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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."
that I haven't bought a monitor in seven years and have fished several out of the garbage. Using a KVM switch is helpful too.
Wow, now I don't have to feel bad about running the tap for a couple seconds before filling my glass....
I have this odd feeling that they are neglecting how much it would cost to make the second PC and monitor; how much of the material cost is simply overhead?
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.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
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!
-- Contradictions only exist in thought - not in reality.
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
has a high environmental impact. I'm somewhat sure that it's at least 50 gallons of water to get one gallon of tap water.
OK, so I opt to upgrade my computer instead of buying a new one (which is the only thing I've ever done in the last 20 years of PC use).
What parts shouldn't I upgrade in order to be "environmentally friendly"? I'm sure the case doesn't take a hellacious amout of natural resources. I mean, it's just bending metal. The power supply is relatively simple electronics.
So, my guess is that the biggest consumers of resources are going to be the hard drive, the memory, the processor, and the motherboard.
Which are things I upgrade. Regularly.
I think environmental conservation is an important idea, but it seems like "Upgrade! Don't replace!" just gives the manufacturers a good excuse to not explore less environmentally hostile manufacturing techniques.
Having said all that, the beauty of water is that when you use it, you get to use it again. Yay water cycle. Makes planet work good.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
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 ?
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
So yeah, recycling really is a good idea.
Please alter my pants as fashion dictates.
Linux can be used as a means to protect our environment, by using its features to save power or paper, since it doesn't require big hardware it may be used with old computers to make their life cycle longer, games may be used in environmental education and software is available to simulate ecological processes. See a detailed description of this means in the Ecology-HOWTO.
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.
i got an eeny weeny 14" CRT display.. :d
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
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.
In some states it's illegal to throw a PC or monitor into the garbage. I know in the county I live in there is a fine for dumping computer equipment because of the heavy metals and other hazmats involved, but I've never heard of anyone being arrested or fined or anything for it. There are companies that specialize in proper disposal, but of course it costs you money.
So anyway, even if natural resources don't mean shit to you and you don't want to sound like some save-the-world-with-idealism, tree-hugging liberal, it's a good idea to recycle machines for reasons other than politics. Aside from dumping laws, there is always someone you know that could use an older machine. Or you can donate it to the VOA or Goodwill for a tax credit.
-JemIn 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.
Underholdning.info
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
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
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
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."
PC, and a very strong argument for trying to leverage older equipment
/. , some people here still keep their houses warm with the idle drone of their VAX clusters ;)
This is
Seriously, I still have my 386sx kicking around. All it has is DOS 5.0 and old games, but hey, I'm using it.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
How many "tons" of water do I use to shower? And I do that everyday. I certainly don't buy a computer everyday, however. You may as well consider the air and food consumed by the factory workers if you are forced to follow the causal trail so far to get the desired dramatic number. How many fossil fuels are used to till the fields that grow the crops that feed the workers that make the computers? Clearly, this is an ecological disaster. Our only option is to start killing people, or at least keep them from being born. That is where this trail of logic will eventually lead you.
Once they're made, though, they treat the environment better than old cars generally do.
The down side of it is that since it isn't fluoridated , my kids definetely had more cavities (seven among three kids) than my brothers kids (none!! among three), who have fluoridated water, so I have to admit that "city" water does have a few advantages. My bro and my Mom, however, also prefer the way our water tastes (yes!), so every week I drop off a few gallons for them to drink "right out of the ground!"
Oh, yeah, I live in New Jersey, about 30 minutes from NYC, up in the hills. It's tested and it's VERY clean - no PCB's/organics/heavy metals, etc so hold your horses before making the stupid Jersey jokes. Newark airport and the Turnpike is not what Jersey is all about
..........FULL STOP.
Isn't it time we start thinking for ourselves when dealing with environmental claims?
Sometimes environmental claims are exaggerated or simply untrue. Consider that while you're still allowed to own a computer.
I've not bought a PC from them yet, but I like the look of Hoojum. They certainly seem to be the most ethical manufacturer I've come across. Does anyone else know of any companies that do similar things?
how much raw materials is needed to produce "ecological" stuff (both mechanical and food).
Does anyone else have the sneaking suspicion that they're including the entire chain of manufacture and resources used in those numbers? Like, the water used to mine the ores to make the steel, which is made with x ammount of electricity, which is in turn produced by x ammount of fossil fuels, to be bent into the case frame, etc.?
