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Control-Alt-Recycle
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.
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
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.