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Japan's War On E-Waste
Stonent1 writes "With the increasing number of high tech devices in Japan filling landfills, Japan has taken a proactive approach to E-waste. BBC News has an interesting article on Matsushita's electronics recycling plant. For example, TV and monitor tubes are opened with a special tool and separated into leaded and unleaded glass, melted and reused in new displays! The plastic housing is also melted down and reused. Sounds like a good idea for the U.S., too."
There's a company that I just recently found out about called Resource Concepts in Texas. Their whole business is refurbishing, remarketing, and recycling electronics. Their website has all the details. Looks like they even deal with individuals, not just big corporations.
This is really no joke. With the 3 year EOL policies of a lot of companies, there is a lot of equipment which is simply thrown away, not because it is broken, but because it's out of warranty.
I got a handful of Cisco 2500's after a company upgraded their network. They were useless to the company, as they had depreciated too much and had been EOL'd by cisco.
I'm just waiting for a couple of Catalyst switched to be made redundant.
I remember IBM offering something like this for IBM or non-IBM machines, and I found a link:
IBM PC Recycling Service for $29.99
Here's the link in their store:
IBM PC Recycle / Recycling Service
From an old press release, it looks like they are sending the machines to Envirocycle, an electronic recycler--maybe it is possible to send stuff to them directly, but I didn't see anything like that on their site.
Check out this "related" article!
Environmental Group Fears Growing Problem of Digital Waste
"I'm not, like, that smart. I, like, forget stuff all the time." -- Paris Hilton
Actually, a lot of junkyard/recycler places in the US are starting to figure out they can make big bucks on recycling almost all of the parts from computers and other electronics. It used to be they would extract all of the metals and plastics, which would net them a few cents a unit. Now they can get a few bucks a unit by pulling chips and reselling them on the refurb market.
They just had a show about junkyards (I think it was Modern Marvels on the History Channel) which talked about this.
Recycling is actually big money in the US. Most people think we send vast quantities of junk to be dumped overseas, but in actuality a lot of that junk is scrap metal that is sent there to be recycled.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Agreed... Goodwill has computer centers set up for re-use in a lot of cities in the US. I've gone to the one in Austin when I needed cheap hardware, and it also helps create jobs and get people who need training trained.
I write code.
The paper/food will break down fairly harmlessly
Food, yes, paper not really. Newspapers in landfills from the WWII era can still be read. Also, food is not really the problem, its all the packaging. Especially, if your like me and get single serving foods all the time.
Doesn't it make more sense to save money and recycle them?
If it were cheaper, yes. How long do you think it would take to get 5 tons of, say, copper from a mine vs. getting it from used electronics? I'm no mining expert, but I would imagine that its much easier to separate the valuable metals from dirt, etc. than it would be to separate them from other metals, plastics, glass, etc.
HP also has a recycling program which was promoted recently on ScreenSavers. According to the HP representative they had on the show, they do much of the same as what was described in the main article above.
for years i worked for a non-profit who specialized in taking donated office equipment (read junk) and refurbished what was usable...
the trick is, what to do with all the stuff that isnt reusable? (cga monitors and the like)
for a long time we sent it to China, until we found out what happens to it in China (thrown in a large ditch for children to pick through)
We then looked into building our own demanufacturing facility (exactly what this stories poster is talking about, breaking down stuff to its components for recycling)
Problem is, safely breaking down CRT's for recycling requires a huge expensive machine. When we went to the State and Federal govts asking for funding for this the reply was "great idea, good luck finding the money"
so, its not like theres noone in the US willing to do this, its just that theres noone in the US willing to fund it.
All you need is your number 1, and it is profitable. I JUST watched a Discovery Channel/TLC show about a man doing just this. He strips the chips from the machine that he turns around and resells. He then takes the reamaining "stuff" and pretty much grinds it up into little pieces that are then sorted by some pretty cool machines. One uses static electricity to "pull" out the metal, etc... He then sells the separated plastic and metal. Hes says he has increased his profitability by 100 fold from when he used to just strip out the gold, AND most of this stuff is now recycled instead of adding to landfills.
About landfills and those that are saying we don't have a shortage of them... until your entire city is up in arms about a new and needed local landfill, and until you are willing to have one 100 feet from your backyard, and until you are told that there is NO CHOICE, then shut the hell up.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
Interesting argument, but I think a lot of computers are already reused. Both of my grandparents have recieved hand-me-down systems, as well as several other family members. Also, the company I work for sells old systems at 25$ to employees. We're talking like p2-350 range, certainly still usable. These systems are usually reserved within 15 minutes of the notices being emailed around (~700-800 person company, and they sell off boxes as they get replaced).
Granted, my experiences could be extraordinary, but since computers, like cars, are still usable long past their "optimum life", I would reckon that many people who are not ready to shell out for a brand new box reuse systems in the same way.
This info was posted to slashdot a few months ago.
...I like to think we are on headed in the right direction.. see here and here I have frequently visited Bo Brodie's company, Computer Recyclers Inc., an Ottawa company that deals in electronic junk. Brodie's firm takes in about half a million pounds of electronic junk a year. Not only will they take your old junk off your hands but they sell the stuff people get rid of that is still good. Win win if you ask me.
Plastic is a long carbon chain, as the material undergoes the heat and other processes associated with recycling, the ends of the chain are broken off and a shorter chain results. The longest polymers (I think these are the harder plastic, but I'm not a chemical engineer) can be reused as shorter ones until they are too short to be useful. Shorter polymers (milk cartons and soda pop bottles) are generally not recyclable into other useful plastics and end up being reused in their current form. I think there was a company working on adding them to road materials with the idea that they would be an alternate filler, like gravel.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
E-Waste recycling is only in very specific cases profitable. Plastics used with electronics usually use flame-retardants which makes it very costly to recycle. Chips are pulled for refurb, but remember that technology goes out of date really quickly. There are still big barrels of chips that get processed for the metals. But this is barely profitable, and only when the chip can be easily removed from other parts. The worst are CRT's, which average about 8lbs of lead a piece. There used to be a couple plants in the States that would pay to melt down the leaded glass, but I believe they went out of business. The vast majority of these monitors end up in China, where they're taken apart by villagers (including children) in extremely unsafe conditions. Check out Exporting Harm, by the Basel Action Network for more info on that. If recycling E-Waste were so profitable, then organizations like StRUT would not be on the rocks. I've visited their warehouse, and I'll tell you they run a tight ship. But they only use vendors who recycle materials responsibly, and that requires lots of money. Beware companies that will take your electronics for free, especially monitors. It's a sure sign they're sending stuff to China.