I'm all for reduce, reuse, recycle... but I'd rather that other proponents of it don't mislead in order to promote the three R's. (Not to make accusations, of course....)
I'd also like to see their numbers on LCD screens.
~UP
Eat the Path.
Admittedly, PC hardware isn't directly affected by the withdrawal of support, because the open standard means you can swap failed bits out. However, when MS stop supporting NT or Office 97 you're shafted, because you can't run the replacement on that hardware without spending almost as much as a new box would cost. So they get you in the end.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Can't remember the brand of cigarette, but their ads always featured some long legged model with the tagline "We've come a long way baby"
Using SSH and console is ok, when I just have to pop in really quick to edit some conf file, or tail -f some log. %80 of the time i'm doing this, it's pertaining to some clients web site i'm working on.
Guess what though? Do I fire up lynx to view my changes? Hell no! I use mozilla or IE, or some other html renderer. Do I create graphics or video from the console too? Hell no, I use some graphic program, with some nice gui, and pretty little icons everywhere BECAUSE I LIKE IT!!!!
Not only do I like it for that kind of work, I like it FAST! The faster the better!
Does it look like I care about leveraging old hardware for modern content? (shameless plug)
What I do use old equipment for is an ipcop firewall. I also use it to frankenstien together stepper motor interfaces because it IS old and I don't give a crap if it catches on fire because I wired something the wrong way.
Here's the whole wrapup to my post, i.e. the point. I read slashdot everyday, I build mosix clusters using plumpOS (couldn't remember the link sorry) My garage is filled from top to bottom with old computer crap because I know i'm not average joe sixpack user, and I will find a purpose for it even if it's just for research or fun. Average joe sixpack doesn't care about these things, he just wants his little clickety click icons to open up faster, or his OS to load quicker, or his games to run better.
And I sympathize with him %100. Thanks Joe sixpack for not taking the time to learn what I do, because I'm that car that stops outside your house to load up that PC you put out with your trash.
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.
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.
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.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
1 ton = 2240 lb (or 20 cwt or 160 stones, if you're British) . By a happy accident, 1 metric tonne = 2204lb. They are so very nearly equivalent that you can ignore the difference for shock-horror enviro scare stories ;-)
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
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...
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.
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.
Consider this: when I need more PC power, I could replace part of the machine (say: motherboard, cpu, memory, disk drive) or I could buy a new system.
When replacing only part, I could say that I saved the environment by not replacing everything. But at the same time, I have discarded part of a system, useless to everyone but a few hobbyists.
When I would have bought a new system, I would have left one complete machine that could be useful to someone else. I could sell it, donate it to a school project, or whatever. It could probably run a few more years before it is useless to anyone.
So, instead of discarding useless parts into the environment, I actually only damaged the economy (because the one who gets my old machine does not need to buy a new one). That does not seem to be such a big deal.
You can also do a lot with a simple memory upgrade.
This is after all the business market. Not the home user market. For office use a dual P3 is even better (with the right modern OS) then a single P4. No more lag while your wordproccessor starts up.
With such an upgrade you just doubled the life of the Mobo, memory, cpu, HD, expansion cards, cables and monitor. 50% reduction in waste. Not bad eh?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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.
Here in Luxembourg, we have non-profit organization to handle recycling (pick-up of recyclable items, such as glass, cardboard, certains kinds of plastic bottles and milk cartons). Their name is Valorlux. A couple of weeks ago, I needed to look up the date of their next pick-up, and was stumped by their flash-only website.
I sent them a mail about it, and got the following reply:
Subject: L'internet n'est pas...
Cher Monsieur Xxxxx,
La page 'macromedia' qui apparait est en fait une passerelle qui vous permet
de telecharger un logiciel
du nom de 'Flash 6' ce dernier etant absolument necessaire pour naviguer
dans le site VALORLUX sans probleme.
VALORLUX a choisi d'offrit ce logiciel et son telechargement entierement
gratuitement afin de permettre a toutes les personnes n'ayant pas ce systeme
de pouvoir visiter notre site.
Ce ne sont absolument pas des publicites pour des societes americaines - ni
autres - simplement des outils
facilitant l'acces au site.
Si vous n'avez pas reussi a le telecharger c'est probablement que votre
ordinateur n'est soit pas assez
puissant, soit un peu trop 'age' pour utiliser ces produits, nous en sommes
absolument desoles.
