Old Computers Vs. The Environment

VValdo writes: "Salon is running an interesting story about the dangers of throwing old computers into landfills. According to the story, the American Electronics Association is trying to block a European Commission proposal that would make manufacturers responsible for the environmental damage that occurs when lead, mercury, chromium, etc. leaks into 'the life cycle.'" One interesting factoid: "Lead constitutes approximately 25 percent of monitors by weight, and the estimate of 5 to 8 pounds per unit is based on 14- and 15-inch monitors." (Which author Jim Fisher points out is no longer the typical display size for current systems.)

Comments

Ideas offered and needed

[hey!]

The HP manager they quoted said "The cost of recycling -- because there is a cost, it doesn't happen for free and it doesn't generate positive revenues -- has never been a part of the commercial equation." The problem is that disposal has never been part of the equation either. The standard model is this: pass the cost onto the consumer, who passes the cost onto the municipality, who passes the cost onto future generations. The problem is that this has been going on so long we are the future generation.

Paul Hawken, the entrepreneur and environmental thinker, suggests that appliances such as computers, TVs, washing machines and the like be leased rather than sold, with the manufacturer. The retailers would become leasing agents. At the end of the lease period the manufacturer would have to take the appliance back. The reason for this is that because the manufacturer has to deal with the waste, it would have incentive to engineer their products to be more recyclable. Even for things like circuit boards which are hard to recycle, the physical concentration would increase the economic viability of investing in the technology to recover the materials.

If a fraction of the emphasis that is placed on styling and packaging were placed on recycling, much more of the materials, including toxic materials such as lead and cadmium, could be recaptured from the waste stream and turned into products.

The problem with this scenario is that its hard to change business models; although many businesses currently lease computers, they retain them at the end because after a couple of years a computer is essentially trash. Perhaps the rising disposal fees for computers will incent consumers to prefer a lease and give-it-back program. However I doubt dumping fees will ever truly reflect the true cost, for one thing because they must be small enough to make risking illegal dumping not worthwhile. Perhaps if businesses are hit with a $200 disposal fee for a computer, the lease and give it back option would be more attractive.

Sustainability is a tautology. Businesses will adopt environmentally sustainable models because not to do so is, well, unsustainable. But this is a lot like saying if there is a fire in your house, eventually it will burn itself out. The question remains is what will our environmental quality of life be? The key is to take steps now when the problem is small enough that liquidating our environmental assets doesn't seem economically rational.

For more information, I recommend visiting the Natural Step website. The Natural Step is an organization promoting a business friendly environemntal practices based on least common denominator scientific positions.

Very Simple Solution

[CaptainZapp]

In Switzerland you pay a "recycling tax" up front when you buy computer equipment.

It's fairly low, maybe somewhat in the 5-10$ range for an entire PeeCee.

You buy the right to dump your equipment at designated areas (set up in every major city) from where it's recycled or disposed off environmentally friendly.

The same system applies for other items which threaten the environment. I.e. 5-20 cents for a battery, ~40$ for a fridge, 1.20$ for a garbage bag etc...

Of course I hear the corporate greed freaks and the relentless absolute capitalists yelling about anti competiveness and hurting businesses and people driving to france to get the stuff (which doesn't happen, since the VAT is 3 times as much) and then dump it in the woods.

The problem with a totally free market however, is that it has a tendency to socialize costs - especially hidden costs like killing off the environment - but to privatize profits.

In this light I think it's a very fair system where he who dumps pays and there is an incentive to dispose of stuff relatively environmentally friendly.

Incoming...

The manufacturer's responsability

[Tester]

This kind of measures may seem bizare to many Americans, but its actually very common in Europe to hold the producers of throwable goods responsible for the recycling. I know that in Germany, at least in some landers (states), the manufacturers are forced to take back their packaging and dispose of it, but they have taxes on private companies using landfills, so they are basicly forced to recycle and reduce it. What really surprised me in this article is that they weren't already responsible. For the monitors, it may favorise their export/resale to poorer countries.... Where they can easily be thrown away, that's one of the known ways to get around the law

Re:The manufacturer's responsability

[Baki]

It is common practice in Holland and Switzerland too. In Holland you pay even some extra (about $25 for a TV or Computer) when you buy it, to pay in advance to the recycling afterwards.

