-- Authors Read --

Today's featured guest on Authors Read Radio was Gumersindo Vidot and his book: You Only Live Twice about his days growing up in the Spanish Harlem and South Bronx; the racism, violence and poverty he endured – This is a real survival story. Gumersindo was born in Puerto Rico to a poor family, who later became a boxer and moved on to a great many other things including armored car driver, police investigator, school police officer, citizen safety awareness instructor, security site coordinator and private investigator. This author is a proud father of 3 and grandfather to 2. Sadly Gumersindo has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, however this has strengthened his resolve to leave a lasting, positive legacy with a young adult organization that helps youth survive today’s world: Youth Survival Project.

Check out today's reading by clicking on the book title: You Only Live Twice.

-- E-Waste --

Electronic waste contains valuable resources such as metals that can and should be recycled. This can include steel, glass, copper, aluminum, plastic and rare or precious metals from bronze and brass to gold. They also contain hazardous waste materials that pose problems for landfill sites and developing nations where unregulated electronic waste is often processed without concern for workers or the environment. This can include things like lead and mercury, batteries, alkaline, acids, polychlorinated biphenyls and flame-retardants, which need to be recycled safely.

The term “end of life” refers to used items – in this case, electronic items – that are no longer in use due to being obsolete or inoperative. This means the item cannot be upgraded, repaired or donated to a worthy cause for reuse. When donating used electronics it is important that you erase any data they may contain – some centers, like FreeCycle.com promise to do this for you. While the recycling center will likely make every effort to ensure the privacy and security of personal information, it is always in your best interest to erase data prior to recycling.

Businesses, office and industry are often able to arrange pick-up for large contributions – but if they are delivering a large number of items the business should call first and arrange for deliveries of large quantity.

Here in Canada, consumers pay an environmental handling fee ranging from 5-18 dollars every time they purchase new products in the designated categories and this is used to finance e-waste programs. Producers, retailers and distributors also lay a role in the recycling of electronic products.

Most e-waste collections programs will start with desktop computers and the peripherals involved including keyboards, cables and so on – monitors, televisions and flat panel displays, notebook computers (a.k.a laptops or tablet PC’s), printers and fax machines (but not their cartridges). Once the programs have been in place for a while the residents will likely see an increase in the variety of items they can recycle from phones, and car dash components to hand held devices and speakers.

According to the recyclingbizz.com article titled: Global Ewaste Grows… electronic waste grows by about 40 million tons per year on this planet.

Find Dave & Lillian Brummet, excerpts from their books, information about their radio shows & free resources & articles at www.brummet.ca