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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."
I think it's rather unlikely for this to happen in the US anytime soon. The time it takes to disassemble electronics properly to separate them out into the varying material types would make the process very expensive, and seeing as how companies are already cutting corners in every way they can, I find it hard to believe they would bother pouring money into device disposal.
KappaStone
Here, in the land of the midnight sun, we have to pay a recycling and disposal fee for every electronic product. This has an advantage; the store is obligated to take your old TV in return and dispose of it properly. Saves me a trip to recycling plant.
Perhaps it is a good idea for the US from an environmental point of view, but I don't think it will be done. Why not? Because it costs money. Land is money, how much it is depends on how much there is available. In the US there is more than enough land, so it is not worth much. In Japan on the other hand, land is very scarse and thus worth a lot. If the japanese can make sure they need less waste dumps this way, then they will do it. The US doesn't care about waste dumps. They'll just build their houses/industries/... somewhere else.
-Ansel.
G=C800:5
We won't recycle unless
1. Its very profitable
2. We are having such a land issue that it mandates recycling.
3. Its legislated
This should be clear by some of the eastern states railroading their garbage out west.
Don't get me wrong I love the idea of recycling and should be doing more of it myself but just don't think I will see a big push for it till one of those things happens
***I GOT NUTHIN***
"Recycling is only one part of a product's lifecycle"
this is the way it should be seen. too often american manufacturers see the end of the lifecycle as the minute it leaves the factory doors. the only thought given to what happens when the consumer is finished is in terms of when they will buy the replacement.
!(^((ri)|(mp))aa$)
Wow, this is a brilliant post. "We don't need to recycle 'cuz we still have plenty of room to put our massive amounts of garbage!". Seriously, that has to be the most unbelievably ridiculous thing I have ever heard. I don't *care* if there's lots of room to throw more garbage... it shouldn't go there in the first place. Especially things like circuit boards, etc, which contain many toxic chemicals (eg, lead, mercury, etc). Do *you* want this stuff seeping into your water table in 50 or a 100 years when the landfill lining breaks down (something which has happened at other sites already)?
"With the increasing number of high tech devices in Japan filling landfills, Japan has taken a proactive approach..."
huh? Clearly they are taking a reactive approach.
I hate the way people use buzzwords like proactive without stopping to think what they actually mean.
This has been hammered down our throats since we were in grade school, but we often forget that Reduce and Reuse come first. Reduction isn't really an option these days, as everyone "needs" the fastest machine, and for most people scared of upgrades and custom-built systems, that means a brand new computer.
Instead of throwing them in landfills, spending a lot of money to recycle them, or leaving them to be smashed to bits by 10 year old Chinese girls trying to earn 15 cents for a teeny bit of copper, why can't we just set up an effective reuse program?
You can't tell me that there aren't millions of people all over the world who could make effective use of a 486 with a dot-matrix printer and open-source software, let alone the number of Pentium I & II's that are being abandoned left and right by the upper middle class in America.
It would cost less to ship them overseas than pick them apart, and actually HELP people.
Reduce, Reuse, THEN Recycle.
Maybe once every item has an RFID tag* embedded in to it, this automatic sorting will be no problem.
* the one potentially valid use for them after they leave the store
The Washington State (US) already does this for tires... it's called the tire recycling tax and guess what! It costs more to administer the tax than it produces in tax revenue to cover the actual removal of tires!
What we *don't* need is more taxes. If anything require that computers be recycled and not just thrown in a landfill. But whomever decided that taxes were the solution (because that's what a government enforced deposit is... a tax) is blind to the fact that adding taxes is a huge negative, adding complexity to the tax system is a huge negative and in addition they are a horribly ineffective way of dealing with a problem.
~foooo
Electronics need to be designed for recycling. I'm sure that when a chip manufacturer is designing a new chip, recycling isn't even a consideration in the design. There are several elements that are ever increasing in the American economy faster than elsewhere in the world: energy prices, property taxes, health care expenses, living expenses, and entertainment. We are headed for the "Artificial Intelligence" future where we have to be mindful of the total cost of manufacturing something and looking at the value we get from that product. Is "X" product really that useful for society? How will it affect the environment (land fill or otherwise) after its usefulness is gone? Are there other uses for the material in that product? Are those materials easily disassembled or dismantled into component parts? This type of thinking will eventually persist in the USA one day, but not anytime in the near future. Let's face it, human existence is starting to get expensive. Why the hell do you think all those manufacturing and white collar computer science and science (chemistry, biology, etc...) jobs are moving to overseas markets?
I just don't see it being economically feasible in North America.
Thats what the government is for. When the raw, slimy greed starts to ooze out of capitalism and corrode the "American Way of Life(tm)", the government should step in and get people's and companies' acts cleaned up.
The government should say "Look, we know its going to cost you, and we know you're going to pass the cost onto the consumer, but you better start a recycling program, and stick to it." They've done the same to stop child labor, to enforce minimum wages, to increase air quality, and so on.
