Slashdot Mirror
Manufacturing 1 PC Takes 1.8 Tons Of Raw Material
remy writes "Although most of it (1.5 metric tons) is water, a study from the United Nations University details the raw materials used in the manufacture of a PC and 17" CRT. That's an incredible environmental cost per PC, and a very strong argument for trying to leverage older equipment, not to mention upgrading rather than replacing."
For anyone in the Bay Area you might want to the check out the Alameda Computer Resource Center (ACCRC). They recycle just about anything electronic, but they also load up Linux on old computers and give them to schools, non-profits, and developing nations. Very cool organization. Located in Berkeley. www.accrc.org
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
From the article: ...Williams suggests redesigning network cards to allow the PC to go to sleep and then wake it should there be any important network traffic."
"Too many computers at companies are prevented from entering their standby mode by LAN traffic, which keeps them awake and consuming power even while they are not in use, he said.
Hasn't that already been done in the form of Wake-on-LAN?
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." -Albert Einstein
Actually, you should run the tap in any place with older plumbing. Some study showed that most of the lead leached into the standing water in the pipes is concentrated in the first water coming from the tap.
50 gallons?
:
You run your water through a double distiller or something?
For most municipal water supplies it goes like
- Filter large crud and let dirt drop out of suspension
- Add a flocculant and coagulant to settle the fines (micron sized particles) to the bottom and drain them off.
- Chlorinate / UV treat the water.
- Pipe to home.
Whilst there is some loss from pumping the settled crud from the bottom of thickeners , it's nowhere near 50:1
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
For me, it is a dilema. Between an upgrade, you get a more efficient hardware at similar price-energy ratio, thus more energy "friendly".
But with these, you get headache junking old hardware, and suffocate our habitat.
Consider this option, Computers for Africa
A similar report on BBC, Computers 'must become greener
Hey, that's my password you are typing
The BBC is running a report from one of the UKs regional recycling centers
"It says a PC uses more than ten times its weight in fossil fuels and chemicals to manufacture."
"One of the ways of extending the life of a computer is to make it more easy to upgrade, rather than the current trend constantly replacing them for a better model as soon new versions become available."
That first paragraph is a little misleading. The author makes it sound like the material cost to produce a PC is the same as it is to build a car. He's actually comparing the raw materials needed for a PC to the final weight of a car. Confused me for a while.
Well, I think it's really important to realize that 1kg = 2.2lbs, not the other way arround. Thus: 240kg of fossil fuels is 529lbs; 22kg of chemicals is 48lbs; while 1,500kg of water is 3,300lbs of water, it's still ~395 gallons.
However, if you run a bath every day (which on average uses around 200 liters of water), you'll be there within the week.
So if we just count the amount of raw materials used, and ignore they way these are contaminated or otherwise 'removed' from the environment, the amount of materials used for a new PC and 17" CRT are comparable to a week's worth of personal hygiene.
From here http://symptom.mit.edu/mt/tso2.htm
" Another cause for concern is the large quantity of water used. Manufacturing a computer involves using large amounts of water to rinse off the components. Estimates say that repeatedly rinsing printed circuit boards requires 33,000 liters of water per computer and more than 12,000 liters for semiconductors (Computers and Society, p7). This water cannot be recycled because of the chemical contamination from solvent residue, and thus must be stored. However, as with any chemical storage, as mentioned above, there exists some risk of leakage. When leakage occurs, the polluted water can go into the soil and cause the drinking water in the area to become poisoned."
So before you all keep ranting on about the reusability of water and you dont have to catr because you are American and SOOOO much better than the half of the world who need that water to keep their children alive, just check your facts.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
Simply bending metal is I am afraid like saying meat comes from the supermarket. Last time I checked there where no metal sheet mines. It either has to be taken from ore wich is a gigantic process involving insane amounts of rock being boiled to extract tiny amounts of metal or recovered from scrap iron. Even the later still requires a lot of work to sort it all out (I am not even going to mention the costs of removing plastics and paint from the scrap iron) melt it down and get it into nice metal sheets for bending.
