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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."
refurbishment!
After trolling my local recycling drive, I came away with a 19" Dell monitor, a couple PII laptops, and other juicy stuff.
There were even a few resellers picking through the scrap as well.
One man's trash...
.. but what is?
What can we do to eliminate the problem, or, at the very least, tone the issue down a little?
The hardware in question is either too far beyond repair, or to old to serve a useful purpose, so is it best to approach this from a toxic waste disposal point of view, slap an extra $100 onto the cost of your new PC, and treat old computing gear like medical/chemical waste?
the only problem with this is that taxes with a purpose for the most part very rarely do the intended job. Look at the lotto's education tax for example.
With all the billions in money the lotto has brought in - our schools in california are dilapidated pieces of shit.
I agree that the companies that make the crap should be responsible for ensuring that they get cleaned up properly - a "tax" (meaning that its actually legislated as a tax) is not the solution.
Rather the legislation should require the actual companies (like Intel) to start REAL clean-up programs and actually build facilities for reclaiming the toxics in their machines.
An the consumers should get *CREDIT* for returning machines to these facilities. not fucking taxed money that isnt going to do a damn thing in the first place.
Instead of recycling your old pc hardware, donate it instead through the World Computer Exchange. Hardware donations are a real boon to the people (especially children) of third world countries. Projects like the Goa Schools Computers Projects and the Digital Equalizer Initiative help provide the less fortunate w/such hardware and train them to use it, too. The DEI also accepts donations.
I called Dell a few days ago looking to get pricing information. It turns out, with their low-end offering in the Dimension line, you can choose Wordperfect Office, MS Office SBE, or MS Office Pro -- bt not MS Works. On a low-end PC. WTF?
So I called Dell, asking if they could override this and somehow install Works. The rep said: "No." I said "No big deal I guess. I have Office 97 Pro from an old PC which I can install instead." This got him revved up.
Rep: "Well, sir, that's not legal."
Even after explaining that I bought this product at a retail store, and told him that the old PC was being tossed because it was no longer working, I could hear that he still wanted to lecture me.
So I reiterated, "I'm literally throwing out this computer because it doesn't work -- my license therefore is unused, and I can install it on my new PC, right?"
Rep: "That's illegal. Throwing away a PC is illegal. You might be able to see if someone would take it for parts if you gave them $30 or $40, but you can't just throw it away. You might be able to ask the manufacturer to take it back."
I did know this already, and had planned to bring it to my local waste facility for recycling.
But here's the punchline...
Me: "It's a Dell. Will you take it back?"
Rep: "No."
Unintended Results From U.S. Hardware Dumps In Asia [2/25/02]
China Bans U.S. Electronic Scrap [6/1/02]
Recycling The First World, in the Third [8/23/02]
I seem to recall all of these had the usual accompanying photojournalism showing women picking through bushels of desolderied TTL gates and such.
(I'm not saying this is a dupe, I'm just pointing out previous discussions.)
I'm not in the least bit surprised, having read a few court transcripts of cases against recycling firms.
Make no mistake, waste disposal is about big bucks. For many materials such as chemical waste, waste oil, contaminated soil, and manufactured products such as computers, batteries and cars, the costs for recycling are enormous. Consumers, governments and environmentally-conscious firms know this, but are still often willing to pay the hefty disposal fees.
Enter the recycling company. They'll take your toxic waste in exchange for your dollars... and now they have a choice. They can actually dispose of the waste properly while making a small profit, or just dump it somewhere and make a ton of money. So, the oil ends up in the sea, the chemicals are dumped somewhere in Poland, the contaminated soil is diluted with good soil and used in horse riding arena's. The computers end up in China where the valuable items are salvaged by less-than-clean methods.
With the great anounts of money to be made in recycling by sweeping waste under the rug, it is no surprise criminal organisations have taken an interest, and are at least partly involved in a number of recycling firms. In Holland, reputed to be an environmentally conscious country, none of the larger recycling firms has clean hands, and have used any and all of the above methods to cheaply get rid of waste. It's not just the computers, people.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
No, in fact all it is doing is taking our problem and making it someone elses. I have two degrees in ES and have some knowledge on the subject. What happens is we send our old crap over to asia where a bunch of dirt poor people who pick through piles of smashed electronics for the precious metals. These piles are generally uncovered and on top of dirt. The process of smashing the electronics allows rain water to filter through the piles sending a toxic coctail leeching into the ground water. For the priviledge of having their ground water contaminated for centuries, they are paid pennies a day.
Exporting != solving.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
I'm not an engineer, so this is an honest question... are there any substitutes for the toxins that go into PCs, like lead, mercury, etc?
If there are, perhaps we should be using those environmentally safer alternatives, even though they may cost more initially? Just like we've removed lead from our gasoline, maybe it's time we figured out how to remove lead and other toxins from our PCs.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I've pointed out the population explosion in the bay area many times, every time I bring that point up I get modded into oblivion... But fuck it, I got karma to burn...
