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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 :)
She loves me: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 She loves me not: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688BF
Not only is it better for the enviroment to upgrade, it also saves you money :)
(hey, I can still use this case, etc etc)
This is the sig that says NI (again)
... send your old computers to me, I wouldn't mind having something to hack around on, I could install Linux/BSD(not dying!) and the people would rejoice!
Donate them to a charity. An MP3 server is really a waste of energy. I mean, come on... why not simply donate the pc to some charity that can give them to those less fortunate folks who could use them, and who don't need a P4 3.4ghz system to use email, do homework, and balance their checkbook...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
I have one, its called a stereo. Really, for the 99.99% of the population that doesn't read Slashdot, who is going to actually do this? Nobody in the iPod generation for sure.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
i wonder. what is the environmental impact of throwing out a PC, versus the envrionmental impact of keeping an extra PC around and having it consume power all day and night? i'm not sure it is more environmentally friendly to keep an old PC around instead of throwing it out.
Since Linux is so darn lightweight and easy to use I took my old laptop, removed the broken screen, installed base SuSE Linux (no X) and networked it. With an installation of rsync I've got an instant backup server for all the machines in our place.
Sure that machine's processor is only 750Mhz, but a laptop with no screen and a large hard drive makes a nice "blade server" sitting on the shelf and with a core operating system running the CPU load is never high.
John.
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.
I certainly don't have a better solution admitedly, but I'm pretty sure this needs some work.
Paul Lenhart writes words!
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
...my local council collects electronic compenents for recycling every fortnight.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
goodwil has computer centers where they take your trash computers and build systems for the less privelidged...or..just the cheap for that matter. I've gone into their center to buy parts for my older machines before.
So, instead of tossing that old computer, I should set it up as an mp3 | print | file | firewall | game | whatever server. That way instead of poluting the environment I can waste more electricity!
reuse the old one as an MP3 server on your home network
If your network is then compromised and your MP3 server becomes visible to the outside, even in a limited capacity, do you then get zapped for sharing your MP3s? That would suck if you didn't even know it was happening and suddenly you get a summons.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
"I'm not going to keep a bunch of useless parts around."
You're going to regret saying that when ISA comes back. You have been warned.
-m
#
# Modus Ponens
#
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!)
FWIW
i use an old 133MHz PI w/ 128MB ram for a RH9 firewall on cable modem. The workload hardly *ever* gets near 1 at all. There are many, many uses for old PC's.
Hell, i hooked up a USB cam w/ motion detect software (check sourceforge) to catch which one of our cats was crapping on the couch! Worked like a dream. Plenty of apps for those old beasts.
...to someone who won't know the difference. (i.e. that little old lady down the street that just needs to check her email, or... you know... MOM n' DAD, punkass little brother, etc)
:-)
All of this is, of course, in theory... not that I've really done that yet. All my 'preciouses' are with me still...
The recent announcment where Intel is building greener chips is an example of reduce...as is simplified packaging, reusable containers, using your own coffee mug instead of a disposable cup etc.
The next best thing is Reuse. I recently turned my old box into a file server for example. The downside is this machine is always on (i.e. I have two heaters in my basement instead of one). I can reduce my power consumption a bit by clocking it down...but not eliminate that electrical demand completely.
All in all I think a general awareness of the "Total Cost of Ownership" on a global scale will hopefully lead to more enlightened decision making. That some of the big players are taking part is a good sign.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
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
You can donate your stuff to http://www.usedpccanada.com - enterprises can also get rid of pallets of old pc's too.
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
- Paul
to someone else who will use it...
and use the identical amount of energy...
--- Ban humanity.
But there must be some space out there for sites specialising in hardware re-use.....maybe offering e-stores for hard to get parts or "adapters".
Links anybody :-)
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
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?
I have an old Dimension 166 running in my garage, it's currently acting as the mp3/ogg player, and internet radio streamer. I'm planning on getting a larger hardrive for it and make it backup all boxes on the network each night. It's running a Netgear wireless card too, so no wiring was needed.