Still the case is probably the least wastefull. but also the least likely to be replaced in an upgrade. Why after all. For several generations of PC's it has been ATX motherboards so one size fits all. Power supply? Unless it is broken again why upgrade?
No the biggest offender is the MOBO. Countless different materials wich are difficult to recover and only yielding tiny amounts. Scrap the case and you got a few kilos of metal. Scrap a mother board and you are talking a few grams of sellable stuff. You can get paid for a truckload of cases, you will have to pay someone to scrap the mobos.
Mobo is a bastard for other reasons as well. The case can be used over multiple generations and so can stuff like the monitors and HD's. But with each new CPU generation you need a new MOBO.
Your last comment is so wrong that I think you really are someone who thinks meat comes from a supermarket?
Water that has been used can be used again? Not unless your into watersports.
Polluted water does not magically clean itself. Sure water polluted by going through humans and animals gets cleaned eventually after several years going throught the natural cycle. Same is not true for industrial polluted water. Heavy metals have a tendency to stick around in the water supply.
Yes water can be recycled but if you are an industry then you need to do it yourselve and this costs money. A lot of it. Best would be if factories used a closed cycle. However most do not and so the water is very much wasted. Unless you enjoy drinking water with the extra tang of lead and mercury.
Drinkable water is a resource that renews itself at a certain rate. Sadly we humans seem very capable of consuming it a greater rate. Luckily we are also capable of adding to the renewal process but this seems to only happen when people or companies are ordered at pain of fines to do this.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The world has plenty of fresh water - it is just not in the right places, and it is very wexpensive to shift. Wateraid and similar organisations are trying to get relatively small amounts of clean water to places where there is very little water indeed. By contrast, Canada has thousands of times more fresh water thanit will ever need for drinking and agriculture. Aside from the pollution question, ther is no harm in Canada "wasting" a bit of its fresh water. The same water consumption would be criminal in Namibia.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
We're not talking about doing the dishes here - the manufacture of microprocessors require huge amounts of water to wash the residue off of the wafers during the photolithography process.y t_1117.htmo file/read_profile/1,1990,NDUtL0FJR0Vudmlyb25tZW50Y WwvSW5kdXN0cnlfSXNzdWVzLUluZHVzdHJpZXMgd2l0aCBFbnZ pcm9ubWVudGFsIElzc3Vlcw==,00.html
Like darkroom photography, this involves the use of potentially noxious chemicals.
Now, the report is quite sketchy on what all that water is used for and that is, IMO, a glaring omission. But, suffice to say that the water leaving a chip fab probably won't be classed as safe drinking water.
Here are some links:
http://www.svtc.org/media/articles/2003/benzene_n
http://home.aigonline.com/AIGEnvironmental/ind_pr
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
A metric ton - which is what he explicitly said - is 1000kg. So 240kg is near as dammit 1/4 of a ton.
A typical adult will require two litres of water a day to remain healthy. That amount is recommended by survivalist guide both for outdoors and natural disasters.
Florida state has a web calculator for you to work out your total water consumption:
There's another one by South Central Texas Regional Water Planning Group
The same thing about the world is also true about Canada - in most towns and cities there are the typical restrictions about watering lawns, etc., and occasional water shortages. That's why there are concerns about U.S. companies trying to force Canada to agree to sell water under NAFTA - they're not going to be taking the immense amounts of water up in the N.W.T. that will never see a human being before it washes into the sea, but water closer to the border that the cities might need. The idea of paying for access to your own water - that has been guaranteed to Americans under some ridiculous NAFTA contract - isn't very appealing.
It is too bad. That every New PC I find uses more power then my old one.
My 486 150watt Power Supply
My P200 250watt Power Supply
A P4 350watt Power Supply
Unless you upgrade from a PC to a laptop you don't really have a a good saving in power.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This is such a non-story. What is the point of the study?
