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."

Comments

Huh what?

[autopr0n]

1.5 tons of water. But all of that gets reused eventually. I mean, it's not like it gets jettisoned into space, or converted into energy.

I mean I suppose things like fossil fuels get converted into useless byproducts, but most of the stuff would not be. This is accounting is beyond a little suspicious. I mean, how many tons of stuff does a person eat and then shit out in their lifetime. Probably a lot more then 1.8 tons.

And would upgrading really make that much of a difference? You upgrade a couple of times, then you need a new mobo, and after a while you need a new case to fit your new motherboard, and you practically have a new PC anyway. Its more like a gradual change to a new computer (combined with enough spare parts to build old machines) rather then large, discrete steps.

Re:Huh what?

[Eivind]

That is true. Saying that 1500 liters of water gets "used" in the process of making a PC is pretty useless as an indicator of ecological impact.

To be able to say something about that, you'd have to quantify how much that water got contaminated, and with what substances, what treatment it gets before it again gets released somewhere, and how and when it eventually gets re-released.

If I start cutting granite using diamond-blades, and cools them by flushing with water from the nearby river, I'll probably "consume" enormous amounts of water, but if I let the water go into a pool where most of the dust will settle, and then back in the river, the negative ecological impact will be truly minimal.

Much more interesting than how many liters of waters go trough my plant is instead what contamination, if any, goes into the water before it's again released. In my example that amounts to "some amount of granite-dust which mostly settles in the pool before release, and ain't *that* dangerous to begin with".

In the case of PC-manufacture, there's obviously some amount of more harmful chemical also being released. That is something we should look at, and do our very best at minimizing.

I just don't see how this "1800kg" metric is useful for anything at all, least of all for measuring environmental impact.

Re:Huh what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, exactly. And even then, byproducts from fossil fuels are useful to... plants. I'd need to see a breakdown of this guys thing to really see how geniune his criticism is.

Now, he could be talking about, say, waste water which isn't useable in its immediate state (ie, it containes acids or poisons, or whatever), but to suggest that it's "destoryed" by these processes is rather disingenuous (and a common practice among anti-techs). He should be focusing on the polluting aspects, not magically invoking "we're using stuff" while neglecting the fact that ecosystems tend to cycle, humans drink tons of water a year, doesn't mean we're "using it up." It's when we do crappy stuff like pollute that makes water "get used up."

Please, Williams, show us the pollution figures, at least those I would believe are relevant.

Re:Huh what?

[torpor]

That is true. Saying that 1500 liters of water gets "used" in the process of making a PC is pretty useless as an indicator of ecological impact.

Where does that water come from? Where does it go?

If you don't understand why its important to answer these two questions, then you're not qualified to determine whether something is or isn't 'ecologically' sound.

That 1500 liters of water, in some places, could make a huge difference to the farming and agriculture of 100's of villages. If it is being diverted by a some Globalized Computer Manufacturer instead of going into a valley basin, like it has for 1000's of years, maybe the use of that water is having an ecological impact.

Of course, though, the modern world has been so used to doing whatever it wants with water over the years, that it forgets that it doesn't actually 'belong' to anyone ... so its not surprising that its not obvious what the problem is with using 1500 litres of water to build an in-animate object useful to only a few small % of the worlds population in the effort of keeping themselves alive ...

Re:Huh what?

[Eivind]

I gave an example that perfectly illustrated what I meant. If you failed to read it, or failed to comprehend it, it's not my damn fault.

Point is, contaminating water *is* a problem, simply "using" it in some sense or other, normally isn't. Every time I take a swim in the local lake you could argue that I "use" thousands of cubic meter. That doesn't imply the ecological impact is much above zero.

Re:Huh what?

[Genda]

There are several interesting points here.

The first point of interest is that industrial use of fresh water only accounts for about 15% total water consumption in this country. Use by public consumption, such as home lawns and golf courses, wasteful water use practices (long hard showers, washing small loads of clothes or dishes without selecting proper water settings, etc.) account for over 35%. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't improve the practice of making our industries more green. It does mean that the best place to start impacting water consumption as a whole is our own homes and public landscaping.

The next interesting point involves the quickly changing technology surrounding computers. In the near future, technical breakthroughs in OLED films, and high density storage, should allow us to reduce the physical size, weight, and composition of computers, dramatically reducing their environmental impact. In fact, using green sources for the feedstock to make computer hardware, and new technology for recycling old hardare, could reduce the power and resource consumption of PC manufacture by 50%-75%. This will result in saving hundreds of billions of tons of water anually.

