“Warm and Stuffy” - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 167

functioning national grid (Greenpeace 2011a, 13). We do not suggest that
it is wrong for the Global South to participate in the same plenitude as the
Global North. Rather, we wish to highlight the unsustainability of consumer
practices pioneered by the latter and turbocharged by the former.
Let's look at the worst example we yet have. The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency estimates that its constituents own approximately three
billion electronic devices (2007, 1). By 2010, three-quarters of the popula-
tion owned a computer and 85 per cent a cell phone. Media ownership var-
ied with age—adults under forty-fi ve typically boasted four gadgets; those
over sixty-fi ve made do with one (Smith 2010). The Consumer Electronics
Association says US$145 billion was expended in the sector in 2006, up
13 per cent on the previous year. It refers joyously to “the consumer love
af air with technology continuing at a healthy clip” (“CEA Forecasts Con-
sumer Electronics Revenue will Surpass $155 Billion in 2007,” 2007). In
the midst of recession, 2009 saw US$165 billion in sales (Consumer Elec-
tronics Association 2010).
In 2007, “of the 2.25 million tons of TVs, cell phones and computer
products ready for end-of-life management, 18 per cent (414,000 tons) was
collected for recycling and 82 per cent (1.84 million tons) was disposed of,
primarily in landfi ll” (Environmental Protection Agency 2008, 1). It has
been estimated that the fi ve hundred million personal computers discarded
in the U.S. between 1997 and 2007 contained 6.32 billion pounds of plas-
tics, 1.58 billion pounds of lead, three million pounds of cadmium, 1.9 mil-
lion pounds of chromium and 632,000 pounds of mercury (Environmental
Protection Agency 2007; Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxics
Coalition 2002, 6).
For its part, the European Union is expected to generate upwards of twelve
million tonnes of e-waste annually by 2020. Whereas refrigerators and dan-
gerous refrigerants currently account for the bulk of this, about 44 per cent
of the most toxic e-waste measured in 2005 came from computer monitors,
TVs, telecommunications equipment, toys, tools and anything with a circuit
board (Commission of the European Communities 2008, 17, 31-34).
GAMING
It is dii cult to specify the precise contribution of games to environmental
destruction, because gaming machinery and processes are generally bun-
dled with other media and genres. TVs, computers and phones are utilized
for various purposes, and even consoles, once dedicated almost exclusively
to the industry, are now routinely redeployed. As we all know, consumer
electronics connect to information and communications technologies and
vice versa : televisions resemble computers, books are read on telephones,
newspapers are written through clouds and so on. Genres and gadgets that
were once separate are now linked (Malmodin et al. 2010).