Nous vous prions de croire en nos salutations les meilleures.
VALORLUX Asbl
Muriel Fedele
Responsable de la Communication
BP 26
L-3205 LEUDELANGE
The last sentence, in English: If you have not succeeded in downloading it [the Flash plugin], it is likely that your computer is either not powerful enough, or a little bit too "old" for using these products, and we are absolutely sorry about this.
Yes, and in order to resolve this issue, I'm supposed to buy a new one, throw the old one into the trash, and waste precious 1.8 tons of raw materials. Way to go, Valorlux!
Say no to software patents.
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?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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
(You can ignore the rest of this if I've explained things sufficiently. I like Imperial measurements, so I'm going to continue.)
Technically, a ton is 20 hundredweight. However, there are two kinds of hundredweight. The short (or American) hundredweight is 100 pounds, and the long (British) hundredweight is 112 pounds.
A British hundredweight was defined to be 112 pounds because it translated almost directly to foreign units of the time (the 1400s). 112 also divides easily into quarters (28 lb), stone (14 lb), and cloves (7 lb). If you're interested in the history of units of measurement, check out this page or any of a number of others you can find on Google.
that that is is that that is not is not
I don't want to pay these people $35 to buy a copy of their report, nor do I have time to read the whole thing. But I suspect that anyone who does take the time will find faults with the stated conclusions. They aren't necessarily lying -- it's just that the nature of the topic is complex and therefore subject to multiple interpretations.
Due to the interconnected nature of the economy, I don't think that it is meaningful to just say that it takes a certain amount of raw materials to manufacture a computer. For example, does the figure include the water that the cow drank that went into the hamburger that the trucker ate while delivering the VGA connectors? It also takes a ridiculous amount of water to produce a little bit of beef, you know. Perhaps that was a bit far-fetched, but you can see how there could be lots of discretion in deciding what to include or exclude in the tally.
One way to see if their methodology is fair is to compare the environmental impact of producing computers with that of other products. Here I sense that between the UN University and InfoWorld, someone is being sloppy / misleading / sensationalistic.
I think that may be a bit unfair to compare the materials used to produce a PC and a car against their respective final weights. The goal of electronics is to fit as much complexity as possible into ever shrinking products. The goal of car manufacturers is to make their cars as roomy and as lightweight as practical. Why don't they celebrate the fact that a solar-powered calculator can compute what it used to take an ENIAC to compute? In that light, we're already making tremendous environmental progress.
What does it mean to say that water is used? If you take the water and mix it with some nasty chemicals, then it's polluted. If you use it to wash some dirt off of something, it's dirty but easily returnable to the environment. If you use it to carry away heat in a sealed heat exchanger, it remains perfectly clean but might make some fish unhappy when you return it to the river at a slightly higher temperature. If you took it from the Seattle, it's no big deal; if you took it from Ethiopia, it's a crime against humanity. How much of the 1500 kg of water in a PC is "used" in each way?
Anyway, I don't doubt that PC manufacturing has some significant environmental impact, and that we should find ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle. But I'm sure that anyone who wants to write a report with an opposite viewpoint could easily do so. Just be aware that the authors have an interest in picking the comparisons that generate the maximum shock value.
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?
The best planning can be done after the project completes.
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.
...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...
Sure I could say that all the resources needed for making 1 pc is:
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.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What's the problem with paper? Paper comes from trees. Trees, which can be sold to make money, grow on private land, which costs money. If the owner of the land doesn't replant every tree they cut down, they make less money. This pretty much guarantees that every tree cut down to make paper will be replanted ..... because it costs someone money not to!
Printing on paper almost certainly uses less energy than displaying text on a CRT monitor; and every time you read it, the mean energy-per-reading goes down. When done with, the paper can be burned to liberate heat which can be used in turn to generate electricity. (Since paper is made from plants, the total CO2 content in the atmosphere is unchanged; burying paper in landfill produces methane, which usually is either vented into the atmosphere where it actually does more harm than CO2, or burned without doing anything useful with the energy.) (It could alternatively be pulped to make paper, but since this uses almost no less energy and more toxic chemicals than making paper from fresh wood, this would only be recommended if suitable wood was in short supply.)