The constant utility uses of Linux never cease to amaze me.
CVB
free ipod and free gmail!
True it might be better to use a LCD. But I have saved a lot money as of lately by acquiring CRTs that would have been trashed.
For instance, my company did some downsizing in the past few years. This means they had extra CRTs that they were going to trash. I took some home.
Isn't it better that I use used CRTs that still have life rather than buying a new LCD?
"... released a ... report on the environmental impact of computers, from production through USE and disposal." (emPHAsis mine)
A friend of mine just measured his power consumption on a 24/7 P166 MP3 server machine and concluded it costs 52.3 kwh/month ($6.14/month for him). Even if the monitor were constantly in use (~double the above numbers) he'd have to save $150 a year with NEW equipment (cost to make/buy + (cost to dispose x2) VS cost to run) to justify trashing the old. If he used a clever timer system so it was only on when needed, then he'd save lots more and REALLY have to work hard to justify new equipment.
The math seems very in favor of careful reutilization in most cases. You have to have something really sucky to justify getting a new thing and THROWING OUT the old thing. The materials almost always cost more to deal with than the energy consumed for use, apparently.
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
Here is something I've wondered for a while now. I have a fileserver on my network that I use for housing MP3s. When I want to listen to them, I just point my player at the files over the network.
.wavs ripped from CD.
This can be problematic if I'm doing other network intensive stuff clogging the pipe.. or listening to raw
Is there MP3 server software with a client that supports streaming with cache or something similar to whats used over the web to even out the hiccups?
There are a lot of limitations on what I can do with old computer equipment. True, CRTs contain all sorts of horrible stuff, but LCDs contain a lot of mercury, so they too will need to be reclaimed in a responsible way. It's not enough to put it on the curb with the correct sticker and claim that you are "recycling." It is likely that the thing is still going into a landfill, maybe a lined one, maybe not.
As for donations, the schools in my area won't accept anything less than a Pentium III, so the whole "the only need an old P75" isn't going to work anymore.
Recycling never takes off until the law says it has to. Until real recycling is a requirement, it just is not profitable enough to build that infrastructure.
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.
if replacing, reuse the old one as an MP3 server on your home network
You're just postponing the eventual landfill anyway, and in the meantime, consuming 200W or so of electricity 24/7. Where I live, electricity comes from coal, which among other things, causes acid rain.
A much better idea would be to donate the PC to a school or a nonprofit charity.
One issue I see with choosing LCD panels over CRT displays is that of lifespan. It's not uncommon for a CRT to outlive it's "useful" lifespan. I've acquired several older CRTs this way from my previous employer.
15" CRTs that were deemed too small for desktop use, old-skool 21" CRTs that had too much screen curvature and were simply too big compared to newer 19" and 21" CRTs (that were also a fraction of the cost). All of these CRTs are four to eight years old and still functioning.
Comparing this with what my experience has been with LCD panels is that they have failure rates higher than that of CRTs. I've seen this mostly with notebook screens. This comparision isn't entirely fair, as notebooks receive considerablly more abuse than a desktop+CRT. However, LCD panels have backlights (usually a miniature florescent bulb) that will burn out eventually. On notebooks, these backlights are integrated into the panel itself and are not replaceable parts by themselves. I don't know if this is the case with desktop LCD panels, but I suspect it is.
So the question is, how does using LCD panels vs. CRTs really impact the environment considering failure rates and manufacturing defects?
Oooh, so Mother Nature needs a favor?!
. ht ml
Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she's losing.
Well I say, hard cheese.
http://www.internet-guide.co.uk/simpsons-quotes
I wasn't one of those people, but I'll try to explain it anyway.
You have a few scenarios:
1. You set up a new machine and trash the old one. You use one PC's worth of power, and it's more than enough to handle serving your mp3s while you do other things. Downside, you trashed the old one and released the toxic badness.