Of course, it doesn't work that way since our government sank into the slimepits, but thats another story. Its clear whose side the current government is on, what with the abolishing of overtime and (perceived?) failures in the punishment of enron and microsoft.
On the other hand, I know that several manufacturers have in fact begun recycling programs. Such as Dell, HP/Compaq, and even Gateway which was the hardest to turn up.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
First, there is a shortage of landfill space for certain communities. The communities selling landfill space are merely reducing the landfill space for future generations.
Second, some things should not be land-filled because they are toxic to humans. It is pretty much impossible to design a landfill that will be safe for a significant amount of time. Most rational communities have recycling programs set up so these waste do not end up in the landfill. These are often funded out of the public purse.
The reason recycling efforts, and clean manufacturing efforts, tend not to work in the US is because commercial interests are allowed to externalize disposal costs to the government and future generations, and therefore not make the cost of clean up part of their business plan. Therefore, dirty operations are often artificially more profitable than clean operations.
The problem, as we seem, comes later when the mess has to be cleaned up and a new generation is asked to pay. We see this now with the superfund cleanup status of a number of defunct commercial entities.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Where I live, we used to have recycle bins that we sit out next to the curb on trash day. I usually had a full bin of glass containers, pop cans, and plastic items every week. Then one day, the city stopped doing that. So now I just toss all that stuff in the trash, because I am surly not going to take a 15 minute drive to the recycle place once a week.
Let's face it. We're too lazy to go out of our way to recycle our trash, and rightfully so, a lot of us have better things to do. So make it easy to recycle and I'm all over that. Make it difficult, and nobody will recycle. Pretty simple.
T
We are a society of extremely wasteful people. Just look at the way products are packaged these days with all sorts of non-biodegradable plastics with infused chemicals. My parents just bought a set of the gardening gloves but they were packaged in a horizontal manner that consisted of dense plastics. They used to tie gloves in a bundle now they incase them in plastics for loss prevention.
I would have to say a lot of products these days are packaged in a way that's best to reduce theft. As far as technology goes I doubt much thought goes into designing a pc that can best be recycled unless it's already running windows.
I think compartmentalizing the hazardous material parts on any device in it's design would be of some service. That way if you chose not to sell your pc or whatever else you could just seperate the parts and drop them off at a technology device recycling center with a bin for each type of part. We need some of those as I have yet to see one...although they might have them somewhere.
So what I'm saying is in terms of pc's they don't have to design them to be biodegradable because that won't happen. Compartmentalize in an intelligent manner that is best suited for easily recycling the parts because there are a lot of lazy people out there who'd rather throw it away than deal with it.
Hopefully when the disposable dvd's come out they have recycling centers for those and they should be funded by the companies who developed the technology. Those who develop wasteful practices and methods in the days of trying to reduce the problem should be responsible for collecting and recycling their wasteful products.
In all actuality I just hope that consumers reject that idiotic disposable dvd shit but as I said before laziness could make it a massive success. I bet if they throw in a free Big Mac then that would almost guarantee success...
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
Part of recycling is re-use of items. To re-use an item doesn't mean you have to break it down to its base componants and remake it. You obviously have never tinkered with electronics. There is a huge market for this stuff.... remember, these items are usually being tested. If not, they are worth less.
Go to any hamfest or electronics surplus store... used parts fly off the shelves every day.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Besides, it's expensive getting metals out of the earth (as in mining them). Doesn't it make more sense to save money and recycle them?
Unfortunately in some cases it doesn't (at least not to the corporations.)
I'm just wondering how long it will take for it to be economical to recycle, and who knows, cost of raw material may eventually go so high we'll start mining landfills, not to clean up the land, but to reclaim disposed materials.
Hopefully if we reach this point we'll do come cleanup at the same time, but I don't expect any corporation to do this in the United States unless they think they can make money doing it (or are following laws that force them to do so.)
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
I think a major reason we don't pay as much attention to this kind of thing in the US, is that there is soooo much wide open space here. People seem to have the attitude that junk can always be dumped far enough away to not bother them. In a densely populated country, like Japan, the problem is right in your lap.
The public in the US needs to be made more aware of this stuff. A bunch of spots on some of those expose shows that always use a hidden camera to show you something "shocking" like how a McDonald's worker didn't wash their hands after taking a leak might be put to a better use like this.
The Fat Man Walks Alone
In Switzerland, you pay an "Anticipated Recyling Tax" on all electric and electronic equipment at the time of purchase, about 5% of the price of the item. I don't believe that you get that money back; it probably goes to subsidize the cost of recycling.
Considering that all electronics will eventually be disposed of at some time, it's smarter to collect the fee up front. It reminds the consumer of the eventual environmental impact that the item will have by factoring it into the price. Collecting the fee at the time of the sale is also more logistically workable than trying to collect it when the item is being thrown away.