posted Sep 23, 2012, 5:44 PM by Jon Hamlin   [ updated Feb 27, 2017, 3:36 PM ]

Brainstorm the following concepts with a couple classmates.
Prepare yourself to share your results within a class discussion.

• What kind of electronic devices do you own?
• What electronic devices do you find essential in your life?
• How long do you usually keep electronic devices?
• How do people dispose of obsolete electronic devices?
• What happens to the discarded electronic devices?
• What are some government policies regarding disposal of
electronic devices? (do web research to find this answer)

            View Photo Gallery from E-Waste dump in Guiyu, China

When you finish, share your information in our collaborative E-Waste document

Google Spreadsheet Form

See how your answers compare with everyone else.

Movie - Produced by UBC students, nominated for a 2009 Emmy Award

Ghana: Digital Dumping ground

On the outskirts of Ghana’s biggest city sits a smoldering wasteland,
polluted bodies of water on Earth. The locals call it Sodom and

Correspondent Peter Klein and a group of graduate journalism students
from the University of British Columbia have come here as part of a
global investigation to track a shadowy industry that’s causing big
problems here and around the world.

Their guide is a 13-year-old boy named Alex. He shows them his home,
a small room in a mass of shanty dwellings, and offers to take them
across a dead river to a notorious area called Agbogbloshie.
Agbogbloshie has become one of the world’s digital dumping grounds,
where the West’s electronic waste, or e-waste, piles up—hundreds of
millions of tons of it each year.

Think about these questions after watching the movie:

• How is the slum outside Ghana’s biggest city described?
• Why did the news correspondent and graduate students go to Ghana?
• What is the “shadowy industry” that is causing global problems?
• What does the introduction reveal about Alex and his life in the slum?
• What happens to the tons of e-waste produced by the West?
• What is the human and environmental impact of e-waste?

E-Waste Project


Through web research find out where in the Tri-Cities area you would recycle the following items. 

Here are some starting points for your investigation:

Your Task

Using Google Maps and having our school as a starting point - calculate how far you need to travel to properly dispose of all of the preceding items.

Create a custom Google Map to identify all of the electronic recycling facilities in our local communities (Coquitlam, Port Moody, Port Coquitlam)

Identify and outline each facility within your map. Draw lines on your map to indicate the direction to travel and the total distance from our school.

How to create a custom Google Map
  1. Sign in to Google Maps. 
  2. Click My Places at the top left panel.
  3. Click Create Map.
  4. Google Maps will open Maps Engine Lite in a new tab.
See my: Example Map

Read: How to Create a Custom Google Map


The student who can recycle all the items and also travel the least amount of distance will be the winner!

Submission Guidelines

Please hand-in your finished map using the form provided below.

E-Waste Activity Submission