Animal Products in Computers? Cell phones? iPads?

[ShivaFan]

Namaste

First off, I want to clarify that I did some research on this on the internet, but found no conclusive evidence that my laptop, computers, cell phones and iPad contains animal products, and this includes the question of animal products in plastics used in such electronic gadgets (not talking about OIL – obviously oil comes from dinos and other animals who died of natural causes and not put in a slaughter house to be ground up into animal products to be used as plastics or other, so this is specific to such abuse of animals to make animal products and not simply animals or sea shells and such who have died naturally or are laying about on the ground lifeless in nature).

Secondly, even if there are animal products in such electronics, there is no way I am about to give up my GPS, cells, computers, scanners, printers, (you might even include CDs and DVD discs with software on them?), and so on. Not at this point in my life - in fact I just got a new “web editor” in the mail yesterday and plan on using it.

However, there is sort of a jerk at work who sometimes sort of gives me “pokes in the chest” that the tires on my car, and all my electronic gadgets and computers contain “ground up animals” and thus no one is a “vegan” in modern society and are simply hypocrites.

I am now thinking this is another “urban myth” or “village rumor” as such – certainly things like bees wax are questionable, but actually I am finding that plastics do NOT contain animal products from animals who were rounded up and grounded up alive to make such things. We know some make-up used by women might be – but in general I think this is not a practice in the materials used to make electronic devices. It would add too much cost to the product, besides, if the manufacturers were getting such chemicals or materials from “animal grinding factories” as animal product based.

But …

Any thoughts? Again, I am not going to give up my computers, so if there are animal products made by suffering animals to be used in such, well I guess I will have to be a "Ravana".

Om Namah Sivaya

[Eastern Mind]

Vannakkam: Certainly the history (beef tallow) of the candle is why Hindus don't use candles, even though it would be okay now. But it's incredibly hard to avoid.

Leather upholstery in a friend's car? "Sorry mate, I can't come to the temple with you, you have dead cows in your car."

So I think we can do some things to avoid using animal products, it would be nigh impossible to avoid it altogether. Would I get rid of this keyboard? No.

Aum Namasivaya

[Jodhaa]

I think a lot of people forget that you can only do the best you can. For example, I would love to buy my clothes locally instead of getting them from slave shops overseas, or even make my own clothes, but now even most fabrics are made in sweat shops. So unless I also want to do my own weaving...

My "solution" was buying almost all of my clothes used. (Hooray for Goodwill). It's not a perfect solution, but it keeps me from wasting resources.

It's about awareness and minimizing damage where possible. To answer your question, I have never heard of animal products being used in things like computers and phones. But then again, I was surprised at what gets put in chocolate, so who knows.

Shanti