In Switzerland, they still assume that people are more decent, thus you have to pay afterwards. In Holland they would assume one would dump the old TV's and Computers in a lake etc. to avoid the recycling costs :)

The producers are responsible, but the consumer has to pay the costs the producer makes for recycling. The producers must do the recycling (i.e. they can't refuse to take used products back) for a set price.

Apple Computers

[Yardley]

Apple Macintosh computers are considered the most environmentally friendly machines available. This is not a reason I use one, but it is nice to know. Though I expect Apple CRT monitors are no better than anyone else's, using lead to shield the radiation, I wonder if the new LCD, especially the 22 inch model are environmentally friendly.

www.apple.com/about/environment

On another topic, chromium causes cancer yet most vitamin manufactures insist on putting it into their formulas. Why I do not know.

--

What??? Blasphemy!!!

[zpengo]

How could anyone possibly throw away a computer? There are innumerable reasons to save computers. Some examples:

• Donate it to charity.
• Send it to a third-world nation.
• Use it to show kids what you grew up with, so that they will really believe that you walked uphill both ways through the snow to school.
• Start a computer museum.
• Install Linux on it and use it to (insert anything here)
• Use it for a doorstop.
• Use it for a small table.
• Donate some processor cycles to distributed processes such as SETI@home (go Team Slashdot!)
• Create an NNTP server to support the slowly fading Usenet.
• Teach your kids how to be 31337 h4x0rz with it.
• Install it in your car to play MP3s.
• GIVE IT TO ME FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!
• etc....

Re:And the lead leaches out *how*?

[Elvis Maximus]

I agree with the core idea of your comment, but...

Now, leaving aside the expenses that these changes will add to your gear (because like a good envionmentuhlists, we all believe that any cost is justified "even if it saves one chiiiyuld")

...

All that's changed in this wacky EU proposal is that the gummint gets to charge the company another ~10-20% as a penalty for making disposable crap - the company then passes the costs on to you.

Why should you be able to purchase a consumer good and pass off part of the real cost oof that good on those who did not consume the good? There's this self-righteous get-your-hands-off-my-consumer-goods attitude in America that assumes that people have a God-given right to "cheap" fuel and other "cheap" consumables when the real cost of the production, use, and disposal of those goods are not figured into the purchase price.

When the Dutch Government, as described in another post on this topic, forces manufacturers to add a recycling surcharge onto their goods, it is not as if a completely new cost is being added on to the good. It's a cost that already has to get paid one way or another; it's simply being charged to the actual consumer, rather than passed off on everyone else down the line.

Inclusive pricing goes a long way toward motivating people to make the rational use and reuse choices you advocate. If I have to pay $75 extra on that TV to cover the hidden costs of the manufacture and disposal of that TV, might I not consider buying a more reliable TV so that I don't have to pay that surcharge again? Might I not repair it rather than replace it? If I have to pay the actual costs of motor vehicle use -- infrastructure, law enforcement, pollution abatement, etc. -- every time I buy a gallon of gas, might I not make a rational choice not to purchase an SUV?

But instead we are shielded from the actual costs of this stuff, so it makes good market sense for manufacturers to make lousy, difficult-to-repair, disposable products covered in wads of packaging. And when the time comes to clean all this crap up, people whine and say, "you can't take my money! It's my money, not the Gummint's!"

-

All this argument over LEAD when...

[garagekubrick]

Anyone who's done a fair amount of dumpster diving knows that people THROW COMPUTER S**T AWAY all the damn time, perfectly good usable equipment. It's incredible. Just a few months ago I scored three 17 inch monitors off the street that were off to the dumps cause an architectural firm moved to flat screens.

