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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.
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
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?
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
Of course, your oldest computer probably consumes a lot of power for the meager computing power or storage space it provides. This hurts the planet in an entirely different way.
Help I'm a rock.
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.
> 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
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!