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klevin writes "Grist magazine's running an article on what to look for when the old PC's running out of gas and you want to avoid trashing the environment even further. Their suggestions include: upgrade instead of replacing, go for LCD monitors instead of CRTs and, if replacing, reuse the old one as an MP3 server on your home network."
...right here.
Or, if you're on the other end, you can also apply for a used computer.
The Army reading list
Of course, then there is always the issue of older machines being less power efficient; Perhaps reusing them could be considered not green at all :)
turn them into smoothwalls for your friends and neighbors.
Seriously... I've recycled a bunch of old pentium-class machines that were headed for the landfill by setting up a "smoothie" and giving them away to ppl.
Doing my part to stamp out worms and viruses.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
A few years back (sorry, can't find the link) UPS had an offer going. Send them $30, and they send you a prepaid shipping label. You put all the crap you don't want into a box, slap on the shipping label, and UPS takes care of properly recycling and parting out your old crap. A good, cheap way to clean all that antique hardware out of your basement and do it properly.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Computer re-use is the best option. Use 'em until they can't even pull firewalling duty.
...letting it go. Stop buying new CRTs now, folks.
The big culprits, however, are CRTs. Manufacturing those things is awful. My father's company once contracted with (Sony, I think) a Singapore manufacturer to remove and purify all the water from their industrial runoff from CRT manufacturing. Dad's company had been working on an ultrapure water system for the Shuttle, so they knew they could do it. However, the final product (a sludge) was so toxic that it would have cost more to dispose of than just diluting the wastewater and
I've wiped disks clean, installed new distros and open office, tweaked it to avoid glitches and then donated the resultant computers to a local homeless shelter. They use them as typewriters for the most part.
I hate to see perfectly good equipment go to waste. (Especially just because I wanted the latest and greatest!)
Keeping old machines in service is fine, but I'm not so sure about finding new uses for them for the sake of not switching them off..
On a similar note, new PC purchases. The library at my Uni has got a whole bunch of new Pentium 4s with WinXP in the library, for running a web client for searching through book records... nearby, the bank of ~20 monocrhome Wyse text-mode dumb terminals are still ticking away after something like 15 years? Meanwhile I'm running simulations on sub-800MHz PIIIs in the labs!
Ahh bureaucracy...
- Paul
LCDs are harder on the eyes than an available CRT counterpart. This is true of even the best LCDs.
Also in my experience they are more fragile (owing possibly to their smaller size and weight) and prone to failure than CRTs. If you have to replace an LCD 3 times over a 6-year period vs a CRT's never, is it really a better choice for the environment to go with LCDs?
Recycling old computer equipment here at the mission is a huge problem. We have a growing pile of old monitors and other computer equipment. This stuff comes to us through donations to our thrift store.
Unfortunately, most of the computer equipment that comes to us is useless. We don't sell it through our thrift store: we've found that no matter what we say, people expect technical support after buying a computer. For the most part we don't use the computers ourselves. We could start declining donations of computer equipment, but even that can be difficult to enforce... stuff has a way of slipping in anyway.
So for the time being, the equipment, especially the monitors, just keeps piling up. I've worked hard to convince my coworkers that it's wrong to just dump the monitors in the trash. Happily, this is a place where ethical concerns do count.
One idea I've had is to strip out the electronics from all the equipment and ship just the electronics to a recycler. We would trash the plastic cases. The idea is that we would drastically reduce the volume and weight of the material, thereby reducing shipping costs to something that might be profitable. Labor would be free: the addiction recovery program includes working full time at an assignment in the mission, and most of the guys are plenty handy with screwdrivers and other tools.
Has anybody has any experience with something like this? I think I could sell the idea if we even just broke even. Is there any hope for Preprocessing for Fun and Profit (especially profit)?
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
True for your house, yes. But not necessarily for the total amount of energy. If you heat your house with oil, almost all chemical energy in the oil is used to heat the house.
Yeah... if you have an efficient furnace.
I'm currently in Ottawa, Canada - either the coldest or second coldest world capital. I'm renting, 'cause there ain't no way in hell that I plan on living here permanently. And the house I'm renting has a 35-year-old oil furnace.
Estimating its efficiency at 70%, I did some calculations based on my best oil quote. I looked up the BTUs of heat per gallon of heating oil, and compared it to the BTUs of heat per kWh of electricity. Since electricity here was fixed at 4.3 cents/kWh (up to 4.7 cents/kWh as of April 1), it was cheaper to heat by electricity. The situation would have been different if I were using a newer oil or gas furnace.
Remember, all electricity consumed inside the house, in one way or another, heats the house - the exceptions being the small amounts of light, sound and RF energy which escape. My roommates loved it - "Go ahead, leave the lights on, but close the blinds first!"
Therefore, I heated my house with electricity. I'd been planning on running a stack of Pentium-I class machines doing SETI@Home work units - at least the energy gets used for something productive on its way to becoming heat - but didn't have time to build the rack to hold all these machines, nor to duct them into the cold air return on the furnace. So instead I picked up a few $20 ceramic heaters and threw them into a big steel box ducted to the furnace and controlled by the thermostat. My electric bill from January to March was $425 - and that includes heating, lighting, the dryer, etc. - very impressively low!
But if you use electricity (be it through the computer or whatever), it takes much more energy to produce the same amount of (electric) energy, if it's produced in a fossile fuel power plant. A coal plant that only produces electricity has, what, 50% efficiency maximum(?). The rest of the energy is wasted in the process. If the electricity is produced in, say, a hydro plant, that's another storyVery true. Most people who think electric cars are a good idea, simply don't understand anything about electrical generation and distribution systems (like, how many coal and nuclear plants are gonna have to be built when 10,000,000 Los Angeles commuters start plugging in their electric cars every night?). It was even rampant in my electrical engineering courses in university!
In Eastern Ontario, given our proximity to Quebec, I'd assume that most of our energy is imported from their hydroelectric dams. But either way, my rationale is cost. Generally, saving money is the most powerful incentive to cut use of resources.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.