Listening, e-waste

• What happens to the electronic waste produced by the United States?
A lot of it isn't really recycled. What happens with an awful lot of it is it gets very minimally processed here where the recycler might take out some of the most profitable parts to the computers, in particular. And then the rest of it gets shipped overseas, usually to developing countries, a lot of it going to Asia, China in particular.

• What happens to e-waste after it arrives in developing countries?
When it arrive to developing countries, it' almost completely dumped. It goes into areas where there are some not-modern processes that happen.


• Why does so much e-waste get shipped to Asia?
Because recyclers can make money selling it. In Asia, there is a market for this system of recycling where people can make money off removing the metals. The bad thing is that many of these countries just don't have the regulations where they can prevent it from happening - prevent the waste to enter. It's all illegal import.

• What are the negative effects of dumping e-waste?
First of all, it's an exposure problem to the communities there. The people that are handling it have no kind of protective equipment, and that's clearly a negative effect. They have literally no gloves and no respirators, so they bread the toxic chemicals. Then, when they burn it, the whole communities are breathing in these toxic chemicals. To make things worse, this chemicalsare getting into their water systems in an area of China. Contaminant levels are so high, that they even have to truck in all of their water.


• How do the toxins in e-waste return to the United States?
The study that was done by a professor in Oregon did show that the toxin is returning to the United States; the discovery? Is in some of the children's jewelry that's purchased at discount stores to lead in solder, lead from electronic waste. Practically, this can be called a poison cycle.

• What can concerned citizens do about e-waste?
Mr. Kyle states two possible things that citizens can do. The first one is to follow the pledge program that responsible recyclers have pledged to not to mantain or execute these practices, not export. The other thing that consumers can do is start to ask their frecuent companies to offer take-back programs, as consumers have some power in their purchasing dollars to say that they want to buy products from companies who will take them back from them when they're done with it and recycle them responsibly.

 

Women and the Family in Nazi Germany

1) How did Hitler try and encourage marriage as soon as he came to power?

Introducing the "Law for the Encouragement of Marriage", which stated that the government would give all newly married couples a 1000 mark loan and the couple could keep each quarter of this loan with every child they had.

2) According to Nazi ideology, what roles did men and women have?

Men were to Nazis the productive and creative in the world of politics and war, while women were reproductive and had their important role in the family home.

3) Using the information on this sheet, create a spider diagram clearly showing what women were expected to do, and what was not acceptable.



4) Using your spider diagram, create a table illustrating differences between our society today and Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

5) Why do you think Hitler placed such importance on the role of women?