The last interesting issue, is that water consumption is not actually the issue. Or at least not directly. The issue has never been the direct consumption of water so much as it's been moving water from places that have to places that don't. Every one of those tons of water has a huge cost in fuel needed to transport it from source to spiggot. Add up the cost both economic and environmental for the maintainance and upkeep of the delivery infrastructure, and you're beginning to look at a serious expense for doing business. With the depletion of western aquifers, set against the stiff competition for water for agrobusiness, and the growing population in arid regions (read that as an unprecedented need for water in places that have none of their own to quench a thirsty populace), and the clear and urgent need to conserve a shrinking resource becomes self evident. In the near future, any sane business program will include the environmental cost, because in the end, we all pick up the tab for maintaining an environment that is sufficiently healthy to support basic human endeavors.

Genda

-- Not only is lunch not free, it seems that the conflicting interests in our country have found ways to make you pay for it more than once...

Re:Huh what?

[stephanruby]

If you don't understand why its important to answer these two questions, then you're not qualified to determine whether something is or isn't 'ecologically' sound.

Then, based on your reasoning, noone is qualified to determine whether something is or isn't 'ecologically' sound.

You can give me an example of where water is being misused and I can give you an example of where water is being used wisely, but in the end, those are just examples and we have no idea what's really happening to *all* that water.

It's really easy to point fingers and say "what if", "what if", and "what if", but in the end you are just as clueless as all of us.

Re:Huh what?

[DarkSarin]

Yes, but the point that many people are trying to make is that the water isn't just 'gone'. It's still around. The article doesn't tell what happens to it, or if it's usable after the fact.

If you make a PC, and use 1.5 tons of water, but after the fact 1.49 tons are put back into the environment, uncontaminated, how much have you really used?

Yes, there is some impact, but it means that the way these guys are painting the picture is hardly the end of the story.

I don't trust ecologists who rail against technology. If they want to study a situation and offer solutions to the problem (hey, if you do this, you will only use 1.1 tons of water), then I'm all ears. But to just say how bad it is that we are using so much material just for one PC is misleading (as some one else said, what about the 2nd PC), as well as nearly useless. I say nearly, because I recognize that without this, no one would even know there was a problem, and that is important.

I just wish they would offer a solution too.

When will people get it?

[Repran]

Do not appeal to save energy or water. Promote the integration of the hidden environmental costs into the framework of market economics for finding appropiate prices for water and energy!

Re:When will people get it?

[shepd]

Uhhhh... how exactly isn't this already done? I know there's a reason why CFC laden Flux Spray is expensive, and it *isn't* because the raw materials are expensive...

Re:When will people get it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, this is one of the major problems with capitalism is that no one pays for the raw materials.

I think in order to extract the raw materials, one should be forced to pay to have them put back again.

This would make recycling cheaper, and would encourage science to head in this direction.

This is especially important for things like fishing.

Of course the problem with this idea is some govts are not prepared to do things that creates an unfair short term advantage for other countries, even if in the long term it would benifet.

Re:When will people get it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh good. Because the thing I need right now, is to have things that are more expensive.

Yeah, this is also an argument for the slave trade too.

What the grandparent was stating was simply for goods to have in their costs not simply costs of production, but also cleanup costs. You could advocate that these costs should be levied upon the end-user, but if you advocate no cleanup costs at all, then you're going to live in a rubbish dump. Or wait, let me guess, you want to bribe some third-world tinpot dictator and dump your wastes there? Yeah, I guess that's an alternate model.

I'm sure that these upstanding corporate citizens won't build in an extra 2 or 3 or 15% extra profit margins for themselves when they pass those costs on to me.

Fine, so advocate a model instead whereby the end-user pays. Or the manufacturer has to accept returns of their products. Advocate a different model, but don't make fun of a perfectly reasonable suggestion that the cost of something should be the full-cost of production without being subsidised by future generations.

but is astoundingly difficult to administer in any sort of workable fashion. Like communism. Or public education.

Uhh? I dunno about communism, but high quality public education is certainly workable in most civilised countries.

But what about Macs, they last longer ...

[kiwipeso]

Sure they may use the same amount of resources to make, but seeing as they are typically used 2 - 3 times as long, wouldn't they be a net improvement on a pc ?

Re:But what about Macs, they last longer ...

[GreatDrok]

Why on earth mod this as funny? It's not funny, its a really good comment. If something lasts longer it is more environmentally friendly.

