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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.
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
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.