2. You set up a new machine and keep the old one for mp3s. Same as #1, but uses twice the power.
3. You set up a new machine and donate the old one to someone else who will use it. Same as #2, except twice the number of people are using PCs at the same energy use.
So, which is more efficient in your mind? One person using two PCs, or two people using two PCs? Seems like twice the use is being obtained with no net energy increase. So, yes, the same amount of energy is being used, but that doesn't seem to be the point.
But, I used this to my advantage -- when the Linux server recently took up smoking as a new hobby, instead of fixing it, I was able to get approval to spend money on a G4 on the condition that I get rid of both the Linux server and the Smurfy G3. Imagine: buying new hardware will actually make my wife happy!
I know you want Linux, but most modern distros (except Slackware and Debian who are highly customisable) are geared to at least P-III class machines. Do what I did, and try either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Small memory footprint (depending on what you run), and not much CPU usage. Of course, it's mostly meant as server usage. I never tried to make a desktop of OpenBSD or NetBSD.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
... the major vendors made their desktops even easier to upgrade for people. If it was as easy as pop a few snaps, lift out the mobo and reinstall a new one, with the vendor taking back the old one, that might help. Yews, this is most doable for anyone on slashdot, blah blah, but for this typical/mythical "joe user" out there it is too intimidating by far.
It is also a shame it'sso hard to find legacy ram, with all it's randomness in config, and the expense. there are zillions of PCs out there that could be easily used several years longer if they were able to easily find/purchase/install the ram to it's max config, without having to shell out more than what a new lightweight system costs now. I've got a nice roomful of older machines, hardly any of them will run a modern linux with a gui desktop. the processor speed is adequate, it's the ram that makes it difficult. I'm on a 1996 IBM right now (FC1 OS), and it was only possible to make this functional-enough by installing a lot more ram. Yes, you can go online, use various vendors configurators, then get sticker shocked back to reality. And most people out there just don't bother,lack the skills, and it's hard to do for a lot of people, they are forced to upgrade their entire machine almost. This is inefficient to a large degree. I realise that is changing, and again, I am not referring to your typical slashdot reader here, but it's still a pain for most people. I know that the older machines I build to give away to local farm kids get given with older win OS (usually a fresh clean install of whichever was on the machine, usually 95 or 98 obviously) because I can't afford the utterly ridiculous prices that the RAM vendors charge, so I can't put a modern linux GUI system on them. And the prices are ridiculous in the first place BECAUSE the vendors are so freaking cheap, leaving the RAM slots unfilled in the vast bulk of PCs that have shipped over the years.
Perhaps if the (major) vendors only shipped machines with the maximum amount of RAM possible already installed as a universal industry default, this might help, machines would last longer as practical tools. That is as easy as "stroke of the pen, law of the land" action there. And if they all did it, the price ratios would still be the same, albeit higher, but, overall prices have dropped so much from even 10 years ago I don't see this as a problem.
As far as I know, not much people know about this, but if you plan on using your old machine as a server this will probably come in handy. http://www.gnu.org/software/gnump3d/
California will add a recycling fee to the cost of new computers and televisions starting July 2004,...
Might I suggest that anyone seeking to purchase a computer in California after July 2004, to instead jump in the car and drive north to Oregon to make the purchase?
We have no idiot fees here and NO SALES TAX for anyone, on anything, at anytime. There are several well-stocked and knowledgeable PC stores in Medford just across the border. The trip is about 400 miles each way.
The drive from the Bay Area is beautiful on the Hwy 101 route (same highway number, but not the demon road of Silicon Valley) and goes through one of the most beautiful places on Earth, the Redwood National Park. There are interesting and inexpensive hostels to stay at in both Kalmath (1 mile north of Trees Of Mystery) and Ashland.
Even with high gasoline prices, the savings from not paying the idiot California sales tax and the new recycling fees make the trip worthwhile. Plus the beautiful scenery is rejuvenating experience for those who spend far too much time staring at symbols on a PC monitor.
