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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."
That's Basel Action Network, not Ban Action Network!
http://www.systemrecycler.com/
Disabled guy takes old equipment, cleans and refurbishs it, repairs it if needed, loads Linux and gives it away to the needy.
Some of it is resold to cover basic costs but it's pretty much a non-profit.
What do you mean, there's no silicon heaven?
~egilhh
Not too long ago, a french ship lined with toxic asbestos was sent to India (finally had to be returned) and had wide coverage in media. The poor are happy to take these things apart and make some quick cash without any knowledge of long-term ill effects. Sometimes, the hunger and immediate needs prevail over any consideration of long-term ill effects.
2 0.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4577198.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/46924
Our router vendor told us that some models will not be available in Europe anymore, because they contain lead and other dangerous stuff. He also told us that they will continue to sell it in USA and Asia, "because it is not illegal".
Companies don't care about the environment, until governments force them to care.
In Belgium (and maybe also in other European countries), this problem is solved by asking a recycling tax and making vendors responsible for recycling old hardware and household appliances.
When buying something, a customer has to pay a small amount of money (for instance: 0,5 for a mobile phone), but in return, he can return his old devices to the vendor. The vendor then sends it to the manufacturer who recycles it.
Due to an EU directive, computer recycling will become compulsary in the UK in 2008: the related article here describes how the WEEE[sic] will force computer manufacturers to be responsible for their products, by providing a recycling service for *all* the electronic devices they sell.
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.
IIRC, Kyoto is all about the carbon output. With respect to old computers, Kyoto would have only made the situation worse. Since China and India are exempt from Kyoto, even more old gear would be sent there so that the CO2 generated from recyling the metal wouldn't have to be monitored, counted, or paid for as it would (in theory) in the West.
Not that it really matters, IMHO, it's only a matter of time before Kyoto is officially declared dead. Here in Canada we're hopelessly behind our goal, the only way to meet our target would be to buy a billion dollars of CO2 credits from Russia -- which would have exactly zero impact on CO2 emmissions because Russia's CO2 credit surplus is due to a timing fluke relating to their collapsing economy in the post-Cold War period.
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.
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
As a fairly poor college student who left the computer industry during the 2001 depression I have lots of broken/obsolete computer hardware and not allot of money. The prices they charge at the recycle centers to take this stuff are quite steep for some one like myself (20 bucks for a monitor is a weekends worth of micro brews for me after all :) ) making just dumping them in the dumpster near my house extremely tempting. I'm sure there are allot of people less eco conscious than myself who see fit to just throw this crap away rather than pay the fairly hefty processing fees associated with proper disposal.
I wonder how polluted our own landfill is due to this.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
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?
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
i.e., I don't think he's spinning in his grave; he's not dead.
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??)
BAN = Basel Action Network (If you'd RTFA)
www.freegeek.org
:D
Freegeek operates in Portland. I do volunteer work there and it's a neat place. They take old hardware, strip it, recycle what they can, and the rest gets put into their rebuilding program.
They take the decent stuff, and after testing it gets built into new systems (Yes, they put linux on them!) and given to other non profits, needy types, etc.
The beauty of the system is that they teach volunteers to build these sytems. The volunteers learn a bit, build so 6 systems, then they get to take the sixth home with them.
So, Freegeek does the following:
Recycles old hardware
gives "new" boxes to good causes
teaches people how to build a computer
teaches people how to use linux
gives people who can't afford a computer a chance to earn one
All around, a damn fine setup... And before you ask them, no they don't have one in INSERT YOUR CITY HERE.
You created a new account to say this?
There was a report on TV some time back (investigative report) which wondered why communities charged for recycling so they decided to find out.
They tagged some recycling trucks and followed them to their final destination:
The city dump.
If the story ended there it would have been sensationalistic enough, but the next day they showed what goes on at the city dump.
Normal trash, and trash from recycled bins got fed into these giant conveyor belts where workers sorted through the trash and pulled out all the recyclable material before it got burned.