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I once worked on a research project that implemented an application that could calculate the economic and environmental impact of creating certain kinds of windows. I was part of the team that created the application. Basically, what you could do was create a network of dependencies, like: this window uses a frame of a certain kind of wood. The size of the frame is such-and-such. To get from a cut tree to this frame, we need to cut up the tree in this way. Cutting the tree cost so much. It takes the guy who does it 10 minutes, and that costs so much. The distance from the tree's origin to the factory is this many miles, and transport costs... etc. This was then weighted against the life expectancy of the window and the expectation for energy conservation.
I conversed a lot with the people that used the application. For years I regularly was hearing discussions about what economical and environmental costs you could attach to the production of a window. For instance, the transport of the trees is done by a lorry. Obviously, you have costs in petrol. But also the lorry needs regular maintenance, so part of the environmental costs of the maintenance goes to the trees that are transported. And also, because it is used, at some point the lorry needs to be replaced. So part of the replacement vehicle goes to the costs of the trees. However, a replacement vehicle must be produced, so part of environmental damage of producing a lorry goes to the trees. But such a lorry is produced by workers who travel to work, so part of the environmental damage caused by their travelling goes to the trees, etc, etc. Continuing such a line of reasoning can make the production of one window frame responsible for the hole in the ozone layer.
If you are wondering: this was not a very successful project.
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 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.
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
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
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
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.
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.
Actually water is quite expensive, in terms of conditioning. But just passing thru the pipe is what this damn report is talking about- I can tell you about processes I've done where the byproducts are BURNED. You want to talk about waste? Thats wasteful. When I tried to implement changes that would recycle and make it easier to recover the fossil fuel solvents, I had it nixed because of the environmental paperwork for the government.
So water consumption is a 'bad' thing? Not in my book.
You were modded as 'insightful' for repeating the drivel on television?
1L at 1.04 g/cm^3 is a cube 10cm X 10cm X 10cm and weighs in at 1.04 kg. 1500L is a cube approximately 1.15m x 1.15m x 1.15m and weighs 1560kg.
Now you'd like to transport that 1500kg across the world to some poor, impoverished nation and give some thirsty children some water?
How would you like to accompish that? Maybe put it in a truck? Or a boat? Possibly an airplane? You might have to burn some fossil fuels to move it, unless of course you will be willing to pedal and move it by yourself (note, you will need cooling water yourself in order to maintain peak performance and prevent your brain from frying due to overheating).
This new-age drivel is very annoying to listen to. You would have a better chance of relocating the affected individuals to a more 'rich' environment.
Of course, using those computers to predict where hotspots will form is a bad thing- better to be surprised by a hurricane and lose the entire crop across an entire nation, than to 'consume' that 1500L of water. Let's exclude the fact that environmental regulations strictly control what can be returned to the water table, and that fines run into the 100K's for offenses.
Personally, I'd find it prettey interesting to watch you move 1560 kg of water using a bicycle to pull an oxen cart loaded with ~5 55gallon drums of water.
Other facts from the same research:
I bet it takes WAY more material to make a stupid user. Why not cut the fat there instead of going after the little guy? :)
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Just making the metal for the case will use a *lot* of water, for coolant etc. You'd be amazed - in some countries, up to and beyond 100 tons of water can be used to make a ton of steel.
Most of the fossil fuels are probably mostly used in various refining materials process - the case, again, a lot of power needed for that. All the different materials in the PC and monitor adds up amazingly fast - remember that the actual raw materials are really cheap, so you don't see much cost due to this when you buy something in a high-street store.
-Chris
I recently had a motherboard die in my 2 year old computer - a 1GHZ P3. So, off I go to the computer store trying to buy a new mobo. Sorry, they don't make them anymore.
Ok, so I try to find out what it would take to buy a cheap replacement that they do have. This is great except for the replacement mobo requires a new CPU since the old one won't work in it. It also uses DDR ram instead of SDRAM. And, it consumes more power, so the old power supply won't work. Oh, and the new power supplies don't fit into the old case, so I need a new case, too.
Of course, I was able to reuse the old drives (hard, floppy, cd) and the old monitor, keyboard & mouse. So it's definately friendlier than buying a whole new PC w/monitor combo. It's cheaper too. Still, IMHO, upgrading is a lot more replacement than upgrade.
$.02
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
1.5 tons is 1.5 cubic meters of water, which is only about a bath tub full (or two, depending on the size).
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.
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.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
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.
Mod that baby up. Dumping energy into a water stream has a massive impact on the surrounding ecology.
