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Apple Recycling Old Macs for Free

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the not-just-for-doorstops-anymore dept.

charleste writes "CNN is reporting that Apple is going to recycle Macs for free. I wonder if this means they will actually recycle them in Cupertino, or sent overseas to be dumped as many 'recycled' computers do, or if they will actually mine them. And does this make the MacQuarium obsolete?"

6 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Old Computers are a Gold Mine by coffeecan · · Score: 5, Informative

    Literally. There is more gold per-ton in old computer parts than gold ore, and its cheaper to extract. so it makes sense given the recent rise of precious metals for apple to salvage as much of these resources as possible. This Free program is probably going to turn a profit.

    1. Re:Old Computers are a Gold Mine by shashi · · Score: 5, Informative

      Very true. There are also a lot of metals besides gold that are worth more (though in smaller amounts, like platinum). I've been part of a business before where we chunked up old Macs and PCs, packed all the circuit boards up in huge wooden crates, and sent them off to a recovery mill... a couple months later, a few tons of scrap is turned into a check for $20,000. It's not bad money but it takes a lot of manual labor to separate it out (i.e. separating circuits from CRT's and plastic) or the mill will charge you to do the separation and sorting.

      Also, newer computers have much lower amounts of these materials, making them almost worthless. The sweet spot are the 68020's and 486's (the heavy processors are where you get the most precious metals per oz.).

  2. Staying in the US by bizard · · Score: 4, Informative

    At the announcement, Jobs specifically said that the recycling would all be done in the U.S. and not just shipped off to China.

  3. Re:I will do one better! by Darkon · · Score: 4, Informative

    It seems like giving them away to people would be a far better way of getting rid of old, but still usable, computers

    Not necessarily. Often these old machines are highly inefficient in terms of the computing power they provide vs the electricity they consume. Sure, having one of these at home would be cool - in fact I did used to use the next model down as my home server - but these days I just don't want to either pay the power bill or try to justify the waste of resources. Sometimes it really is better just to let this old kit go to silicon heaven.

  4. Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition vs. Apple by reporter · · Score: 4, Informative
    DAldredge (2353) incorrectly stated, "This isn't about being green, ..." On the contrary, the CNN report mentioned in the lead article starting this thread of discussion talks explicitly about recycling.

    How has Apple handled recycling?

    According to the "The 2005 Computer Report Card" by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, "Apple, Dell, Gateway, and HP are the companies that use recyclers that have signed the Electronic Recyclers Pledge of Stewardship. To learn more about the Recycler Pledge go to: http://www.svtc.org///cleancc/recycle/recycler_ple dge.htm".

    In that report, note that Apple received the second highest score in the category of "DISPOSAL CHAIN". That category indicates the degree to which a company will audit the entire disposal chain (including work sub-contracted to suspicious companies in China, Taiwan Province, and Korea) to ensure that recycling of old computer equipment is done in accordance with the most ethical, most responsible practices.

    Note that Apple management actually signed the Electronics Recycler's Pledge of True Stewardship, committing to the gold standard of ethical, responsible recycling.

    Finally, the recent decision by Apple management to take back old equipment for free is probably due to the tireless efforts of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) and other groups in the Computer TAKE-BACK Campaign (CTBC). When Steve Jobs gave the keynote speech at the 2005 graduation ceremony at Stanford University, CTBC flew a banner over the ceremony. The banner exclaimed, "STEVE - DON'T BE A MINI PLAYER - RECYCLE ALL E-WASTE".

  5. Re:I will do one better! by tomhudson · · Score: 4, Informative
    Maybe they don't want a repeat of the old Mac Clone - where people cold take the custom bios chips out of a defunct mac and use it to legally run a clone made by Franklin Computer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_clones

    a large amount of this system software was included in the Macintosh's ROM chips. Hence any competitor who attempted to create a Macintosh clone would have to either illegally duplicate all the copyrighted code in the ROMs -- in which case Apple could legally quash the manufacturer -- or reverse-engineer the ROMs, which would have been an enormous and costly process without certainty of success.

    The strategy of suppressing clone development was successful; from 1986 to 1991, several manufacturers created Macintosh clones, obtaining their ROMs by actually purchasing one of Apple's Macintosh computers and removing from it the required parts, then installing those parts in the clone's case.

    ...

    Before true clones were available, the Atari ST could be converted into a Mac by adding the third-party Spectre GCR emulator (which required that the user purchase a set of Mac ROMs). The Amiga could also be converted into a Mac with similar emulators. Since Apple Computer never manufactured a 68060 based Mac, the fastest way to run native 68000 MacOS applications on real hardware was to run it on an Atari or Amiga.

    So your dead mac is worth money. Pull the roms, send the rest back.