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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.
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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
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.