I'm sure most of the US people have heard of the manatees- the power plants in Florida have discharge channels that are long and wide and attract hundreds of the 'sea cows' each year. Why? Because the water being returned (reclaimed) comes out quite a bit warmer than the water it's going back into.
This translates to a literal calving ground of protected, tempered water. The plants even run a little tourist center for people to come in and watch the manatees - heh there's even a little hose that drops 'fresh' water into the discharge channel. Watch the creatures pull up under it and drink from a 'novel' non-salt containing water.... I think it gets them drunk, but then again if you've watched a manatee swim you'll swear they are all drunk.
But in this case the energy return is quite benefitial to the surroundings. Usually it's not- think of the Alaskan pipeway that draws heated oil from the wells to distribution. That permafrost underneath NEEDS to be kept cold, yet we are radiating millions of therms of energy above it to keep the oil from freezing solid. So it's a complete tradeoff in that sense- the coldest environment that MUST stay cold has the hottest (And capable of generating the most heat) mere meters above it. I think the pipes are about 2.5m off the ground, to allow animals to pass thru.
The dissolved O2 problem is real, but not as big as you think. I'd place more issue around the extra few degrees in the winter than on the amount of O2 present (algae can have a more devastating effect from phosphate dumping)
The two tons of bullshit it takes to sell a Mac.
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
>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.
While at one level you're right that earth's ecosystem is a "closed loop" for the most part and there is LOTS of water in the system, I think only about 1% is fresh, while the rest is seawater, which isn't nearly as useful for human purposes. You might also point out that fresh water is not a finite resource like oil or coal- it is being created continuously by evaporation and deposited as precipitation.
However, it takes time for water to completge the cycle. Water that you "use" to water your lawn, take a shower or build a computer doesn't go straight back into the reserves of usable water- it either evaporates or is polluted.
In many parts of the country and world, we are starting to run out of fresh water because it is being pulled out of wells, lakes and rivers faster than it is being replenished by nature. The result is that the water levels in the huge underground aquifers that are the primary repository of fresh water are starting to drop, with potentially dire ecological consequences. Sure, it will come back if we stop using it, but that doesn't seem to happen.
So basically, yes, it matters a lot how much water is "used" in the making of a computer.
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.
Crafting a nice pile of feces takes several more liters of water, both in the production of the feces (many digestive processes are hydro-based) and its removal down the sewers.
Are you gonna stop pooping?
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
The thing about "using" water is that... well, after you use it, it's still water. You can dump chemicals into, you can shit in it, it's still water. So it's hard to say that it's "consumed." Really it's just dirtied, and can be cleaned and turned back into clean water somehwat more easily than, say, replacing oil that was burned.
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.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
And it still takes only pennies on the dollar to pay workers overseas to put them together.
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
1500 kg of that is water. It's not used up--it's supposed to be treated and then sent down the drain. It gets recycled fairly quickly. My monitor doesn't contain a ton and a half of water--does yours? So where did that water go? We each use about 200 kg of water per day just in our homes--washing laundry, flushing toilets, showering. 1500 kg seems like a lot, but we each use that much every week.
240 kg of fossil fuels. Well, that's a possibility. How is that assessed? That's (ballpark) a hundred gallons of gasoline. That's what someone living 25 miles from work might use in two months of commuting. It's not enough fuel to get your motorhome to the Grand Canyon and back for your vacation this summer. The figure also assumes that all the energy used to produce the computer comes from fossil fuels. If nuclear energy was used, that 240 kg of fuel corresponds to roughly 2 cubic centimetres (half a teaspoon) of unenriched uranium. If hydroelectricity was used, the cost would be kinetic energy from many tons of moving water. (See note above regarding the recycling of water.)
22 kg of 'chemicals'. Well, that's certainly vague. Water is a chemical. Some of those chemicals are acutely nasty. Some are moderately unpleasant. Some will be relatively harmless. Does that 22 kg include the finished product? I mean, the computer itself with CRT is probably up around ten or fifteen kilograms...
Other posters have already noted that a useful report would compare these totals to the resources used in the production of other products: home appliances, automobiles, cotton. (The Aral Sea is drying up largely because of cotton growing in the area. It takes about 5000 kg of water to grow one kilogram of cotton. The environmental costs of the pesticides and bleaches used in cotton production I will leave for another post.)
~Idarubicin
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.
I've seen the cartoon, and it takes an entire tree to make a toothpick.