They asked the landfill operator why, and they said because they make money off the recycling.
After I saw that piece I haven't worried one bit about nor recycling, and I haven't paid for it either. Why should I pay a company money to do some work when it doesn't mean anything in the end and they in turn are just going to make more money?
No thank you.
I'm sure the same happens with PCs and equipment. Copper is valuable. So is gold. If there's money to be made, someone will figure out a way of extracting the raw materials. If the process is not environmentally friendly then that's a different problem.
Power plants didn't used to be environmentally friendly until the laws were changed which forced power companies to install scrubbers and catalytic converters. If you require the recycling companies to clean up their acts then they will.
Anytime one of these articles comes up, someone posts a link to Free Geek, your local place where technology is recycled. That is because people think Free Geek is awesome. Because it is awesome. Although, you know, you can also learn a lot about Free Geek here
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
> 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.
Amazingly nobody complains about toxic waste being sent to the very same countries where the American jobs are exported.
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.
You should contact your local landfill and see if they offer an free recycling dates for electronics. I found myself in a similar situation as yours previously and then I found a program at the landfill.
Electronics are accepted for recycling three days a month from 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. The collection is held at the Hazardous Waste Facility located at the Broome County Landfill. There is no fee for residential users. Visit www.gobroomecounty.com or call (607) 778-2250 for collection dates. Materials Accepted: Monitors, printers, CPU's, televisions, VCR's, stereos, laptops, keyboards, two-way radios and fax machines - From my local landfill website http://www.gobroomecounty.com/dpw/DPWLandfill.php
nothing
Rather than throw old PCs into the trash and fueling the waste problem find new uses for them.
For example, old PCs 386 or later, can be reused as a router/firewall. They provide excellent security for your home LAN while keeping it out of the waste pile. Being floppy based, Freesco does NOT require a hard disk! Install the software and reuse the PC or give it to someone who will. See:
http://www.freesco.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FREESCO/
Later PCs, such Pentium 400 MHz or later, can be reused as MythTV PVRs by adding an inexpensive TV tuner ($20-$30) I have gotten PCs as old as P2 266MHz 128 MB to have some limited PVR functionality. (contact me if interested in old PC PVRs)
http://amicus.sourceforge.net/
Practically any PC, 386 or better, can run lightweight Linux distributions such as DSL or Debian for general purpose computing.
http://damnsmalllinux.org/
http://debian.org/
These are just three low cost methods I have personally used to recycle old computers. Use your imagination and Google, and you can see there are many other options too. Don't throw it away, make the old PC into something useful reuse it or give it to someone who will!
Andrew Lynch
My tab in Firefox says:
Slashdot: Where Computers Go To Die.
Struck me as funny anyway.
jeff
sdg
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!
then new PCs. e.g. my 200mhz dell's processor pulls 30 watts as opposed to my Athlon's 90. You really only see low power PCs in business and desktop environments (and laptops). Most users are still buying cheap Dell Boxen with 300 watt power supplies running full on.
Besides, once you hit 200-300 mhz with a tnt/rage128 class graphics card you can do any 2D task you care to name. That was a major concern for PC venders back in the day: how are we gonna get people to upgrade when this year's models are only sightly better? luckily Microsoft to the rescue with bloatware 5.1 SP2, but you can still get by quite nicely with a pared down Linux install running Abiword/Gnumeric/Firefox.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
One of the tasks of the Widernet project is to take old PCs, install a static copy of part of the Internet on them, then ship the computers to developing countries in Africa so that they can benefit from the knowledge without having a dedicated connection. For working equipment, this would be an excellent way to keep the computers from being junked.
Wait a sec, folks. I think you're missing the forest for the trees here.
Somebody. On Slashdot. Used "effluent" and "affluent" in the same sentence. Correctly.
Don't give me this "global responsibility" crap in the face of a God Damned Miracle!
Cheers! -J
--- Corporations Are A Fad.