:) geek cominucae continues) Since we're the teachers its up to us to show the y to the (quote"l4m3rz"unquote) the path to rightiousnuss.
/. ..... it requires some action.
First let me explain why I'm an expert on this. My family has lived in san jose since 1901, we started out here as immigrant sicilian ranchers, and over the years went from being just the fruitpickers to owning a lot of east side san jose, and now we own strip malls (w00t) I hang out on slash because during the boom, I was quite the sysadmin, and came to know this place.
Back to the subject of enviromental disasters...
My great grandfather, grandfather, heck even my uncles could go to any stream in the bay area and fish without worries of toxic fish with 3 eyes. Before milpitas became a great big office complex they would take their shotguns out to the duck blinds and get duck.
These days though, there isn't shit left. Guadelupe river has a big sign "DONT EAT THESE FISH POISONOUS" all along it's banks. They say it's because of the "quicksilver" (read mercury) mines that were prevalent in the almaden valley area, but those existed WAY before IBM, which sits along the coyote creek which is a feeder into the Guadelupe.
What does this have to do with recycling computer stuff? Well let me tell you....
Since i've pretty much been jobless the last 2 years, i've gone back to my second love of bicycle riding. Riding a bike is a lot differerent than driving a car because if you want to stop to look at something.. No big deal. Hit the breaks and stop for a minute..
Last week I was riding along almaden expressway when I saw an AT style case laying in the creekbed (Almaden expressway runs along the guadelupe) I parked my bike, walked over and decided to take a look.
It looked like an old pentium class PC, I whipped out my swiss army knife's phillips attatchment to see what was under the hood..
Well, there was definetly a p133 in there. Nice of socket7 to make it easy to pocket this little treasure. Ram turned out to be 4 16bit EDO ram modules totaling 64 megs.
Hard drive had enough oxidation where I didn't want it, same went for the floppy....
But the point i'm trying to make is here in SV people have been dumping this type of semi usefull electronic shit for years in our creeks, and the combination of population explosion with enviromental hazzards has really fucked up the ecology of SV.
Now moderators, (and rob, cause i know you mod my shit once in a while) please.. This is the god honest truth i'm telling here, any negative mods would be an injustice to the truth (isn't that what good journalism is about anyways?)
Compare San Jose ecological system with a close sister city like portland. Portland OR. has just as many bright talented people as SJ/SV (think M$) The health of their river and stream systems just blows doors over anything we have because they took the time to think ahead (should we whore ourselves out for business or should we keep quality of life in mind)
Here in SJ, people are basically dumping their systems in the creeks and steams. Maybe i'm just being a bit optimistic here, but since so many of us geeks are outta work right now shouldn't we do something about it??? Seriously folks, go download some "router centric" version of *nix, turn those old POS 133's into broadband routers for those not in know. WTF I can find any ISA 3com NIC at a surplus store for less than a dollar.
I love what I used to do, I loved edumucating people on just how they can get the most out of their pc's. In this day and age of firewire capture and such, we need to let people know that their old 486-pentium 200mhz still got some life left in them in the form of hella phat broadband routers that will not only protect them from the evil assholes of the internet, but will log it too (Soooooo much better than my old linksys router)
You know... this is our scene.. And despite GWB being a total cocksucking dickhead to technology (yeah i hear you GWB, u n daddy want oil) we put our faith, our geeky little belief in thing like fuel cells, organic LED's and the like because ultimately we know it's better.
I can't really comment much on the havoc IBM and other companies have wreaked havoc on our ecology, but I know what we gotta do to stretch out the "usefullness" of what we got. And folks, there are two ways you can fucking approach it..
A. educate people..
B. stick your head up your ass.
So my advice to all of you is, if you want to prevent this sort of crap from continueing, DO IT FOR FREE!!! seriously, I consider myself an out of work techno hippie. Set up that killer BSD server with no backdo0rz fo free. Fuck it, aint no shame in promotin yo name. Trust me folks, all the no-geek people out there will love it when you show them how they can use their sprintlink wirelesss dsl to link to an 20 gig archive of data being served over a wireless link. Just don't whine about it, do something!@!!!!!
Well, i hope I've inspired folks to do something instead of whining about it. Sorry u all but im on my second glass of wine and aint coming down. (still can type
Becoming an enviromentall activist on this subject requies more than post on
Yours Truly...
--toq
How similar is an interesting question- in each country it's a nasty job, but is there any information on the relative working conditions, the level of education of the workers as to the health and environmental issues, and the avenues of recourse for workers in cases of abuse? Any correlation with the degree of democracy?
Curtains for windows?
I helped start a computer recycling business (provided business, computer expertise, and moral support). My friend is still running the business after 5 years. The industry is going through lots of changes, however not once has he ever sent something overseas. In fact nothing ends up in the landfill. He is proud to exceed all epa, federal, state, and local guidelines. I cant imageing that shipping stuff overseas would save money. I also wonder if the origanators of the salavage are aware of how its being disposed of. At least everytime I hear of this story I cringe. Maybe its cause Im in the midwest, but dont know of any salvage operator that does this. I would be interested to hear from other people in the business. starjax
The article said it is created there, why shouldn't it be returned there for recycling? They should do a better job of it, but that is really their deal, not ours.