A CRT is hardWARE, btw. A monitor often has a lot more wear in it than most people get from them.
How to make a monitor last longer:
1) Keep the brightness down at the level that black is black, not gray.
2) Adjust the contrast well below the point that you note the white dots from blooming [expanding].
The net of this is you are stressing the circuitry less [IE the image will maybe somewhat dimmer than you are used to]. The natural process of phosphor darkening that occurs over time progresses more slowly at lower brightness levels.
I have been using the same 17" monitor since 1997, and the image still looks near perfect. I have a cheap Samtron 14" that I used for 5 years continuously [purchased in 1992, and now used occasionally] that still has a sharp and bright image.
The only reason I have bought new monitors is for analog capabilities or for the larger display area.
Lastly, the monitors I use at work [1994, 1996 Mfg dates] and still have very good images.
"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?
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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?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Actually, I would recommend people upgrade from CRT to the best LCD they can afford.
:)
In a single year, my LCD uses at least 100kWh less than a CRT. 1kWh ~= 2lbs/1KG of coal, so the CO2 emissions in manufacture are offset by a ~ 3 year life span.
But that's not all. In the summer in most office buildings, you have to add the air conditionning costs- those CRT hogs create a lot of waste heat, so you have to waste even more energy to remove that heat. You can also have a smaller batter and/or UPS.
While the energy costs alone won't justify the cost of replacing your CRTs, the increase in productivity certainly will. Better contrast has meant fewer headaches for me, and I can read much faster off my LCD (granted, 1600*1200) than I can on most flickering CRTs.
Even a 1% increase in productivity -assuming it's not all wasted on slashdot- is worth quite a bit more money than the LCD for any professional.
So, a cheap productivity boost with a small or positive environmental footprint... In my ideal world, the old machines would be recycled with an efficient OS and an LCD screen
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Some of the highlights:
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]
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
how much fuel and water does it take to manufacture 1kw worth of solar electric panels?
1500 lbs of water can be reclaimed this is just more eco BS. The manufactures could probably do better but this is alarmist.
Fortunately, many people regularly fail to shower, bathe, brush their teeth, wash dishes, or use the bathroom because of their PCs.
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.
Keith Lofstrom server-sky.com
People don't live in the desert where no food can be grown. Mass starvation, in every case is caused by either government bungling such as Mao's The Great Leap Forward program or outright malice, such as every other instance I know of.
Interestingly, someone posted a versions of this rant in a story about Aid to Zimbabwe, despite the fact that Zimbabwe has one of the most fertile land in Africa. People are starving over there because the agricultural economy has been all but destroyed by malicious mismanagement.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
if it takes so much water to make the damn thing then why does my keyboard die every time i spill a beer on it?
> You'd need your own power plant just to read /.
Yeah, but considering how many people were on the Internet back in the 1950s, just imagine how often you'd get FP!
> passanger cars have not improved their efficency that much.
Don't get me wrong, fuel inefficiency is one of my pet peeves, but I think actual passenger car efficiency has improved. For example, you couldn't buy a Corolla in 1950 that gets 30 or 40 miles to the gallon. However, average efficiency of all the cars on the (US) road hasn't improved that much due to things like the Dodge trucks with "V8 Hemi" you see making the heavy-duty trip to the cleaners and the bank, or the Hummers that spend all of their time sitting in traffic. Those people should die.
The problem with your argument is that these so-called experts have no idea about what they're talking about. Let me explain:
"And how do you recycle that water?", you ask? Generally, some of the ways of doing it are...
1) Evaporation & Condensation
2) Filtering
3) Biological catalysis (popular with sewage)
And I completely disagree that there's a fresh water shortage. Rainfall in the US has not decreased in the past decade and I know of no environmentalist who has even claimed that global warming would decrease rainfall (it might actually increase it!). Rainfall gives you fresh water (yes, Captain Obvious has spoken!).
Now, as for Israel & the West Bank, they don't get a whole lot of rainfall..mostly because it's a DESERT.
And my profession has spent decades studying the best way to purify water. Those pharmaceutical and manufacturing plants commonly purify their water outflows so much they are often MORE pure than the water inflow.
And, yes, it does require energy to perform, but it doesn't have to be from burning fossil fuels. They usually use electricity so a significant fraction of it comes from nuclear reactors.
Now, go rant on nuclear reactors for all the good it'll do ya, rofl.
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