I am currently conducting such an experiment having had a Toshiba laptop that died after 18 months of daily use. The battery died, the back light died, the case cracked and chipped, the paint rubbed off within weeks. Basically it seemed to have been designed to be disposable. Now I have an Apple iBook G4 and so far it still looks really good after daily hard use for four months and cost 2/3rds of the price of the Toshiba too. By this point my old Toshiba looked like a wreck. I fully expect this laptop to survive significantly longer than the old one and therefore be considerably more environmentally friendly. In addition, the thing draws far less juice and generates a lot less heat so that is good too.

Macs - the environmentally friendly choice!

Re:But what about Macs, they last longer ...

[Jarnis]

You calling Apple enviromentally sound? The same Apple that makes IPODs with a battery that cannot be replaced without shipping the whole ipod to a service center and back? Not to mention the new 'mini ipod' which has 'disposable' written all over it...

Want to fix the 'disposable' economy? Outlaw ridiculously short (90 day, 6 month) warranties and force - by consumer protection law - the manufacturers to make sure their stuff is *durable* by forcing them to replace it at no cost if it fails within the expected lifecycle of the product. End result is better, more durable products with only a slightly higher pricetag.

Upgrading uses resources too

[Mostly a lurker]

As the article notes, fabrication of IC's is very resource intensive. So, even if I can replace my graphics card, CPU and RAM without upgrading the rest of my machine, the environmental savings may not be as great as the article suggests.

That seems to be a heavy PC

[Advocadus Diaboli]

Remove the 1.5 tons of water and you have 300 kg of other material. The average wheight of a PC is much less than that. So the question is where does the matter go? Or in other words: I can't imagine that a PC manufacturer that is doing lets say 1 million PC per year is moving 300000 tons of material through its factory. That would be 1000 tons every day, just imagine the number of trucks you need to supply that mass.

Let's turn this around for a minute

[Underholdning]

In other news:
80% of the raw material used to manufacture a PC is pure water! Water that can be recycled! Compare this to the manufacturing of a car, where 20% is water, you got yourself a very enviromentally friendly piece of equipment.
Tree huggers unite! Buy a PC and save the environment.
In conclusion, numbers and statistics are in the eye of the beholder.

Re:Let's turn this around for a minute

[puffing_billy69]

80% of the raw material used to manufacture a PC is pure water! Water that can be recycled!

And I'm sure you're familiar with all of the processes involved in turning the water back into its pristine state we began with.

Why, they could surely just pipe the water from the factory outlet back into the factory inlet, right?

I think you might be overlooking something, son. It isn't just shite & piss we're talking about here. Hundreds of different kinds of contaminations, many involving heavy metals.

Yes, I agree completely with you about numbers and statistics, but I don't think the impact of any amount of water contamination, or the effect if it being released unpurified, is seen by you here.

Its not really 1.8 Metric Tonnes

[Hungus]

According to the first Paragraph of the article 1.5 of the 1.8 Tonnes is water or roughtly 83.3% of the amount listed. I do agree its pretty obscene the amount of fuel that goes into the manufacturing process however (240kg of fuel). I would also stand behind the articles point of

"donating the old computer so that it may continue to be used offer potential energy savings of between five and 20 times those gained by recycling"

So what can be done curb this kind of thing? Well I for one would suggest some of the following:

Donation of older systems

Businesses really do not need to upgrade as often as they do Is there really that much functionality to the officeworker of an athlon FX 64 bit machine compared to a P200? I mean Word perfect and Lotus 1,2,3 both worked great on mine under OS/2 2.1 Now I am talking for business purposes hear not gaming or rendering or scientific maches servers etc. Just your typical iffice users 8-5 kind of thing

Move more and more to clustered computing. Need a render farm after hours? Use the machines already in place. When I worked for a design firm we had a render farm but I would use the other network machines after hours to speed things up considerably and it meant I didn't have to upgrade so rapidly.

Boot diskless terminals (kind of like the reverse of the previous comment) another 10 users may equal a change in processor and memmory and the addition of a new drive no need to build an entire system for each one.

What other responsible actions can we think of to turn the tide? I know the computer manufacturers certainly dont want to see it happen but the whole situation has become quite silly.

BTW just because of this topic I am posting from my 7350 dual 180Mhz 604e server

Re:It's a pure propaganda.

[Ganennon]

Once they're made, though, they treat the environment better than old cars generally do.

Upgrade less often???