Portland, Oregon is home to "Free Geek," a really neat PC recycling / refurb effort:
http://freegeek.org/
They charge $5 to recycle a PC or monitor. If it has usable parts, they strip them out and use them to build Linux-loaded PCs for schools, nonprofits, and the like.
Labor comes from volunteers. They will give you a PC for every six you build / refurb.
Stefan
You may find much more tips and tricks how to use a computer with ecological awareness in the Linux-Ecology-HOWTO, which is also available at the The Linux Documentation Project - TLDP and in Japanese.
Yea. Lets all reuse our old slow computers and waste more electricity. The problem is when people set up "MP3 Servers" and what not they leave the machine running 24/7. That wastes a lot of electricity. Do you leave the lights on in your home all the time?
There are places that you can take equipment to be disassembled and the metals, glass and plastics be extracted.
Donatations to Computer Recycling Center is one example of getting rid of an old PC. But if the parts are too old they will want money for disposal. There are many places like this. It is a far better solution than using old PCs as "servers".
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Yeah!
You could take that old P75 with it's 300MB hard drive and... well... you could put like 5 or 6 CDs on it.
Ok, so you buy a new hard drive and video card to replace the ones you gutted out of it for your new PC, a network card since the old PC only had a modem, and by the time you've spent all that money your neighbor has an iPod one tenth the size that does the job way better!
I've got a PILE of old computer stuff I'd love to do something with, but it's so obsolete it's not worth it.
I just don't have the heart to throw away that old 300 baud modem!
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.
Yes, you can hit OfficeMax, or Fry's, or Best Buy... and as you do, yet another computer goes into the landfill. Go ahead... purchase whatever black box you can buy the cheapest... but that's not what this article is about.
Also, I'll wager the uber-cheap router you just purchased doesn't have any IDS capability (like Snort), or a cacheing proxy, or eye-candy graphs, or remote management via SSH, or any of the other nifty features that smoothwall offers.
Yes, your hardware might not last... but the point is this: It still works. If you could keep it as a useful tool instead of turning it into a groundwater-polluting hazard, why wouldn't you?
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
When they're taking them apart, becareful of the capacitors. I assume you're already aware, but they can hold a few hundred volts for quite some time. An old guy with a heart problem might have a bad day.
That was my thought exactally...
Why hasn't this post been modded up?
Just because you have a computer laying around doesn't mean it is more eco-friendly to use it than to send it to the dump... Eventually it will die (No component will last forever), and will end up in the dump any way. Why waste all of that extra electricity (which probably came from burning some fossil fuel) to prolong the enevitable?
Unless you are planning on upgrading your old POS with some new hard drives it hardly seems like it would be worth using as a file server anyway. At that point why not just pop the new hard drives in your replacement pc? You waste a lot less electricty that way. Admitedly this is a lot less fun... It is just cool to have home "servers" laying around. You can play sysadmin at home, but don't fool yourself into thinking that you are helping the environment by doing so.
The best way to help the environment would be to buy fewer computers in general... I for one would have a hard time with this choice. Well actually I haven't bought a computer in 5 years, but it has nothing to do with the enviornment... I admit it, I'm poor.
Would anyone like to donate their old (2-3 years old) computer to a poor computer science graduate student? I promise to only use it when I really need it, so you need not worry about excessive electricty usage.
Did taking the useful parts make the safe disposal of the rest of these computers my responsibility?
By taking the memory and hard drives I turned two of those computers to something that someone else could get working with the addition of no further parts to complete junk.
I said they had not erased the hard drives? Well whoever was responsible for the disposal of these computers had sprayed them with fluorescent orange paint.
So, does putting the computer to the curb relieve you of the responsibility of disposing of the toxic waste, if someone takes them away? It might merely mean that a cheapskate has grabbed them, put them in their car, taken them somewhere, to examine them, and determine if they held anything of value. And then put them right back on the curb when they determined there wasn't anything they wanted...