006).
In another initiative to battle the perils of electronic waste, an IT peripherals and solutions company and voluntary organisation, Saahas, have come together to establish e-waste collection centres in five locations in Bangalore. WeP Peripherals and Saahas will launch the centres — at The Forum in Koramangala, GK Vale on MG Road, Jayanagar and Indiranagar, Fabmall in Indiranagar and Bannerghatta Road, Safina Plaza and Fitness One in Jayanagar and Koramangala — on April 22, the World Earth Day.
CiviCRM 1.4: A Free and Open Source eCRM Solution
We are pleased to announce the latest release of CiviCRM - version 1.4.
Special thanks to the dedicated folks who contributed to this release by testing the beta revisions - and to everyone in the community who provided new ideas, feedback(especially critical feedback), and patches.
CiviCRM is the first open source and freely downloadable constituent relationship management solution. CiviCRM is web-based, internationalized, and designed specifically to meet the needs of advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental groups.
New to CiviCRM? Read more...
What's new in 1.4?
India’s first e-waste dump faces eviction
K Raghu
DNa India
Friday, April 07, 2006 00:24 IST
BANGALORE: India's first scientific hazardous waste dump faces an eviction threat for a new township. A joint Indo-German hazardous waste management unit (HAWA), set up to treat and handle e-waste at Dobbespet, about 45 kms north of Bangalore, faces eviction just a year before it was to become operational.
China's electronic-waste 'recycling' discharges a toxic smorgasbord
By Tim Johnson
Knight Ridder News Service
Salt Lake Tribune
GUIYU, China - When discarded computers vanish from desktops around the world, they often end up in Guiyu, which may be the electronic-waste capital of the globe.
The city is a sprawling computer slaughterhouse. Instead of offal and blood, its runoff includes toxic metals and acids. Some 60,000 laborers toil here at primitive electronic-waste recycling - if it can be called that - even as the work imperils their health.
All gone to waste
New York artist to collect Stanford community's obsolete electronic equipment and turn it into outdoor sculpture
By Pamela Sud
Stanford Daily
April 10, 2006
In a few weeks, the lawn in front of the Cummings Art Building could be home to your old batteries and obsolete extension cords.
Chemical poisoning: Corporations must be held accountable
Accra Daily Mail
Monday, April 10, 2006
With 47,000 people estimated to die each year from toxic chemicals and many millions more made ill, a United Nations expert has urged States to hold trans-national corporations accountable for the poisons in household goods and food.
The Middle Kingdom convulses with change
China: the sky darkens Le Monde Diplomatique (April 2006).
The Chinese government made it clear at the UN climate change conference in Montreal last December that it was aware of the extreme dangers that China faces from both immediate and long-term climate change.
By Agnès Sinai
Every spring, fierce winds, sweeping across the arid landscape of Inner Mongolia, blow walls of sand hundreds of kilometres eastwards, periodically enveloping Beijing and turning day to night. The authorities have planted thousands of hedges in the path of these dry whirlwinds, but the long green line is powerless against the force of the wind and the advance of the dunes. Sandstorms could well disrupt the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Where computers go to die -- and kill
salon.com (10 April 2006)
More than 50 percent of our recycled computers are shipped overseas, where their toxic components are polluting poor communities. Meanwhile, U.S. laws are a mess, and industry and Congress are resisting efforts to stem "the effluent of the affluent."
By Elizabeth Grossman
"The ugly side of the E-world."
Cybernoon (06 April 2006)
Electronic gadgets do make life better albeit with a price tag. As e-gadgets become obsolete within no time and find their way to the scrap dealer's, they do affect man and his environment. KAPTAN MALI assesses the flip side of electronics and vows never to get wired-up again
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