[PhotoBoy]

According to the article we need to upgrade less often, it says buying a new PC every 2-3 years is too much strain on the environment.

Uh-oh. Aside from the case I usually change everything in my computer every 6 months! If I'd followed this advice and still had my PC from 4 years ago I'd be trying to play Half Life 2 and Doom 3 on a P2 266 and Riva TNT this summer. Scary.

I can't see many people following this advice unfortunately.

At least monitors are a somewhat stable investment

[zakezuke]

While monitors have a somewhat limited lifespan... I think it would be more likely to encourage users to keep their monitors unless their current one is inadaquate. I'm on an old Sony 20se for example, one of my favorites, older but still pretty damn good. I know of many people who just get new monitors with their new pcs just because it doesn't cost all that much when their older monitor will do the trick.

At least in America, there has not really been a compelling reason to upgrade TV sets more then once a decade, unless the old set broke. Not that we didn't get new spiffy TVs with AV inputs, fancy svideo inputs, remote controls, or the new HDTVs with 3 inputs

Sadly, any thrift store that I frequent will not accept a monitor as a donation, or a TV set for that matter. It makes me sad as even a 14inch monitor for $20 = one step closer to a PC for some.

And what about running costs...

[rediguana]

Thats a bit of water to create a computer, but as we know, creation is but a small cost of running something. How much water is used to power said computer? (ok, we use hydro for most of our power in NZ). I'll bet that far more resources are used to keep them running than to create them in the first place...

And compared to running the PC

[Barnett]

Just to put these numbers in perspective:
Running the PC and monitor (using lets say 500W) for a year during office hours (2000 hours) would consume 1000kWh. A typical power station would produce 1000kg of CO2 to generate that. Leaving the PC on all the time (8760 hours) would produce 4380kg CO2 per year.

Then don't bother, see what happens

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a matter of argument, it's a matter of that the earth has finate resources, and by wasting them you're literally killing the future generation. So go on about how Joe Sixpack needs his SUV/4WD car and new computer every 20 months, you or your children may literally end up dying of starvation in your old age as a result. You can scorn environmental concern as being some paranoid left-wing plot, but however you perceive it or what social groups you associate it with, it does not change the cold hard reality that a CPU actually cuts a slice of materials of a limited pie.

You got two kinds of water.

[SmallFurryCreature]

Drinkable and non-drinkable. The last is in plentifull supply. The first is not.

Usually during manufacturing they use clean drinkable water wich emerges from the other end un-drinkable. There are systems in wich the cycle is closed or in wich polution does not take place but these are rare and expensive. Polluted water is in fact a useless byproduct. Unfit for drinking (for obvious reasons) unfit for cooling (even drinking water isn't clean enough for that) and unfit for production unless your a Pepsi fan.

But you can filter water to become drinkable can't you? Well yes. To a certain degree and at a cost. So if factory X takes water from a river and then dumps it back with pollution then it is taking Y amount of drinkable water from everyone down stream.

So this is probably the figure they are talking about. No water is not in itself in any danger of running out. We can always build more refining installations. But these in turn too cause pollution (how do you think they are powered) wich then you will have to clean up. Unless you like your drink with heavy metals?

Bah! These people will publish any story.

[jigyasubalak]

Considering that they have rejected two of my (sole)story contributions, you'd think that they'd find more earthshaking/non-silly stories than I submitted.

I use 22kgs of fossil fuel almost every three weeks to commute to my place of work, here in India. People in developed countries burn lot more. Now, according to their arguement do we stop using our cars?

Re:While I like the message...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't like the message because it sounds like United Nations "we have nothing to do so we'll invent some work" bullshit.

Where are the facts? Like, how much of the 1.5 tons is water? Let's take water out of the equation and compare everything else - and then get the statistics on other goods. Like how many tons to build a car, television, radio, microwave, etc.

using water?

[muffen]

...requires at least 240 kilograms of fossil fuels, 22 kilograms of chemicals and 1,500 kilograms of water.

So, 1500Kg's is water... How do you use water such that it doesn't go back into circulation?
I mean, are they keeping the water in the computers or blasting it off into space after using it?

Resonably, the water is put back where it came from after being used and cleaned, so really it requires 300Kg's of raw material to produce a PC.

monitor requires at least 240 kilograms of fossil fuels

Monitors run on petrol?
I'd like to know how they got these figures. I mean, they didn't do something retarded like checking how much energy is used to produce a monitor, checking how much petrol would be required to produce that energy and then just using that figure?

