A few days ago Greenpeace or some other organization published something about videogames hardware being unhealthy. Now that announcement was probably made for shock value and to ride on the wave of unpopularity of the video games within a certain demographic. However the statement is true. It is true maybe not for the gamer directly but rather for the people that end up with the garbage from consoles and peripherals that are being thrown away in the garbage.

Video games hardware are only a small part of the problem, but as the industry grows the problems grows too and certain policies that are now being applied to the computer industry (think recycling programs) will have to be applied to the consoles developers.

As I said the problems of those waste is not for us. We throw everything away and that's it, out of our lives. However most landfill do not accept or as little as possible any electronic wastes and some companies make it a business to rid the landfills of these waste and most of the time export them to foreign countries (China, India, Africa) and it's in those country that the health risk becomes evident.

The technique used to collect the precious metals contained in our electronic can be devastating for the environment and the health of anyone nearby.

My recommendation for consumers here in North America or Europe is to accumulate the electronics you want to throw away in a box and once a year call or go to a center where they will recycle all the stuff in a clean way.

I'm going to stop here so if you want further details ask me but for now you can just check those pictures to give yourself an idea.