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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 should be a deposit on all computer components to handle the recyling. A lot of the stuff gets shipped overseas to become other peoples problems.
When you live on an island, you think about waste more. Japan has been running up against the limits of it's geography for centuries (arable land, timber, etc.) so they are in a better position to tackle these kinds of problems.
Although when you shop at a 7-11 in Tokyo, and they double bag your overly packaged Pocky, you might not think so.
I'm much funnier now that I'm a subscriber.
Along with recycling the waste we're currently creating, I think we should go into a proactive recycling of old waste. Along with reusing the glass and plastic, we should look at using techologies such as >TDP </a> (Thermal Depolymerization Process) to better break down the waste.<p>It frustrates me as an American to see what a wasteful society we are. <i>Everything</i> is desposible. I'd be okay with that if everything was being recycled as well. If there was some synthetic ecosystem of waste and reuse, I wouldn't have to feel the massive guilt I do everytime I purchase something that's whole purpose is to be used one and then discarded.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Sounds like a good idea for the U.S., too.
:-) Just kidding.
I don't think that the U.S. has any shortage of landfill space. A Florida company that owns a landfill in Michigan sells the space to Toronto, for crying out loud! Of course, people in Michigan blame the Canadians for that... but whatever.
In Japan, I imagine that landfill space is at a premium, and recycling this junk makes sense, but I just don't see it being economically feasible in North America.
When I was in Oklahoma City in 2001 they didn't even have recycling, and I think they had a push going to generate more waste because they were piling it in this landfill near town and it was the highest point for hundreds of miles. It's probably been renamed to Mount Oklahoma by now.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
This requires equipment to be shipped back to the manufacturers, however. If given the choice between throwing away my old parts or digging up documents to find out where to ship my stuff to, my parts will be in the trash without a second thought.
KappaStone
If it was profitable we already would be.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
The link is here
A snippet:
The Georgia Institute of Technology in partnership with Dell Computer Corporation of Round Rock, Texas is pleased to announce a one-day computer equipment-recycling event in Atlanta. The event will be held at the Alexander Memorial Coliseum parking lot on the Georgia Tech campus on Saturday, July 12, 2003 from 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM. The Coliseum is located on 10th Street off the I-75/85 Connector in downtown Atlanta. Participants are asked to enter the Coliseum via Fowler and 8th Street. The general public is encouraged to bring any brand of old computer-related equipment--computers, computer monitors, keyboards, mice, printers or other peripherals to the site for collection and recycling by Dell.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
It is a little different burying paper/food waste vs. electronics. The paper/food will break down fairly harmlessly, but electronics have all kinds of nasties (arsenic, lead, a bunch of stuff I can't spell) that can easily leach into the water supply.
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?
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Raw materials are something, for the most part, will run out eventually. If people are not concerned with the filling of Landfills in the US or any other country with lot's of free land, then they should be concerned with using all of the earths precious materials. Were going to have shortages in a lot of items, even in our lifetimes. Let's look ahead
Well, that's where government regulation comes in. One of the ways a free market fails is the environment. If a good-hearted company incurs extra cost by being environmentally friendly while their evil competitors do not, their products will be more expensive than the competitors and they will fail. This is a very much an all or none deal, and the only way to make sure everyone helps the environment is with governmental laws. If you RTFA you will find that this is why the Japanese recycling plant was built, to comply with new environmental laws. Don't worry, I'm sure Congress and Bush will be drafting and approving a similar bill any day now. ;)
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
we have one of those centers here in my town.. But I simply strip the machine of useable things (32 meg and larger 72pin and 30 pin Simms are worth gold!) and simply deposit them at their gate after hours.
I certianly am not going to pay them $30.00 to "recycle it" when I can throw it away for free. (My town has free trash pickup... smart idea.. higher taxes but free trash = a clean city.)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
GE Medical systems has a salvage operation, where they take field returns of computers, circuit boards, monitors, x-ray tubes, and traded-in equipment. They test items that have a demand, and resell them if possible, and then the rest goes into the process.
There is a group of people who snip the gold contact fingers off of circuit boards - the gold contacts go to one process, the boards go off to China for reuse of the components (so, that cheap Chinese toy you buy, might have 15 year old resisters that used to be in an Xray machine!). The CRTs are, as the article mentioned, separated for leaded vs. unleaded glass; chassis are stripped, steel & aluminum go off into their own recycling places.