Whether or not the lead leaks the fact is obsolence in this field is FAST and the result is that so much silicon and plastic and so on has got to pile up somewhere. Whether or not there is leakage from contaminants, these extremely non biodegradeable materials will have to take up some space because they get thrown away so often.

The other thing to think about is that geeks often forget that computation is ubiquitious and therefore everyone has computers and doesn't know what to do with old ones. Most people wouldn't know how to jury rig old systems together with obsolete parts and find a use for them - and those are the majority of computer users today.

For that matter, the computing industry as a whole is totally screwed by complete lack of ingenuity when it comes to recycling. Just recently I had a leftover case and p350 proc, and all I wanted was a very small, very cheap hard drive, new, to make a machine for my girlfriend. Since I'm in a small town in the US at the moment I can't go to my usual urban haunts with used parts, and my options are to basically buy a new 20 gig drive and that's it.

And one other thing - laminated chipboard is some of the most durable stuff on earth. It's nearly frigging invincible to the elements. And it's already started to pile up, and boy is it gonna get worse. Whether or not you think computers are safe to dump without contamination to the environment, fact is that the landfill is land that could, say, be a park for kids to play in.

Just some friendly idealism and simplicity from someone who considers outta sight outta mind to be one of the most dangerous attitudes out there.

Re:I wonder how heavy a magnet that would take....

[puppet10]

Actually you can do this and many recycling facilities do to separate metals (including non-ferrous, or generally non-magnetic) from other materials. The way it works is you drop the material in a rapidly oscillating magnetic field which produces a force on any conductive (read metal) material in the waste stream. This force pushes the metal into a separate path from the rest of the material (here's an example of a commercial separator). The only problem I see is that most of the lead is IN the glass (CRT's are good quality moderately leaded ~20% glass) and I don't see the lead in the glass being separated except through melting.

This will happen eventually in the USA

[CoderDevo]

Here is a list of current regulations in the USA for the disposal of electronic equipment including CRT's. National Recycling Coalition EPA and the Display Industry State of Massachusetts CRT Recycling Right now, it is the consumer's responsability to dispose of these electronics following national & local regulations. In the future, it will be the electronics manaufacturers' responsability.

Recycling a Monitor is a Bear

[ewhac]

...At least in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We had 19 (count 'em) monitors that were just going to get tossed. Ordinarily we would have roof-disposed them (tossed them off the roof of our four-story building and watch them go *smash*; quite entertaining for a typical male geek), but I had just read how much toxic crud is in these things, and sought to get them recycled.

It turns out there's only one organization even remotely set up to recycle monitors in the Bay Area (and, if I had my notes in front of me, I'd post their contact info). It took me a day to actually locate this organization, a few more days to actually speak to a live person, and even then I was informed that, unless one of their people just happened to be in the area, on-site pick ups were, as a rule, not something they did (since they didn't charge for the service).

To make a long story short, they said they'd get back to me. The monitors languished in our hallway for two months, taking up space. They finally disappeared last week, but I have no idea where to. Frankly, I'm afraid to ask.

So if you want to be environmentally conscious in the Bay Area with more than just soda cans and newspapers, you're going to have to work at it. No one's providing the service.

Schwab

Making MANUFACTURERS responsible? MORONIC!

[Curious__George]

It's supposed to be illegal to dispose of the old oil out of your car just anywhere too, but it seems to me that if I got caught dumping it DOWN BY THE RIVER -- it wouldn't be the Pennzoil Corporation that would be held responsible!

It might be a good idea to make it illegal for dumps and landfills to take old computers (which would encourage you take it to the recyclers), but I don't see how the manufacturers should be held responsible for an irresponsible owner's disposal of his machine.

Making manufacturers responsible would just result in higher consumer prices. (MFG would have to build-in the cost of disposal for trade-ins).

"Yeah, in my day we used to collect computers from the ditches and take them back to the store for the deposits!"

Curious George

Philosophical question

[Anonymous Coward]

So god said:

• The food that's bad for people shall taste great.
• The useful chemical elements shall be toxic.

