Environmental Impact of the Ubiquitous Microchip

TimWeigel writes "The Japan Times is reporting the results of a study by the United Nations University on the environmental impact of michrochip production. We've already seen the impact of disposal practices, but is the manufacturing more environmentally friendly? Turns out it ain't necessarily so - according to the study, producing and using a 32MB DRAM chip weighing 2 grams requires 32 kg of water, 1.6 kg of fossil fuels, 700 g of elemental gases, and 72 g of other chemicals, many of which are hazardous. I'm no environmentalist, but this looks like it might add up to more bad news when you consider that these things are cranked out by the millions each year." Update: 01/26 16:31 GMT by J : Yep, it's a dupe.

Comments

It's a dupe

[adavidw]

Say what yoyu will about CmdrTaco, but at least he's consistent. Every story he posts is a duplicate!

-Aaron

Not surprising.

[Big Mark]

a 32MB DRAM chip weighing 2 grams requires 32 kg of water, 1.6 kg of fossil fuels, 700 g of elemental gases, and 72 g of other chemicals, many of which are hazardous.

Your average male first-year college or university student weighing approximately 80Kg requires 2,423 gallons of beer, 75Kg of books, produces about 9,316 cubic feet of noxious gasses, and requires 5Kg of food a day, most of which is prepared in a hazardous manner.

-Mark

Re:Duplicate.

[eXtro]

CmdrTaco is too busy to read this site, slashdot, which you speak of. He and his co-workers are too busy providing the excellent editorial content which we have all become accustomed to. Do you have any idea how much work goes into editing submissions for grammatical and spelling errors? Could you even imagine what this site would look like without Rob's hard work in this area?

We can expect a few spelling mistakes or grammatical errors in the commentary section, however heads would roll if any were to make the front page. Not only that, but inflammatory, sensationalized or factually incorrect articles would be the norm otherwise. Perhaps even duplicate stories would grace the front page.

Why, it's these services which make a paid subscription to this site so worthwhile, and why if any of these problems ever make the front page I will immediately cancel my subscription.

Also, how MUCH "environmental damage" was that?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

producing and using a 32MB DRAM chip weighing 2 grams

And storing 32 MB of data. In the '60s (decades into the computer revolution) 32 K by 36 bits cost around a million bux (in '60s currnecy, of which $24 would buy a troy ounce of gold) and worth every penny. It occupied one standard IBM 70x cabinet - roughly 3' x 6' by 8' or maybe more, just barely fitting into a standard elevator car, CHOCK FULL of circuit boards soldered with lead and wired with copper ...

requires 32 kg of water,

And what happens to that water? Is it disintegrated into its compoent subatomic particles and beamed into outer space, never to be heard from again? Is it sealed into a vault with the radioactive waste and buried for geologic time? Or is it cleaned up back to super-purity and reused to make ANOTHER chip, and ANOTHER ad-infinitim, until it finally evaporates and comes back as rain?

1.6 kg of fossil fuels,

3 1/2 pints of fuel oil - enough to make about 1 3/4 pints of gasoline. Call it five chips to the galon. You probably burned more gas per chip just to GO PICK 'EM UP the last time you upgraded your RAM.

Of course that's assuming all the energy came from fossil fuels - which are still used because they're so abundant that they're cheaper than most alternatives. But the last time I looked the windmills at Altamont Pass were still spinning, and the hydroelectric dams were still generating, etc.

700 g of elemental gases,

Yeah - liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen. And any that doesn't end up in the chip itself (i.e. the oxide layers), like, say, the liquid nitrogen used to supercool gas traps or purge ambient air and its contaminants, eventually goes back to the air from which it was extracted.

and 72 g of other chemicals,

2 1/2 ounces.

many of which are hazardous.

And some of 'em (such as the doping gasses, used in microscopic amounts) are SO hazardous - both to humans and to the next step of the process - that any excess is destroyed at the end of the step where it is used. Others (like the cleaning solvents and etchants) can also be supercleaned and reused, destroyed, or disposed of in other safe ways. That's where a lot of that energy goes. Want to cut its use?

Of course if some cheapscate wants to dump used solvent, that's what the threat of the EPA is for: to make it more expensive to dump it than to deal with it properly. Meanwhile, the solvents are the same class of stuff that your auto mechanic sprays on your (toxic!) brake pads every time you get a brake job. Any bets on whether the chips in a 1/4G SIMM, built by a hypothetical scumbag manufacturer who dumps ALL his used solvent, would pollute the environment more than your last brake job?

And how much modern RAM would it take to match the pollution and resource consumption of building, or operating, that '60s-era 32Kx36 RAM box?

A day in the life of CmdrTaco

[EmagGeek]

So much for my Karma, but what the hell is it good for anymore?

7:55am, Alarm goes off, Snooze
8:04am, Alarm goes off, Snooze
repeat several dozen times
11:14am, Alarm goes off, crawl out of bed, hit the head
11:18am, load up wired.com, glance over headlines
11:19am, without having read any, copy and paste 3 or 4 of them over to /.
11:20am, back to bed
1:32pm, wake up, crawl out of bed again, eat cold pizza from the LAN party the night before
1:41pm, load up wired.com, glance over headlines
1:42pm, without having read any, and not remembering having done it before, copy and paste the same 3 or 4 articles to /.
1:49pm, read through hate-email from people complaining about dupes, and from paying subscribers who feel short-changed
2:24pm, meander to the "office" for the 1pm staff meeting
3:08pm, meet with editorial staff to discuss that afternoon's postings
4:11pm, CmdrTaco, timothy, and Hemos decide on 3 or 4 really good articles from wired.com that are worthy of the /. front page
4:55pm, after a long day at the office, calls it quits and heads home
5:15pm, arrives home after stopping by Starbucks, Ikea, the BMW dealer, and the natural food store
5:45pm, decides to check up on /. and contribute some material. Googles for articles and finds 3 or 4 really good articles in the google cache from wired.com, posts them
6:12pm, after having exhausted that day's supply of Mountain Dew and Pringles, decides to meet some friends at Outback for dinner.. brings laptop, of course
7:11pm, seated in the 802.11 section of Outback with michael, Hemos, and timothy, and his pseudo-quasi-girlfriend that he met on IRC, who, having just gotten her first driver's license, drove out from Raleigh in her parents' 1971 Pinto, without their permission
7:15pm, orders a Mountain Dew to drink
7:24pm, fires up laptop and the gang looks for good material for the front page. Collectively, they find 3 or 4 really good articles on wired.com to cut and paste. Decide to post an article from The Register just for the hell of it.
7:29pm, server asks if they're ready to order. The gang asks if they have Pizza - but settles for burgers and beer (At Outback)
7:57pm, after a few beers, decide to check up on their darling blogger and post some relevant "News for Nerds, stuff that matters"... they find some really good articles on SLASHDOT to post to the front page
8:11pm, finishing up gobbling down the burger, having gone through 38 pitchers of mountain dew and the equivalent of a case of Meister Brau, they head to CmdrTaco's apartment for that nights UT LAN party
8:21pm, pick up a case of Meister Brau, a case of Mountain Dew, and a case of Miller Light on the way home
8:46pm, arrive at CmdrTaco's place, decide first thing to check /. and post some cool articles found earlier in that day, after all, they don't remember posting since before dinnertime.
9:11pm, timothy, rip-roaring drunk, logs onto /. and after reading through for a couple of minutes, yells "What the hell is with all the dupes on /. today!??!! f'ing editors!"