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The Darker Side of Computer Recycling
Makarand writes "We all know that with electronics it is very difficult to be green. We leave
our computer waste in the recyle bin lest dangerous chemicals like lead and mercury
seep into our landfills. The more dedicated environmentalists make a trip
to the local recyling center where they may be asked around to pay around $15-$30 to recycle their old PCs. But guess what -- these 'recyclers' merely
ship 50-80% of this stuff overseas. The Mercury News has a
report on this ugly side of the PC industry which merely
exports the recycling problems instead of solving them."
I remember reading about this here in August.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
You know they are goign to toss it on the side of the road somewhere else in an even more broken situation... Now lead and othe chemicals are in the ground thanks to oyur lazyness.
I support the idea of putting a small tax on new computers sold to pay for recycling the old ones. As much as it sucks it the only way we can pull this off.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Nothing has changed since the last time this was brought up or the time before that.
People need to understand that the countries that these parts are shipped to either A) Want them. B) Don't care about the damage they do.
I read the article, but there are no new insights into this at all. Take this quote for instance:
"``I don't know yet if I like this work,'' said Li, 30, who had been on the job about one month. ``But back home there are no jobs. There is no money. There is nothing to do.''"
That is the plain and simple truth to this. There is a market for this crud. They are making money by doing it. Is it the most healthy way of doing it? More than likely not, but it is a way to make money.
Someone needs to publish that link about the place in India that takes apart oil tankers. Big Karma boost in that.
Lead and other chemicals are already in the ground.
It's called Nature.
Do you think that we get those things from magic poison fairies?
If you work in Hickville, IA and get $35,000 a year that is a good paying job. Get that much in Cali and you are very near poverty. It is all a matter of cost of living per region. C'mon guys this is basic economics.
I hate people that dont have a sig
With 3 486's and some RAM, it is easier than you think to put together a lightning fast X server and workstation. These machines can do real work...
Perhaps the emphasis should be on re-use before shifting to recycle. There are upstart geeks all over the place that have no money... and in other news Mr Smith just threw out a Pentuim I PC, or a Mac Quadra....
What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
I usually just give my old computers away somewhere -- what us geeks consider horribly slow and outdated can still be very useful to other people who can't afford/don't need state-of-the-art machines. What they do with them one they truely die, I don't know.
A Minesweeper clone that doesn't suck
Happy to take them? I'd wager the general population has zero choice in the matter, it's the people who actually collect and keep the money that are "HAPPY" to make the trade. And its the people who take the money who don't give a damn how much mercury or lead seeps into the same water supply that drinking water is drawn from.
To make a blanket statement that these country's people are happy to take this junk from us -- for spare parts !?!?! -- is being incredibly ignorant of the problems this "welcomed" trade is causing for the general population.
Stop recycling old news. This story is getting old. Rather than rigurgitating old news, how about providing a solution in thought!
What's telling is your use of the word "country" to describe who's happy about it. The country is... The government is... please. There are people making money off this and it's not the people knee-deep in toxic waste trying to feed themselves so they can live today only to die tomorrow.
WTF?! Just because a person has few options and takes what they can get doesn't mean they're HAPPY about it.
While I agree with your assessment of his tone, you are mistaken in implying that "poor people" are the ones making the decisions regarding international trade. "Poor people" are not deciding to import the toxic electronic waste of first-world, but they are the ones who will be living and working with it. "The rich" who actually make these decisions will be far, far away.
The poster's analogy should have been something more along the lines of "If you saw an adult feeding nails (or other sharp things) to a child, should you do something about it?" While the comparison may use paternalistic terms, I don't believe that invalidates the analogy.
A starving man given a Ritz cracker and a glass of water is HAPPY to receive it.
Just because you think you need a whole box and a six pack of Mountain Dew to make you happy doesn't negate his happiness.
The people who make the money are happy. The government is happy to tax them. The rest of the people are oblivious because they aren't knee deep in toxic waste, but knee deep in the rice paddies. And they are happy that their sons can get good jobs working in a company that trades with overseas companies in the U.S.
Perhaps it is you that needs to think a little harder.
BTW, what does dandelion wine taste like and where can one get it?
unfortunatly, even schools dont have much to do with them, they take them, not realising there horribly outdated, and after someone realises it, they then throw them away or end up paying for it to be "recycled" . doesnt solve much of a problem at all.
P.S. This comes from a recently graduated student from a poor urban school district.....
I'd take any old computer! As long as it's a 486 or higher, it's still useful. Especially to a geek! Or give it to your child. Or just put it somewhere and use it as a typewriter. Or a print server. Or a regular ol' server. Or a file server. Or a router. Or a dildo. Er...maybe not the last one...but you catch my drift.