Depending on where you are, the energy could be coming from water/wind/sun, or some other enviromentally friendly source.

I don't doubt for a second that PC's are unfriendly to the enviroment, and we should try to recycle... but 1800Kgs, when 1500 of it is water.. c'mon...

Yes and?

[SmallFurryCreature]

Unless you are one of the "meat comes from the supermarket" people then this study is taking the proper approach.

Sure I could say that all the resources needed for making 1 pc is:

• 1 case avg 5kg
• 1 mobo 300 grams?
• 2 cpu 200 grams?
• 4 x 1gb memory. 100 grams?
• Coolers. 1kg
• PSU. 1kg
• etc

and in way I would be right. But only to people who would believe this stuff is delivered by little daemons in the middle of the night.

So the figures are the costs in raw materials used in the complete production process of a pc. This is btw not enviromentalist. It is economics. Only by knowing what it costs to produce something can you determine its worth and thereby the minimum selling price.

The sad thing

[pkaral]

The sad thing is that you won't save all of these resources by not purchasing that computer. Sure, the first order effect will be that one less computer is manufactured. However, the second order effects in a market economy will be:

1. Less demand for the resources in question
2. A drop in the price of the resources in question
3. As a result of cheaper resources: More demand for the resources for other uses

There will also be second order effects in terms of your own behavior, depending on what you get instead of the monitor. If you get a digital camera instead, the environment may be no better off (or even worse). If you, on the other hand, spend it for a massage, a restaurant dinner or a nice painting, then the environment will still remain grateful.

In the end, global resource consumption will reflect the aggregated preferences of us consumers in terms of resource-hungry vs. resource economical products and services.

It's hard not to upgrade

[dysprosia]

It's hard not to upgrade when commercial software (which, yes, most people still) gravitates towards being bloated and resource-inefficient, when hardware companies tout their new products as the "Next Great Thing", when Joe and Jane Bloggs users want to upgrade because they think that it'll make their computer experience less crash-worthy and more fantastic...

And all these companies who depend on hardware upgrades for incoming cashflow still need to stay in the black. So I don't think a computer recycling-culture is going to develop any time soon, until the alternatives become a little more well known.

Re:While I like the message...

[chrome]

Yup, I have to concur, doctor. Its all very nice to say it costs you X amount of water, for instance - but water isn't exactly lost is it? I mean, its going to find its way back into the system via evaporation etc. "Not. Bloody. Likely." Indeed.

Re:Environmentalism = Hatred of mankind

[BeCre8iv]

Funny that - I am an environmentalist because our children shouldnt have to clean up our shit.

We dont need mahogony trim in our cars - but we do need mahogony forests to absorb the pollution our cars create.

Also- dont equate environmentalists with the NIMBY bastards who moan about the eyesore on the Horizon. when its that or a Fossil/Nuke solution and where are they gonna build that?

anyhow - you are oprobably just trolling

Re:Check your local laws

[salesgeek]

That always amased me about the US: How manufacturers and sellers don't have to take responsibility for the stuff they sell.

Perhaps because after you buy their product, they no longer own it?

Re:While I like the message...

[stevey]

Isn't that a false economy though?

I'd imagine if we're really caring about the energy usage, etc, it's better to scrap the old machine and get a new one with lower power consumption, and better a energy saving mode

For the steak of arguement

[nfabl]

It costs something like 10,000 litres of water per kilogram of cotton.

Or ~1000 litres per kilogram of beef.

Clearly, we should all be eating and wearing monitors.

Re:Valorlux: ditch your old PC to access our flash

[Permission Denied]

What I find amusing is that they felt it necessary to mention that they are not endorsing an American company. Assuming this was a boilerplate message (which it certainly appears to be), that would indicate more people are worried about requiring technology from an American firm than making the website universally accessible.

Re:While I like the message...

[ajagci]

That is to say, if you have 5 monitors (I do), that's equal an entire month of your total energy consumption? As a comparison, it takes about 250 kilos of gasonline to drive from Los Angeles to New York City. So, they are positing that it takes as much energy to produce a CRT as to propel 1.5 tons of metal and flesh 2800 miles at 70mph. Not. Bloody. Likely.

Well, and how do you think that CRT got to you? By carrier pigeon? Transportation, heating, etc. are all part of manufacturing.

And their statistic didn't even include the fact that it takes much more plant material to produce that coal in the first place.

Re:Apologies for my cynicism but...

[gtrubetskoy]

1.5 tons of water?

