Informal recycling can involve washing the e-waste—often using bare hands—in acids such as “nitrates, sulfates, hydrogen fluoride, etc., to create slurry. Gold is extracted by mixing sodium cyanide to run off gold cyanide. Lots of toxic wastewater results from this process. The remaining slurry is dried and buried or burned. It’s very toxic and problematic to handle. Burying causes terrible leaching 10 or 20 years later, poisons the land and makes large areas unfarmable.
Gerry McGovern
Nature will recycle us
Data centers are driving up electricity bills "The reasons for price increases are often complex and vary by region. But in at least three states with high concentrations of data centers, electric bills climbed much faster than the national average during that period. Prices, for example, surged by 13% in Virginia, 16% in Illinois and 12% in Ohio."
CNBC
Data centers are concentrated in these states. Here's what's happening to electricity prices
Residential utility bills rose 6% on average nationwide in August compared with the same period last year, according to the Energy Information Admi...
"The plans formally surfaced in July. Four months later, they have the green light, a deal with Michigan’s largest utility to draw more power than a million homes and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer heralding them as the largest one-time investment in state history. The project? A sprawling warehouse filled with servers to fuel Big Tech’s rising demand for cloud computing and artificial intelligence."
mlive
As AI ‘arms race’ and data centers hit Michigan, rural farm town feels left in the dust
As tech firms speed past local opposition toward construction of the state's first "hyperscale" data center, some are pushing for a careful review ...
“We are just making these reports pretty much in the dark — since there’s almost zero information,” said Shaolei Ren, an AI researcher at UC Riverside and co-author of the report. “We have extremely little information about data centers in California.”
CalMatters
Data centers are putting new strain on California's grid. Here's the best estimate yet
California’s data centers have doubled their use of electricity and demand for water , and are polluting more, even as lawmakers stall on oversight.
 Big Tech wants to know absolutely everything about us. It works incredibly hard so that we know as little as possible about them
"The availability of freshwater is already a concern globally. By 2030, demand for freshwater will outstrip supply by 40% — which will mean those reliant on water will become increasingly dependent on the extraction of non-renewable or unreliable water sources. In essence, the data centers needed to power the AI revolution are already drinking from a drying tap. Some tech accelerationists argue that AI isn’t the cause of this crisis."
Tech Policy Press
Artificial Intelligence, Water Consumption and the Trillion-Radish Conundrum
The AI sector, which uses as much water as Norway and Sweden combined, is a ticking time bomb, writes Henry Throp.
"The water crisis is really a crisis of groundwater. 99% of freshwater is groundwater, and groundwater supplies 40% of our food, and 70% of irrigation, but many major aquifers are already overdrawn. The Ogallala, which grows a sixth of the world’s grain, could be largely unusable within decades."
The big groundwater crisis - food, water, pollution, and social unrest : John Cherry interview Part I
groundwater supplies our freshwater, water crisis is based in a groundwater crisis, virtual water hides the groundwater crisis
 The Growth Death Cult will kill us all, and Big Tech want more and more water. All for super greedy AI. Time to resist!
ChatGPT Now Linked to Way More Deaths Than the Caffeinated Lemonade That Panera Pulled Off the Market in Disgrace "As of last week, ChatGPT maker OpenAI is facing a total of eight distinct lawsuits alleging that extensive use of its flagship chatbot inflicted emotional and psychological harm to users, resulting in mental breakdowns, financial instability, alienation from loved ones, and — in five cases — death by suicide."
Futurism
ChatGPT Now Linked to Way More Deaths Than the Caffeinated Lemonade That Panera Pulled Off the Market in Disgrace
ChatGPT has been publicly linked to at least eight deaths. OpenAI has announced no plans to take it off the market.
"A sharp increase in e-waste has accompanied the surge in electronic equipment. In 2022, 62 million tons of e-waste was produced globally. Canada’s e-waste tripled between 2000 and 2019 and is expected to reach 1.2 billion kilograms by 2030. These statistics demonstrate an urgent environmental crisis that demands new ways of thinking and educating future generations."
The Conversation
To tackle e-waste, teach kids to be responsible consumers
Schools should provide students with the know-how to challenge our throw-away culture and empower them to become conscious consumers.
Increasingly Big Tech will compete with food for water. Big Tech will win. The people who run Big Tech would let half the world die of thirst and see that as merely the price of progress, innovation "Rice farmers in the south were forced to stop planting rice for three years in a row, from 2021 to 2023. “Farmers say they are being sacrificed for [the] semiconductor industry, and I think that’s a fair assessment,” said Po-Jen Hsu."
Truthdig
The Ecological Cost of AI Is Much Higher Than You Think - Truthdig
As the demands of AI grow, each generation of microchips requires more energy, minerals and water to produce, driving a ruinous cycle.
AI is devouring life on earth, and it's only getting started. And for what? A tech bro scam "By 2030, the current rate of AI growth would annually put 24 to 44 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the emissions equivalent of adding 5 to 10 million cars to U.S. roadways. It would also drain 731 to 1,125 million cubic meters of water per year—equal to the annual household water usage of 6 to 10 million Americans." https://phys.org/news/2025-11-ai-centers-strain-energy-resources.html