Parallelnormal is yours to copy (with attribution), under a 
Will RFID save the environment?
Answer: No. The tags will leach toxic metals into landfills.
But that’s not dampening the RFID industry’s current greenwashing effort. RFID Journal, the most authoritative magazine in the business, is running a cover story this spring about how radio tracking tags can protect the environment.
The March/April piece, “The Green Technology,” picks up on RFID industry co-founder Kevin Ashton’s recent RFID-is-green column (below).
Ashton (Image: From Ashton’s Leigh Bureau bio) and RFID Journal editor Mark Roberti claim that RFID tags will help waste managers recycle paper and plastic.
The magazine’s cover story, however, only makes slight mention the waste disposal problems presented by the tags themselves–with their metal and toxic parts.
RFID’s Greener Side - RFID Journal
Recycling this waste is a hit-or-miss business. For example, it is both difficult and expensive to manually sort different kinds of plastic, so lots of it is either never recycled or recycled into a low-grade cocktail of mixed-up stuff that isn’t terribly useful. The same RFID tag that can reduce excess inventory can also identify what every package is made of, enabling the automated sorting of garbage. Once sorted, the waste material can be turned into raw material. And because plastics are made from oil, more recycling means saving energy—and maybe the planet in the process.
Filed under: Boston, Cambridge, Uncategorized | Tagged: auto-id, Environment, green business, greenwashing, mit, recycling, RFID, technology
Have you noticed how everyone wants to save us nowadays?This time it’s the ever increasing push for chips with everything.
Here in the U.K. moves are afoot to “save” us by fluoridating the water and of course setting the precedent for “medicating” our drinking water.
These crooks are going to “save” us to death!