The schools don't want it. They buy Dell/IBM/Compaq PCs and have support contracts with those manufacturers. They also would also need to buy a license for Windows XP. Your license is non-transferable. What do they do when your PC's memory goes faulty? Who do they contact for a replacement? The fly-by-night Pricewatch vendor you bought it from? What are they going to use your Pentium 133 for, anyways? They're not going to be doing any physics simulations on it. You want to explain to them why they should make this the lone Linux PC in their entire computer lab? Especially after they see how horribly slow KDE runs with 32MB RAM and a 2MB video card that doesn't have XF86 4.x drivers...
In Sault Ste. Marie, ON (Canada), we (Clean North) run a computer recycling event twice per year. We accept old components from the community (businesses, individuals, government) and charge them $1CDN (about 5 cents US) to take it. We get as much running as we can to give to other charities, or use for ourselves (we have an environmental resource room on the main street in town), as well as sell on the day of the event.
Anything else goes on a truck bound for southern Ontario, where we have an arrangement with a recycler to accept our shipment, and reclaim as much of the metal and plastic as possible.
This is the third story I have read about exporting the problem of dealing with this waste, however, those recyclers that we have dealt with in Southern Ontario have been most accomodating about telling us exactly what happens to the materials. At times, we have even had them pay the shipping.
Our last event was in October, and you can read about it on our web site.
Problem 1: PC/MAC lifespan is too short. Why not make computers so easy to upgrade that any grandma could do it without feeling intimidated. We're almost at that point now, why not promote this as a way to to reduce computing costs? Guess what?...most people aren't gamers and they don't want to fiddle too much with the hardware, but if they were convinced that it was easy and cheap to upgrade their current computer they probably would.
Problem 2: Computer manufaucters should be responsible for making computers more recycle friendly. Start an organization that makes computer product recycling standards and promote those eco friendly products.
Problem 3: Software that is not upgrade friendly (you know...those guys from Redmond). Boycott software manufacturers that aren't upgrade friendly or won't let you legally move your existing software from one machine to another.
"You helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 -- 1976." --George W. Bush, to Queen Elizabeth, Wash
I see a lot of mis-guided and mis-informed posts on this subject. Not surprising really, since the waste 'recyclers' don't exactly advertise their business practices.
1) In most cases, the countries involved in importing PC waste *do not* ask for it. Recent case-in-point being China, which after banning the import of US PC waste *still* cops both US and non-US PC waste. The people don't want it*, the government doesn't want it. But the businesses can make a f*#ckload of money doing it, so it continues.
2) One previous poster has pointed out that the Chinese people *want* the waste dumps to continue, so that they may work. To which I say, "utter bullshit". If you're a techie and, because of the economic climate are forced to work as a dish pig in the local diner, does that mean that you *want* to work there? No. You work there because *that's all there is!* It's the same with the people in China and other 3rd/2nd-world countries who panhandle our old 286 motherboards in corrosive acid for the tiny amounts of gold on the traces.
3) For anyone who thinks putting this crap in landfil is a *good* solution (like one previous poster) - lead, arsenic and other chemicals that remain on PCBs and other PC parts can *kill* you. If you don't believe me, try regularly eating old-paint flakes that contain lead.
4) To all the people who cite refurbishment of old PC parts, networked clusters and the like: You must look at the entire energy chain before you can assert that refurbishment of old equipment is better than replacing with new. Five networked 486's are all going to need power. They're all going to give off at least some amount of ozone. Basically, they're all going to pollute when running. Compare this to the pollution and energy usage of the single Athlon 1GHz you would have replaced it with, combined with the energy cost and pollution generated by recycling the old machines properly. Once you have your result (and you better use a proper equation, not just some approximations), THEN you can talk about refurbishment being more environmentally friendly than proper recycling.
Janie took my gun...
I knew computer recycling was a scam the second I heard about it. If it was legit, then they would pay *you* for the scrap, instead of the other way around.
What makes it Intel, or AMD's responsability to do this? Why should they be shouldered with the burden of disposing of YOUR waste properly. Just because they built the product does not mean they are responsible for how it is disposed. If the government is going to require a product to be recyced, the government needs to handle that itself.
To say that Intel should have to build facilities to see to it that electronic goods they may have made are properly disposed of is akin to saying that Coca~Cola and Pepsi need to build aluminum recycling plants nation-wide, or that the New York Times and Chicago Tribune et al should be forced to build paper recycling plants nationwide. This is unfair and ludicrous.