1.5 tons is 1.5 cubic meters of water, which is only about a bath tub full (or two, depending on the size).

Facts vs Fiction

[purduephotog]

I find it very humourous that one second you tell me to get some humanity... and then call me a 'stupid moron' and suggest that I should choke to death on a hamburger and fries. Interesting, I think we've proven which one of us is more qualified to discuss the ecological impacts of using water- a Chemical Engineer Level IV (capable of designing plants) or someone that compares others to sheep (btw, I collect sheep- can you send me a photo of you and one for my collection?)

Now, on to your post- when my company built a plant in China they allowed the workers to bring their families in and shower, clean up, etc. Shanty towns sprung up next door. I'm pretty sure that it wasn't entirely voluntary, but in the end it worked out for both groups.

Now lets talk about water regulation: In the US water outlets are strickly regulated. Plants must have water monitoring tools, take samples, observe, and report any and all spills or problems, on a regular basis or face severe economic penalties.

I've seen silver sludge, as black as your heart-felt comments, come out drinkable. In fact, I watched the lead engineer down a glass that, moments before, was as toxic as your words.

Of course, I don't agree with the economic policies that force pollution out to 3rd will countries- but there isnt' a damn thing that can be done to stop it until those countries force the same regulations.

Anyways, thank you for holding up some more posters of preservation. It's been entertaining.

Computers are not "static" consumer appliances

[Vandil X]

Unlike your refrigerator, radio, television, or microwave, you can't just buy a computer today and expect it to run the latest software 2-4 years from now.

While your refrigerator, radio, television, or microwave can handle the latest in food and radio-broadcast entertainment, software has an ever-changing specification. The computer must conform to the software.

You can upgrade a computer to some extent, but eventually, the system bus speeds reach their peak (if the hardware itself hasn't died).

I'm all for upgrading a PC or "recycling" an old one to people who have less sophisticated needs for a computer.

Even a 486 or a Pre-G3 Power Macintosh can surf the web and do email.

But I'm a gamer and an enthusiast. I upgrade/rebuild my rig constantly, and as far as I know, only my basement suffers from the aggregation of old parts... at least the ones I can't use to build mini Linux PCs.

Re:Make me feel good...

[Anonymous Coward]

Kid, keep your hands out of your monitor; especially if you don't know anything about them!

There's probably 25,000V to 30,000V driving the CRT plus a 500V preamp.

If your monitor goes replace it. Period.

If you're emotionally attached to it take it to a qualified repair facility.

Re:While I like the message...

[PReDiToR]

You may want to rethink your figures if you assess the components in your PC instead of just the CPU.

486/150w inc 5400rpm drive and single speed CDROM

P200/250w inc CD Writer, 7200rpm drive and network crad, fan on CPU, bigger fan in PSU, soundcard and USB

P4/350 inc 2 or more 7200rpm HDs, fans on case, CPU, northbridge, CD and DVD writers (50x speed of the 486 version), soundcard pumping out 6 channels and gigabit networking. Just for fun lets throw in Firewire, USB2 and WiFi, all options onboard.

Your CPU doesn't use those watts, I have a system with 6 7200rpm drives, 2 opticals, 8 fans and lights. I have a 550w PSU running a processor that I *could* run on 150w if put the old 486 drives in my box and turned off all the motherboard devices.

Re:While I like the message...

[C10H14N2]

yes and it costs about a dollar to send that volume clear across the pacific. The point is that within the final cost of the item in question, there is not enough to support the claims of the article. Multiply their figures out over even a modest level of production and the results become absurd.

Re:While I like the message...

[the_mad_poster]

Transportation is distribution, not manufacturing. If they want to include that, then it takes that much raw material to "manufacture and distribute" a single monitor. If they include warehousing the equipment, then its "manufacture, distribute, and store".

I don't buy THAT for a second either. Much as I like the idea of reusing old equipment and being nice to the environment, etc. etc... this stinks of number manipulation through and through.

Re:Make me feel good...

[SillyNickName4me]

Since when do we give a flying f**k about the U.N.s concerns? Keep the U.S. out of the U.N. and the U.N. out of the U.S.

A few things you might want to consider...

• Last time the USA thought it did not have to care about the rest of the world, it got involved in what we now call the 2nd world war.
• The USA was the big proponent of setting up the UN, that it turned into what it is now is something you can in part blame the same USA for due to its absurd abuse of its veto power (look it up, there are more vetos from the USA then all other members of the security council together)
• We need a body to deal with problems and issues that are larger then the USA, don't forget the USA is less then 5% of the world in population

Bottomline, what you propose is unrealistic and very dangerous. If you have issues with the UN, and there are definitely some areas where you should have issues, then work on getting it fixed.