Some of the more intersting stuff is the tungsten rotors from the Xray tubes - some seriously heavy stuff, and the mu-metal from inside of some monitors and image intensifiers. Some of the scrap they come up with is painfully expensive stuff, some of it is toxic, and all of it would end up in a dump somewhere if they weren't doing it.
Of course, GE being GE, they're not doing this just because it's a good thing to do, but I understand that they actually turn a profit at all of this. I'm guessing other GE businesses do it to, and I'd be surprised if there aren't dozens or hundreds of places in the US doing it already. If there aren't, maybe it'd be a good thing to look into.
A government mandate requring manufacturers to recycle 50% of the parts of new televions will encourage manufacturers to continue making older, better understood, CRT based TVs.
New TVs based on LCD technology use much less than 1/2 the raw materials, but those components probably aren't as frequently recycled.
Therefore, consumers don't get the technology that they prefer, and more waste is generated. Thanks, government!
The answer: Charge a fee based on how nasty the stuff is to dispose of properly. Those components that get recycled are free of fees. The higher the fee - the more stuff that gets recycled - or not built in the first place, as people switch to other products not so environmentally damaging.
The problem with the answer: What would be the fee on a gallon of gas or a TV? No one can really be sure.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
Here in California, we have a tax on many recyclable products (soda cans and bottles). The tax is called CRV and is usually something small, like $0.14. They refund the tax when you recycle the bottle or can. I think they should have a CRV for electronic components. That way, you might have more incentive to recycle them.
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The discussion thusfar seems to have identified two major issues (and one minor one) that must be overcome before such a program could exist in the United States.
1. Land - We've got a lot of it over here, but the bottleneck to starting something like this is probably not so much a question of whether or not its easier to make landfills. The question is one of transport. How can any recycling operation afford to ship 22 pounds (10 kg) of monitor from an office in Lemmon, SD, once every 6 months, and still hope to turn a profit? Japan has the "advantage" of being compact. We don't.
2. Law - Landfills are cheap & easy. Recycling is less profitable. Will we be trying to implement this state by state? Does the federal government have any authority to mandate such a disposal regime under the interstate commerce power?
3. Will the RIAA object to anyone recycling a DRM enabled device under the DMCA?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
A reactive approach would be when it becomes a serious problem (ie we have no landfill space to put this stuff in what do we do.) A pro-active approach does something about it to prevent it from becoming a serious problem.
Most plastic (would say "all" but I'm not 100% sure 'bout that) doesn't recycle all that well. Something breaks down in the process such that the resulting plastic isn't as good as that newly produced. So most plastic ends up being reused in ways such as insulating filler for pillows and jackets. I know plastic soda bottles are used for that purpose; can computer plastics be used in a similar manner?
Anyway, until this is resolved, plastic will not be recycled as much as we'd all like. I for one hope that someone finds a way to prevent the degradation.
- Leo
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
"Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle drugs."
Dell has trashed its prison labor plans because of some bad news surfacing about unsafe work environments. Apparently Dell was just handing them computers and saying "well, recycle them" without proper tools or training.
As far as reducing e-waste this has to be a top down process starting with design and manufacture of the product. You need to use components that require less resouces and waste to produce, packaging that separates easier, and service plans that promote recycling near the end-of-life. Many Japanese firms have created timelines for removing all lead from their computers and reaching carbon dioxide milestones for manufacturing.
HP does have a program that gives you a rebate if you send them an old computer but it's really a raw deal. You pay them $50 to recycle your computer then they give you a $50 gift certificate that's only good at their online store on specific non-sale, non-ink, non-toner, non-paper items and expires after 30 days. Not to mention you have to buy something that's $10 more than the certificate value. I was thinking of recycling a bunch of computers here but there's no way I'd PAY $300 to ship it off to them only to get forced into buying 6 digital cameras at $180 each.
Unfortunately what they don't tell you is that about 80% of the collected e-waste is shipped to third world countries. See export harm at:. htm
http://www.svtc.org/cleancc/pubs/technotrash
Dell uses prison labor to do their recycling. Recycling is usually pulling some parts which have little value and sending the rest overseas and to landfills.
However, there are systems such as plasma torch processes at ~8000 degrees C that are non-polluting
(everything is closed cycle) which can recover all the raw chemicals. Japan has these plants for household waste. Unfortunately no venture capitalist in the U.S. will back one (~10M) since they only have good profit returns rather than 10X returns in 2 years. I know, I wrote a business plan for one and found out disinterested they are in plants with just 'good' profit returns. My own university 'venture office' laughed and said come back when I had a biotech or computer idea.