The computer manufacturing business is one of the most cut throat businesses on the planet. Every tiny bit of slack in the process must be eliminated in order to stay competitive. This means that they must use as few raw materials as possible. Energy consumption is minimized. The part count is kept to a minimum. There is as little waste as possible.
Let's talk about some of the positive impacts of computer use. I use mine with VPN to handle work for customers without traveling. This results in fewer plane rides, rental cars, and sitting in traffic. In my professional work I use computers to monitor environmental impact at manufacturing and industrial plants. I also use them to help make the processes more efficient which lessens the environmental impact of the activities.
Computers are also used to mange traffic in large cities. They are used to manage public transportation facilities. I've done work for logistics companies that manage the shipment of goods to reduce fuel consumption, lessening the environmental impact of these activities.
Let's face it. Computers are the most valuable modern tool that we have developed. The impact of manufacturing one is more than offset by all of the positive impacts of their use.
Worrying about the environmental impact of producing this valuable tool when we already know how competitive it is to manufacture them and how efficiently it is already done seems really silly.
Perhaps we should do a study of the impact of all of the CO2 that is emitted during worthless UN debates. Certainly it is impacting global warming in an adverse fashion.
Hey UN, stop worrying about inane crap like this. Last I heard there was some shit going down in Haiti that you might want to concentrate on. While you're at it, Kim Jong Il is starving his people. I'm sure there are a lot of other areas of much higher impact that you could concentrate on. You do some really good work out there. This type of study isn't helping though.
Wow, I doubted your numbers as first but they look like they're right. (1.5 tons of water ~= 1.36 m3)
Water is pretty damn heavy.
OK, so it wasn't very percise; it was intended as an order-of-magnitude figure, because after some googling, everywhere seems to disagree on usage. Several reports cite 30-50 tons water / ton steel in China; 5-6 tons water/ton steel in the USA and Japan due to higher tech and more regulation; another couple cite 'a ton of steel can take 280 tons of water', though this sounds doubtful in comparison to the others. An Indian report cites up to 300 tons.
Google for "ton of steel" "tons of water".
-Chris
sci.electronics.repair FAQ will teach you both how to fix the most common faults in equipment and give you all the safety info you need. However as for the latter, all I can say is read, read and reread - it's your life after all...
-- Sig Sig Sputnik
>Water is extraoridinarly heavy.
Um, water really can't be anything except
"ordinarily" heavy, since it happens the be
the standard unit for mass density.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
"1.5 tons of water is about the same amount of water that you use taking a shower or a bath."
Actually, er, no. My shower head is a 2.5 gpm water saver, but let's consider an old fashioned 6 gpm water waster mega fountain. Now, I like long showers, but more than 10 minutes? I don't think so. So 6 gpm times 10 minutes is 60 gallons, or 229 kg - a far cry from 1500 kg!
Now, since I am using only 2.5 gpm and it has an instant on-off button on it, I only need maybe 50 kg even for a 10 minute shower.
BTW, the water saver shower heads provide a very satisfying output.
1m^3 has a mass of exactly 1 Tonne (Metric) by definition
1m^3 = 1.102 Short (US) Tons
1m^3 = 0.984 Long (Old UK) Tons
I'm amazed to see ppl on /. surprised at the weight of water. Over here in Europe where we use the metric system it's common knowledge 1000Kg=1Tonne=1m^3 as it's so easy to remember.
My spelling isn't bad, I'm evolving the language
The way I was taught was to ground the metal tip of a screwdriver, and hold onto the insulated end and let it probe around the coils on the back of the CRT and such. Expect sparks. BIG ones.
You were taught wrong. Shorting out caps like that is a good way to destroy them, especially electrolytics. The proper way is a big resister, preferably 5 - 10 watt, about 50 ohm, on the end of a plastic rod. That way you drain the caps without damaging them, your eyes, or your screwdriver.