PC industry needs to change

[Junks Jerzey]

No, I'm not a Luddite or environmental wacko. But the PC industry is pretty messed up right now and really needs to change. To wit:

1. CPU power consumption keeps increasing at a dramatic rate, even though the vast majority of PCs are underutilized by ~80%. That is, people buy a 2.8GHz P4 because it's the lowest end model sold by Dell in a desktop (seriously!), even though they just do web browsing, play simple Flash games, and use Word. Fortunately, LCD monitors have more than balanced this out, at least for now, but with 150W CPUs coming before year's end, I don't know how long it will last.

2. Games drive things far too much. Why does every PC made since 1997 include AGP hardware? Why do you get a heatsink and fan-laden nVidia 5200 with most all-but-bottom-end PCs? Why have power supplies jumped up to the 400-450W range? Because there's a very vocal gamer market that has been driving PC hardware development. In reality, high-end PCs games don't even sell all that well. The huge selling games are things like The Sims and Roller Coaster Tycoon and generally not cutting edge 3D games.

3. PCs are far too general purpose. They're designed to do everything, but nothing really well. It's still far too common to see Xbox games that utterly blow away PC games, even though the Xbox has 64MB *total* RAM and a PC game requires 128MB of *video* RAM. You have people buying the P4 Extreme Edition solely because they spend most of their time doing video compression. Really, wouldn't a video compression chip that outperforms the CPU by 10x be preferrable? (Note: This is coming in the next nVidia chipset this spring.) Wouldn't we be better off with CPUs designed more for languages like Python, ones that use 1/10 the power of existing processors? Ericsson prototyped a CPU for their concurrent functional language Erlang, and they got *massive* speedups and a power consumption in the range of 1 watt.

4. Processor speed, memory requirements, they've all gotten very soft and meaningless. You see tables in Dell catalogs saying that 2.8GHz is good for email and web browsing, but 3.0GHz is much better for games. Hello? That's only a 7% performance difference! Similarly, people blindly advocate 1GB over 512MB without any real reason.

Economies of scale

[PMuse]

Don't you just love pricing? Imagine what you or I would pay to acquire:

240 kilograms of fossil fuels

22 kilograms of chemicals

1,500 kilograms of water
Far more than $250, right? But these corps can acquire all that, turn it into a 17-inch monitor, ship it to me, and make a profit. It boggles the mind.

Re:Heat is a VERY big contaminant!

[SillyNickName4me]

Well, this is a nice story, but what you seem to forget is that in order for this to happen, the orioginal ecology at the place was destroyed. It is nice that another ecology developed in its place but if that is more or less damage is debatable.

Wheels of industry

[Performer Guy]

OK so all that water is used, let's see.... where does the water go? Oh look it's mostly still water when you're done using it. And the environmental cost? What is it, the weight of materials "used" tells us nothing directly of that. These kinds of sensational articles are pretty useless. How much air was "used" by the employees who assembled the PC breathing?

The problem I have with this kind of nonsense is that making PCs keeps the economy going somewhere. Not making a PC has economic and social implications that are far reaching. Those resources getting consumed feeds millions of people down the supply chain and keeps the wheels of industry turning. Simply stopping that would not be a good thing.

Re:While I like the message...

[C10H14N2]

God damn it, I'm not arguing that there is an environmental impact. I didn't even touch that part of the analysis. What I *AM* arguing is that their figures are dishonest. They are naming a very specific item and advocating an action--on that exact item. They gave a specific _MASS_ of fossil fuels. That the amount of energy available in that mass can be directly attributed to the specific action of manufacturing something as simple as a CRT is what I am questioning. Also, the argument to use old equipment rather than new betrays the lie. New equipment is more energy efficient. Since the bulk of the fossil fuel burning they are talking about can be attributed to electrical generation, running an old piece of shit that sucks up ten times as much juice will produce far more pollution than stuffing it in the closet and buying an LCD. THAT is the point, damn it.

This statement is based on BS

[Salis]

"1.7 metric tons of material are consumed by making one PC"

Bullshit! What are we doing, fusion? The 1.5 metric tons of water doesn't disappear. It gets recycled in one way or another. Yeah, the fabrication process is very chemical intensive, but the big manufacturers (Intel, AMD) have strict environmental policies. They recycle where they get, purify their outflows, and use as little material as possible.

