Hi everybody, dear colleagues and students who are new to this Blog of mine. This post has been devised to help you prepare for the Talk in English “ERP takes WEEE to school” that will take place at our Liceo November 16 from 9.10 to 11.05 at AUDITORIUM B.

Who are the Speakers? Umberto Raiteri (President & CEO of ERP) and Samantha Charalambous (ERP Coordination office and ERP Italia marketing)

What does WEEE stand for? It means WASTE OF ELECTRIC & ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT.

Agenda of the lecture:

• Enforcement of the WEEE Directive and thus the consequent birth of ERP;
• Producer’s responsibility and obligations (financing & information);
• ERP’s mission and role in the WEEE/Battery take-back systems around Europe;
• WEEE/Battery take-back systems in detail;
• Treatment procedures, technology and outcomes;
• ERP’s results and important awareness campaigns.

I would like to share with you a very interesting video from Ted – a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading that started out in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. The video by Mike Biddle is about recycling plastic not electrical waste but it’s pretty interesting and it well introduces the idea and goal of our talk. ( NB: You can activate the subtitles in Italian or English by clicking on the ∇)

Now let’s listen to the funny video by Jack Johnson THE 3 RS which is right about the topic of recycling. I do not want to tell you more about recycling of the electrical waste otherwise we’ll lose all interest in our Talk November 16 & I don’t want to spoil the pleasure of learning something new 🙂

I took the next photos while I lived in Ireland but I’m sure you can find similar depressing sights also here in Italy or in Pordenone. I really hope they will make you think over the  importance of cooperating to preserve our environment, to reduce pollution & make our planet a better place. It’s not that difficult if you spread the word as regards the utmost significance of recycling not only paper, glass & plastic but also all electrical appliances.It’s your right to have a better future 🙂 and to say NO to this shame.

HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES DUMPED at the side of the road.

A fridge stranded on Howth beach. What a shameful sight!

To end up my post I would like to share with you two stunning photography websites by Chris Jordan. The first is called Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption & left me speechless. Each image portrays a specific quantity of some kind of waste such as e-waste, mobile phones, cigarette butts, cell phone chargers, circuit boards, bullet casings, diodes, glass you name it!: VISUALIZING MERE NUMBERS MAKE THOSE REALITIES SOOOOO DAMN REAL! It thus makes us realize how important it is to preserve our environment!

The second website depicts images of MASS CONSUMPTION like the  one million plastic cups, the number used on airline flights in the US every six hours or the 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds or 400,000 plastic bottle caps, equal to the average number of plastic bottles consumed in the United States every minute. Choose the photo on the right, click and then ZOOM in the image. It’s just amazing!!

Here’s a British GUIDE TO RECYCLING. Have a look! You can find a lot of new words you may need during our talk.

You can also download these PDF on: The The WEEE World-for consumers  and on The Batteries and Accumulators world.

Hoping you have found this post of some help and interest I’m looking forward to seeing you all in 3 weeks. Leave a comment if you feel like! Thanks for your attention.

cimy

PS Here’s the interesting post devised by my colleague Cristiana Ziraldo about electrical waste. What are we doing to our planet?