They made it, we bought it, used it and sold it back to them when we where done. I have no problem with that. They should do a better job with disposing of it. I am glad it is there and not here!
Of course, this is all based on the fallacy that a nation REQUIRES an export driven economy to prosper, which is ludicrous. How did the United States or Australia for that matter prosper when they never have relied on agricultural exports as a foundation of their economy? The south had cotton and tobacco yes, but the north got by pretty well eating their own damn food.
It is an absolute MYTH that trade is a necessary part of a thriving economy. People need to create value locally. They can build better houses, create better laws, mine locally... They don't need us anymore than we need them, which in our case in the United States is not at all. We have always supplied our own people with all the food they need in abundance. The only reason we export food is because we produce so much.
We subsidize our farmers because we want to protect the agricultural way of life, and to insure we do not become reliant on a foreign source of food. There is nothing more damaging to a nation than to become dependent on a foregin source of key resources. If you think oil is a problem, food is much worse.
What you miss is these countries are poor because they have no system of justice or property rights. No one bothers doing anything like large scale agriculture or any other economic activity because there is no inscentive. These countries are subsistance farmers or they grow REAL cash crops like coca or the opium poppy. Everything else just isn't worth it. Most crops require careful cultivation and investment in the land to grow enough to make a profit. This investment is not feasible when a virtual anarchy exists.
Personally, I wish there were far fewer people in the world so the United States could become an agricultural economy again. I would join the Amish in a heartbeat if they didn't believe in god. I don't want to buy anyone elses shit, and I don't want to sell any of my shit. The world used to be that way, before this corporate fascist system of capitalism was implimented by the rich industrialists and their progressive puppets around the turn of the century. Now we are all just slaves, spending half our productive lives going through indoctrination in schools before we become employees in the system we call the global economy. I want my own life, my own future. I don't want to answer to anyone, and I don't want anyone to answer to me. It used to be this way...
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Sorry, but ... I need to say here that countries like mine (south America) and surely Africa are bigger technology trash cans? Is that new for you? If this is new I'm reading the wrong page.
The tech spending is entirely controlled by the highed level Board of Ed. goons, whose pockets are no doubt well buttered by the computer companies. I don't know what the situation is now, but 5 years ago NY public schools could only buy/accept Macs (I think this was largely for support reasons, and in that case it did make some sense). At least they were thrifty about it - my middle school still used Apple IIs for the word-processing class.
In Calgary, Alberta it's downright horrible. The schools don't take anything less than Pentium 166s, and put fresh copies of Windows 95 on them. They have huge contracts with Compaq (each school buys a few dozen new PCs a year which it doesn't need) and that Bess censorware company for providing a filtered proxy. Support for anything took literally months, the proxies were incredibly slow, and almost always in a half-broken state. They also ran their central record-keeping systems on NT - these always crashed every couple of weeks (at least the staff got extra coffee breaks.)
The biggest reason behind this is the inept staff and management public schools have - the only kind they can afford. It's really too bad.
In the great CONS chain of life, you can either be the CAR or be in the CDR.
Have a read on Vancouver Indymedia...
Another thing I wanted to point out was that I was expressing concern with the idea of a tax specifically.
meaning; that if we realyl want something to be done about this issue - the legislation should stipulate the cost recovery method in a means other than what is traditionally thought of as a tax. Taxes have been written so much and so many times that the tax writers are experts in wording and creating them so as to provide a miriad of loopholes which serve the purpose of siphoning off the money gained from the tax towards uses that are in no way related to the object of the tax in the first place.
Of course in implementation the costs would be exactly a "tax" in that it will be a cost passed onto the consumer (given the cost of hardware at this point - I think we all can afford a little increase in the cost of a component) - however the major difference is that the money collected by this "tax" would be so strictly watched and regulated that maybe something would ACTUALLY GET FUCKING DONE in this country - and the world would start to actually be a better place due to the computer industry rather than in spite of it.
It would be nice if there were a regulatory body that could over see this - but given the tendancy for corruption (ICANN) in computing regulatory bodies - it would be best if we could have some people who know how to actually write shit that works come up with something that has the least chance of being abused.
Remember when Energy Star was actually trying to mean something. When was the last time you saw an Energy star logo as a valid amrketing push.
Well - If you live in the uk, and have old computer gear - with the exception of CRT's I can use it. Rip it to peices and use teh components to build robots.
Especially BEAM robots.
Of course the cases are then usable in the scrapheap for larger projects. Anyone here watch scrapheap challenge?
There are people I know to whom anything above a 100mhz p1 with 12mb is an upgrade....
Also you should check how much even older gear sells for on ebay. Theres always another use for stuff if you look hard enough.... I agree that one way or another, the manufacturer, and the consumer should share the cost and responsibility of recylcling the stuff.
OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol