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Where Computers Go To Die
broohaha writes "Salon.com has a featured article on where all our unwanted techno trash gets sent, and what is not being done enough to account for all the so-called 'recycling' we're doing. From the article: 'More than 50 percent of our recycled computers are shipped overseas, where their toxic components are polluting poor communities. Meanwhile, U.S. laws are a mess, and industry and Congress are resisting efforts to stem the effluent of the affluent.' Some sites to visit dedicated to attacking the problem are Computer Take Back Campaign and Ban Action Network."
Actually the kyoto protocol would allow rich carbon producing nations to sell their carbon output to poorer carbon negative nations. In fact it has the potential to do exactly what you say it will stop. Just more of the same non-systematic thinking that has got us into this mess in the first place.
Why can't anything be simple? Are people really that greedy? I guess what'll happen is some certification will spring up "100% true recycling" or something. These things tend to work out in the end.
Yes, you send it to the manufactuer. The manufacturer then sends it to a 3rd world country where it isn't really recycled at all, it just sits there and pollutes the enviroment.
That's pretty much the point of the article, and you missed it.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Isn't it interesting how this topic is framed in terms of pop sociology? It does no one any good to frame this problem in these terms, any more than efforts against infectious disease are helped by discussions of humors and prescriptions for bloodletting. The problem isn't a matter of affluence but of responsibility.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Part of the problem is that we junk our old computers or 'recycle' them. There are plenty of individuals and organisations that don't want or need a brand-new computer and would happily take our old machine. When I was a graduate student, I used to buy second-hand computers from my department every couple of years. I passed on my old machine to my 88-year-old neighbour and slapped Debian Woody on it (it works fine, by the way, and she now uses it constantly for keeping in contact with her family and for genealogy).
These days, if I wanted an old machine, I'd probably use Freecycle. This is simply a Yahoo forum for people who want to give away (or get for free!) unneeded items.
Phoenix, Boston, Little Rock, see a pattern?
Even if your eventual fate is to die of long term effects ill effects isn't that better than dying of hunger now?
by keeping all my old computers. They all have a use, if for nothing more than a file server or router or something.
As far as I know there is no "silver bullet" out there. That is, there is no clean great solution (clean and cheap enough to not drive tech companies out of business). Recylcing isn't that clean, dumps aren't that clean, and even if sending old computers to poor areas that they are still "fast" works now it eventually will not. If there is then I will agree to push to legislate it.
While I will not purchase from known pulluters if possible (as is my right to choose), I can't say I blame companies if a country out there says "Send me your crap - we will take care of it cheap". I don't see how one can feel justified in controlling international trade in ways they like but not in ways they do not as "like" tends to be personal and arbitrary (even if your line in the sand is pollution the next person may be "terrorism" or something else). You get control or no control - personally I choose as little control as possible and only where a clear line is.
Even then you need a clear plan in opposition - we have the discarded computers and "Can't do anything with them" isn't a solution (they have to do something with them). Yes, maybe it's REALLY bad for the environment but the stuff is there and we have to do something.
In this you can not make a clear line in the sand, only a random one where you feel it needs to be. Nothing really wrong with that other than many will have other random lines in the sand (and you do not get angry and worked up because someone has a different line in the sand).
Eh, anyway, this has been a known issue even in the early 90's when I first got into computing - I assume it was known before then, although I do not know how long before (my guess is even in the early days of computing).
Finally, don't take this as a too negative post. If you have a solution that allows companies to stay in business and is clean - by all means propose it and I'll support it. This isn't anything close to something I keep up with, only through news blurbs. Every one I see is complaints, no solutions. Complaints are OK as long there is a solution - I have been going bald since my early 20s, complaining about it hasn't stopped anything. Sometimes every choice sucks and you choose the least sucky (for instance, cost and effectiveness for baldness cure is horrid, thus best option is to accept it and go on unless you are one of the unusal individual that it works for).
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
When the equation changes, we'll figure out a better way and we'll gradually start doing something different. This pattern hasn't changed for centuries.
An interesting business idea (unpatented as of yet) for you speculative investors, would be to collect and safely store (in landfills, or wherever) large amounts of technological waste of known quality (say, cellphones and ipods only, no monitors, or something). Then sit on it for a few decades, and wait for mining and recovery/recycling technology to catch up. Sort of like buying up land that has oil shale on it. You know we'll probably need it someday.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
What in the world are you talking about???
The "re-vote" in ireland was not an election, but a referendum, much like the frequent referendums in the US that get instrumentalised, repeated or overturned by politicians on a regular basis
The european parliament is an elected body (by the people, seats according to population, much like the US congress), while the european comission consists of the (elected) governments of the member states (imagine a senate where senators are the state governors). Which part of this system is "undemocractic"?
> mean the loser of an election here bitchs about "no democracy",
> but that is just cover for them feeling bad that the majority of Americans don't agree with them.
What about those who lose even though the majority of americans *do* vote for them (maybe half a million more than the guy who won??)
I think the benefits of this are slightly blurry - on the one hand it is socially invaluable to do this and I take my hat off to the guy for doing it, on the other it is an old inefficient PC that uses an awful lot of energy to do not that much.
I was investigating a scheme to get computers to the residents of a village in Kenya and my immediate reaction was to use recycled PCs, then I realised that using something like a low end mini-itx would work far better for them because it would be easier to get out there, could run for a long time on batteries (crucial for intermittent power problems) and is relatively robust (potentially solid state).
Horses for courses I guess, but I still have an extremely strong urge to get as much out of old hardware as I can.
With China, India, and most other developing countries exempt from Kyoto, (and to a lesser extent, the USA opting out) there's very little incentive for those who have signed on to actually do anything. Plus, the costs of meeting the targets through technology (e.g. hybrids, or new power plants, or home upgrades) are enormous.
... (the list goes on) and the longer we put it off the worse the problem gets. That last paragraph of your post is an echo of a very popular conservative argument against pollution and emission control. What that basically says is: 'Doing something to solve this problem (and we are just hypothesizing mind you, not admitting that there actually is a problem) will be to expensive so let's just accept that the only sensible thing we can do is to ignore the problem. After all it is common knowledge that if you ignore problems long enough the forces of the free market will make them go away...' People liked the Kyoto protocol because it seemed like a first step in the right direction nobody ever said it was perfect.
And yet it has to happen. There is no way around hybrids, new or upgraded power-plants, energy efficiency measures, alternative fuels for internal combustion engines, home upgrades
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
When climate change really hits is the USA going to take the can ? No, it will suddenly decide that it is a global problem. Sorry guys: we all share this planet, don't use more than your fair share.
Katrina was worse because of global warming - far, far worse is to come.
> sees as a persistent failure by the U.S. federal government to stop the > dumping of millions of used computers, TVs, cellphones and other
> electronics in the world's developing regions, including those in China
I don't see it as dumping if the Chinese are smuggling the stuff in..
I agree that it sucks to live in a third world country, and it sucks to live in a polluted environment. But what will these people do for food if they can't recycle? Will they starve?
It's easy for rich fat Americans and Europeans to be critical of situations that put people and the environment at risk.. But we mostly all have food to eat every day, and homes, and money. I'm reluctant to pass judgement on other people I don't know or understand. If was starving I would work a dangerous job to buy food.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
One problem with the large number of "obsoloete" machines in need of disposal or recycling/re-using is that they are normally perfectly good machines for light use. For example, the person who buys their machine just to email and surf the web should realistically expect to get 5 years+ use out of it. i would expect far more than that if the hardware does not fail.
There seems to be a lot of forced upgrading among those who don't need more power, whether that be for new OSs requiring more sophisiticated hardware, or that PC manufacturers have redesigned the internals again and you cannot buy a replacement PSU/whatever for your old machine when it blows.
With more considerations paid to backward compatability as well as component quality I think we could cut waste quite a bit.
This is just an observation. What do you think?
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
Since hearing about the extent of this problem on NPR Science Friday a few months ago, I've decided to just hang on to my stuff until there's some decent way to get it REALLY recycled.
I mostly reuse computer cases, just swapping out mainboards. Mainboards and old PCI cards can stack pretty compactly. It's the couple of old dead CRTs that are really taking up the space.
I'll take them somewhere when I can be confident that they'll be handled in a sane manner. They'll probably still be in my basement in 20 years, knowing how fast things move in the environmental regulation area, particularly internationally.
Problem is two fold.