Both for cost-cutting sake and environmental law sake.

So that 1.5 metric tons of water is reused over and over and over in making each PC. The actual specific waste per PC should be measured as the material that leaves the manufacturing factory per day (as waste) divided by the number of pieces of hardware it made that day.

For computer geeks, you guys are really stupid.
That is, unless your PC weights 1.7 metric tons.

Duh?

Pros/Cons

[ackthpt]

A CRT will ware out in about five years. Brightness and contrast will decrease to a level which is unacceptable.

Where did you dig that number up? I've got CRTs that are 20 years old and still work fine. I've seen a few CRTs with patterns burned into them from running 8 or more hours a day, but they still work for years.

The gripes I have about CRT's are:

Lead: Cathode ray tubes have landed in city dumps for decades. Got lead in your ground water, yet?

Radiation: I've already had cancer once, it was enough. I use LCD screens whenever I can now. I suspect some long term damage to vision, too, as my peripheral vision appears more acute. I still have excellent eyesight, but I'm not as old as I'm planning to be.

Deskspace: They take up too much realestate.

Power: Suck lots, though not as much as the CPU does.

On the Pro side, they've typically looked better than most LCD's, so I stuck with the behemoths until a year ago when I figured Samsung finally had one worth getting (Syncmaster 172t, it's only real problem is it's too bright even on the lowest setting!)

How much material is required to dispose of a personal computer?

RMI's work with STMicroelectronics

[danharan]

If you are interested in the ecological footprint of computers, reading "Ecology is Free - RMI's work with STMicroelectronics" should be required reading.

Some of the highlights:

• Microchip fabrication facilities (or "fabs") are complex and energy-intensive.
  
• Energy accounts for less than 2 percent of a chip's cost, yet electricity can be the largest single operating expense for a chipmaker, totaling millions of dollars annually at a single fab.
  
• Despite great innovation, semiconductor manufacturing fosters a risk-averse corporate culture due to exacting process requirements, safety risks, the high cost of downtime, and brutal competition in a fast-moving marketplace.
  

They were able to reduce energy consumption at one plant by 60% with better design.

[rant]One of the things I don't like about these studies that tell you how much water it takes to build your car or get you a hamburger patty is that they are aimed at consumers. Maybe we should increase the cost of water and fossil fuels, or the penalties for being wasteful, so that manufacturers might get with the program and stop being such hogs.[/rant]

BS

[pagercam2]

1500 lbs of water can be reclaimed this is just more eco BS. The manufactures could probably do better but this is alarmist.

Waste water?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm wondering about the use of the term "used" when speaking about water and manufacturing. I used to work in a plastics molding factory. You wouldn't believe the amount of water needed to cool the molds when producing tiny plastic parts. But the water isn't "used". It doesn't suddenly become some other toxic material, and it doesn't immediately become waste water.

It would be too expensive to pay the water company and use the water once before dumping it somewhere. It is reused. This of course applies to a US manufacturing firm.

-Fred

Using up the oceans to make computers

[klic]

And there is about 1.7E24 Kg of water in the ocean, a lot more locked up in lithospheric rock. When everyone on the planet gets one thousand computers and monitors each, we will have "used up" (I assume that means lost in hyperspace, most water I know about gets reused) about 6E9 * 1E3 * 1.5E3 Kg of water, or about 9E15 Kg, which will lower the ocean surface by 25 millimeters. I guess we will have to increase global warming just a tad to melt some glaciers and fill back in. The other material will lower the land surface by an average of 1mm, which will make the distance to orbit much higher, rendering space travel very difficult :-)

Of course, these scare stories are nonsense, promoted by people that don't understand arithmetic. The major negative consequence of computers is their energy consumption during use. Newer models provide more computation per watt than older models, so old ones should be recycled and the materials they are made of re-used more efficiently. I know of at least two people that went bankrupt assuming that re-using old computers was commercially viable. That said, there is a place for old computers right now, but I hope such niches are filled by modest-performance, ultra-low-power new machines. The performance of a 486-50 grade computer with monitor can be exceeded by a hundred dollars worth of state-of-the-art hand-held hardware consuming perhaps a watt (assuming an available source of natural backlight for the 640x480 LCD screen).

The most important thing is to use that computation wisely and efficiently. Better software can help that. Replacing Windoze with smaller, less bloated OSes can do that, too. Think about how much energy is wasted computing the pixels for Clippy. :-(