But why???

And the lead leaches out *how*?

[Tackhead]

Umm, lemme get this straight, there's a whole lotta lead in a typical CRT.

And this lead leaches out of the glass in the landfill how?

And while we're at it, the talk of banning lead solder seems also to be a crock - the non-lead alternatives to solder have higher melting points, meaning changes to manufacturing processes for chip and board alike.

Now, leaving aside the expenses that these changes will add to your gear (because like a good envionmentuhlists, we all believe that any cost is justified "even if it saves one chiiiyuld"), you've solved one problem, but created another one, namely:

Crappy solder means higher failure rates, which means even more crap thrown into landfill.

This is fine if you're a manufacturer - you get to sell the customer two $59.99 VCRs and a $150 TV every couple of years as the solder joints - already crap in most consumer gear as witnessed by the flood of complaints in sci.electronics.repair - go cold on you and the customer can't be bothered to get it fixed because the cost of "junk it and buy a new one" is less than the cost of "fix it".

All that's changed in this wacky EU proposal is that the gummint gets to charge the company another ~10-20% as a penalty for making disposable crap - the company then passes the costs on to you. It's no skin off their nose when the consumer would rather have a $150 (or $150+$20 "green" tax buried in the price = $170) piece of crap than a $500 piece of equipment.

You wanna really help the environment? Screw this "gummint oughta tax manufacturers who make products we don't like" crap. Just do two things:

• Press manufacturers to build quality into their products the way they used to. Gear made in the mid-80s is still going strong - gear made in the mid-90s is mostly crap. Be willing to pay 15% more for a screen that'll last 5 years longer than its bargain-bin neighbor.
• Reuse, don't recycle. My current TV is a 27" set that someone left out for garbage. The fault was a $0.25 capacitor that took out a $3.20 amplifier chip. Because the previous owner cut the AC cord on the thing (presumably they didn't want anyone trying to fix it - fsck that!), I spent another $5.00 on a cord from Rat Shack. The goddamn cord was my biggest expense.

Now, not everyone can (or should!) fix their own gear, especially if it's a TV set. But that fix was trivial, and any repair tech would have recognized the failure instantly (vertical deflection failures are common on this model), and said "$5 for the new parts, $50 for knowing which parts you need".

Hell, even if you don't want it fixed, consider giving it to a local repair tech. "Hey, if you can fix it, it's yours, find someone who wants it".

Back to my set - that set was made in 1993, just at the start of the decline in consumer electronics quality. But it's still going strong a couple of years after I picked it up. I fully expect this set to last until HDTV renders it (and all our other sets) obsolete in 6-8 years.

(And yeah, I'll be stocking up on lead solder, just in case it's banned by the time I need it to fix something!)

Side note -- the real cause of failure in that set - and many monitors and TVs - was dust buildup. High voltages used in monitors and TVs mean lots of static to attract dust. The dust coats the components, trapping heat. The heat is what killed the capacitor, resulting in the failed amp chip.

Practical upshot -- if you read a few FAQs (e.g. http://www.repairfaq.org) and learn the basic safety rules for working in a monitor, you can probably save yourself a lot of headaches by just getting in there and cleaning out the dustbunnies every 5 years.

Less heat. Less stress on parts. Less landfill. Happier planet.

Or to borrow an old WWII slogan: "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

This ain't new, kids.

It's all about innovation...

[rsborg]

If you check out the About AEA page, you'll be confronted with some scary stuff:

It's all about innovation. It's all about competition. It's all about productivity, efficiency and success.

Is it me, or has Microsft permanently tainted the word "innovation"? As another /.er's sig points out, you can tell how desperate they are by how many times they say the word "innovate"...

You save money and gain clout. Most importantly you have a voice in Washington...

What do these guys do? They lobby for your needs and wants on the hill (trade association). GREAT!!! How do I sign up?... Us geeks need to get our voice into this channel to the whitehouse!
Wait, I can't. Because I must be a corporation. So how do we get a voice in this org? Does anyone here know anything more?