1 - too many people believe that P-III 500 they paid $1500.00 for in 1998 is still worth $1000.00 and will not sell it for less so it will sit in a closet for 3 more years and then silently get thrown in the trash.
2 - Way too many people believe that you have to have a Pentium4 or better and 2GHZ or faster to do anything. I can edit a full length feature film, do Advanced CG graphics at broadcast quality and everything else productive that is done today on much older hardware. Hell we have a old intergraph Graphics Workstation here with dual P-II 350's in it with a old copy of Lightwave that can do amazing things (and has! the M&M animated characters on TV were done on that same hardware and software revision)
and that is with windows, install a properly chosen and configured linux on it and it can be faster "feeling" than a XP machine on modern hardware.
Way too much get's tossed based on a belief that it is un-useable. I fished out of the trash here at work a pair of Dell poweredge servers that had only P-III processors in them. They scream as SQL and File servers at home, and a smaller company would kill for that kind of resources that a larger company happily tosses in a dumpster.
Obsolete = useful in different ways. I have old obsolete 386 pc104 formfactor computers all over michigan on towers acting as ham radio digipeater data collection nodes running an obsolete linux kernel and had rolled Filesystem to fit on a 4meg flash. that 1.X kernel is supposedly "unsafe" but nobody can hack them unless they want to climb up 200 feet.
these old computers would rock for a robot "brain" for robotics... adda rat-shack VEX kit and go the next step from remote control erector set to real robot.
There is lots of life left in "obsolete" computers and computer parts.
Hell I keep around dead motherboards and cards simply because I never have to buy surface mount resistors and capacitors anymore... Harvest the boards for free parts to feed my electronics hobby!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I've noticed that one of the prevalent comment subjects with regards to this article is that either "I can always find a use for my old hardware" or "I know somewhere around here that has a free swap/refurbish service." Which is great, don't get me wrong. The thing is, computer-techy-types are, by their very nature, not inclined to throw out old hardware, as they will be able to find some use for it, whether it be to re-purpose it at home or create a Frankenstien box that they can give to someone who can use it. Most enthusiasts of any kind are like this -- car enthusiasts will save parts in their garage for years after they've sold the car, just in case they need it someday; handicrafts enthusiasts just won't throw out that leftover/old piece of fabric/paper/etc. because they know that once they do, that'll be just the thing that they have to go out and buy.
It's not the enthusiasts that fill up junkyards/landfills/ships to China/India. It's people who don't know/care much about the subject that just junk their stuff as soon as it's no longer the "latest and greatest." It's not just individuals, but companies that do this (although larger companies often have a plan where they send their older hardware to be used in schools or community centers or some such).
Something that every nerd and geek can do to help reduce useful hardware going to junkyards/landfills/overseas is to let their friends and coworkers know that much of the stuff that people are throwing out can be repurposed. This goes for not just computers, but most electronic equipment. A lot of people just throw out their old TVs/VCRs/DVD players/etc. too (even though they still work or just need a tiny repair). And being the person that everyone knows is into recycling/repurposing has the side benefit of probably being the person who receives the hand-me-down hardware!
the majority of homes in the UK dont have basements you insensitive clod!
I think the benefits of this are slightly blurry - on the one hand it is socially invaluable to do this and I take my hat off to the guy for doing it, on the other it is an old inefficient PC that uses an awful lot of energy to do not that much.
Really? Most introductory computer users are going to type S-L-O-W-L-Y into their computer as they type up their homework or email. They'll spend large amounts of time staring at the screen trying to decipher what they're looking at. Does it really make any difference if their computer sits at 98% idle or 99.99999999926% idle?
I find that there's a law of diminishing returns for computers and computer usage, particularly when you're talking about consumer usage.
> Having a low-end pentium computer connected to the Internet at 56k delivers vast, incredible advantages over no computer at all.
> Having 10x faster computer at 10x the connection speed delivers much less more of an advantage.
> Having 100x faster computer at 100x the connection speed delivers very little more value than 10x.
Only in limited contexts (EG: performance clustering, rendering, some servers) is this not true, and this is why the $100 laptop with built-in mesh networking is such a big freaking deal! It has society-changing potential. When the poor and impoverished have cheap, easy access to information and technology, they can realize the true causes of their plight and take much more effective action to make their lives better.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.