Where does it stop? If I am a small buisiness owner making $30,000 a year profit manufacturing widgets that use mercury, should I be forced to bild a wdiget recycling plant? I would much rather see some sort of tax impossed on new PC sales to have PC drop-off places around the nation. I for one cannot recycle my old PCs 'cause I have no earthly idea where the hell to send them. This is never mentioned to anyone who buys a PC, and down here in the Georgia swamps, most people can't afford to ship a heavy metal box hal-way across the State or country.
Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
"Why should they be shouldered with the burden of disposing of YOUR waste properly"
MY waste. You need to re-think your whole frame of reference here. First of all do you know how toxic chip fabs are?
Do you even have any idea how many superfund toxic cleanups there are in silicon valley? Do you know where the most toxic (based on superfund site density) place in the country is.
It is not MY waste. You think that just because i buy a computer from them - that now the toxic product that THEY created is now solely my responsibility? "sorry buddy - to bad you have cancer. You bought the machine - you opened the EULA. Its not our fault that your water table is polluted to the point of being undrinkable" Why is it the responsibilty of any company to be even remotely concerned with the full LIFE CYCLE of a product they create.
You my friend are clearly an idiot if you think that the full life cycle of any product simply ends when a company either sells that product or just decides to no longer support it.
Since you have the view that nobody should care - especially not the companies that made the product in the first place - you should have to live on land that gets the benefit having all this crap dumped onto it.
And yes - I have long though that all container companies should have to be at least partly involved in the responsibility of recycling their products - like coke and pepsi. However the significant difference here is that toxicity factor of the components under discussion - and if you are to naive to notice or even admit the difference - you should refrain from participating.
thankyouverymuch.
I agree with many of your points but it's a bit too simplistic to just say "educate people and things'll change for the better".
I too live in San Jose, though I can't claim to be nearly the local you are as I am a recent import to the Bay Area up from SoCal. I can attest to the local environmental stupidity and believe there is plenty of direct linkage to the big techs like IBM, etc who built the valley as we know it today. For crimeny's sake, downtown SJ is littered with Superfund sites. It ain't no coincidence. And I don't think the Almaden mines had squat to do with any of them.
Once the situation gets as bad as it is now where there's shitloads upon shitloads of cash to be made in tech and major economies like those in the Bay Area are dependant on that attraction to businesses, it becomes far too easy to become complacent (like so many posters here are -"Why do they keep posting these stories? This is such OLD news. When are Taco, Neal, etc gonna get off their collective ass and give us more stories on geeks modding cases with Furbies and cold cathode tubes?" You know the mentality.....). Everyone knows about it but till they start finding pcb chips in their ramen too, they aren't gonna do jack shit. Neither are the politicians, businesses, or any other average Joe Schmoe. There's to many kickbacks, revenue streams, and jobs to be had as a direct result of these pollutant sources.
The jury is still far from out on this particular issue, but all of the SV electronics (use, recycle, manufacture, - every part of the cycle) use is a potential suspect in my mind to the massive increases in kids with autism in California. Even Time carried a cover story on the so called autism "geek clusters" in the Bay Area. I just have to wonder if there isn't a connection in there somewhere.
And people bitch about California being a bunch of environmentalist, tree hugging dirt worshippers who have nothing better to do than pass restrictive environmental laws that squelch businesses. Last time I checked Cali was the 5th largest world economy despite the tree huggers. A few more environmental regulations to keep yahoos from dumping their old P2s in the Guadalupe and in the Yangtze won't be the end of the world. God forbid, the Great Satan might actually start giving even the most minute of shits about their effects on the other inhabitants of this big blue marble..... Maybe all the hippe enviro freeks just had enough forethought to look ahead and realize we're all gonna start spawning flipper babies at this rate and decided to try and stem the tide.
No, educating people is only the start. You gotta take away their trick flat panels, SUV's, PS2's, cellphones. etc long enough for them to realize they actually are a part of the ecosystem - including those in 3rd world nations we're taking advantage of- and scare them in to realizing we all have an impact. Once you begin to get people reaching this epiphany - I mean really see the reality of life - , then maybe we all will begin to change our ways and think ahead a bit before buying ANOTHER new cell phone after the 1 year old one we have now isn't cool enough any longer. The only reason there's a river of toxic pollutants destroying anyone's life is because we all create the demand for these gadgets and gismos ourselves. You buy 'em, they'll keep building 'em.
Think about it, ya know... Sorry ThinkGeek, but how is that Soundbug or new Logitech cordless mouse really gonna make anyone's life any better, really?