Today technological advances are happening at a exponentially rapid rate. The number of old devices like computer monitors and televisions are being replaced very quickly. The percentage of households with televisions and computers in the world are growing. As the availability of devices increase, the amount of waste is also increasing. In first world countries like the United States, the waste is deported so we do not have to personally deal with the dirty jobs. Countries like China, Nigeria and Taiwan are recycling the electronic waste, which is good, but they do it in environmentally detrimental ways. For a long time, Taiwan has been “recycling” old car batteries from the United States, but they have done so that lead contamination has seriously damaged their water supply. It has been estimated that Taiwan’s water will no longer be drinkable in less than ten years. In China, the rural villages where the electronic waste is disposed, hazardous chemicals seep into water supplies, workers inhale dangerous phosphor particles and the burning of toxic materials cause air pollution. Although the intention to recycle is a good one, we may be doing worst by recycling in an inefficient way. Everyone is caught in a terrible cycle, well developed countries will not stop using electronics. Because we won’t stop using electronics, we won’t stop cheaply disposing our electronic waste. Because foreign countries do not have the same environmental laws, they will continue to salvage what they can from the waste even if it’s in a detrimental manner. What we need is a set of international environmental laws. It doesn’t matter how far one country is from another, if it’s two miles or two oceans, water and air pollution affects the entire planet. Everything we do to harm the Earth has many effects that go past simply deforesting an area or creating smog in another. If we have a UN, maybe we should focus on things other than wars and politics sometime, if we screw up the planet we don’t get redo’s, there won’t be a planet to live on, much less war on.