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Taking a Crack At Recycling E-Waste
An anonymous reader wrote to mention a New York Times article being hosted at News.com. It touches on a new initiative in upstate New York to deal with the problem of e-waste. The Town of North Hempstead has positioned helpers at the dump the last four weekends, assisting people with a flood of old monitors, keyboards, laptops, word processors, and even a Pong game or two. Besides the obvious benefit of getting this junk out of our homes, the article highlights why this should be a growing concern around the country. From the article: "While federal law regulates the disposal of electronics by businesses and government agencies, it does not affect individual consumers, who account for more than half the e-waste produced annually, according to the federal agency. Every old computer monitor contains about four pounds of lead, and other parts are filled with heavy metals like mercury, arsenic, cadmium and chromium. They have toxins that hover in the air after incineration or leach into the water supply when buried in landfills. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh say that dumps around the nation's major cities, including New York, hold more than 60 million computers."
This post made with 100% recycled electrons.
I may be mistaken, but software doesn't actually generate any waste. The packaging already has ways to be recycled. What am I missing?
.. 'helped' onto E-Bay. If it's working or repairable, I guess some of the stuff gets pocketed and recycled onto E-Bay or put into home use. You can replace the batteries on defunct iPods for example. My own iPod mini, for example, was screwed, but I managed to get the 4GB drive out of it, which was working fine, and the drive now stores my music for my 360.
I think one of the solutions is to get companies to donate old equipment, or give it to organizations that will fix it up and give to the needy. I have seen companies trash perfectly good computers, but refuse to give them to anyone. These computers were far from useless, and could be used by grandma to get email and surf the net. I think if these type of programs were setup at companies it would reduce the level of waste considerably.
Still we need a solution to the problem of lead and other toxic chemicals leached into the soil. That makes me wonder...what happened to all the stories of businesses dumping this type of waste in rural China?
Steve Wiseman
http://www.windows-admin-tools.com
-b.
It's as "downstate" as you can get, on Long Island. The recycling company is upstate in Buffalo, NY.
There's a recycling site near here, and the best part is they don't mind people taking away stuff that's been left there (with the usual disclaimers). It's a bit depressing to find out some people will throw away perfectly fine (and often new) PCs just because the windows installed on it got spyware.
North Hempstead is on Long Island, and is thus not in upstate New York. (And, no, the word "upstate" is found nowhere in the original article; Times writers and editors know what upstate encompasses, even if Zonk doesn't). This is as incorrect as saying that Pasadena is in the San Francisco Bay area or that Palo Alto is in the Southland.
Are the United States really so far behind in environmental issues?
I understood from Bush that he does not really care about the environment (relative to other issues), but I would think that lower levels of government would already have acted more responsibly.
Over here, the separated collection of waste, including separate places where electronic waste (computers, household electronics) has been in place for many years.
We even pay a small fee on new equipment to pay for the recycling of old equipment.
I think the US should change from "we only care about economics and hate to pay for others" into something more responsible.
We have about 60 HP Vectras sitting in a closet at my school. They're being used for nothing, and the school district refuses to let them go. So they're going to have to be thrown away. I know any number of people that would like to pick one up to play with, whether to use it as a spare Linux box, or simply to take apart and salvage parts out of. But the district can't get out of it's own way to put them to use, so they're probably going to sit in that closet until someone can take them to the dump.
Perhaps the nation as a whole should put more effort into recycling e-waste and less into the more inefficient plastics and glass, since heavy metals can cause big problems if not taken care of properly. I've also heard that the only thing proven to be efficient to recycle (in terms of energy) would be aluminum (link). Since the other ones probably don't even save us energy, why not put more efforts into something that may save us in the future? All the other recycling is probably done just for politicians to cozy up to environmentalists.
The hardest part is sorting out the ones and the zeros without generating more ones and zeros than you started with. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University believe they are on the cusp of a major breakthrough in the E-Waste initiative.
South east asia, mexico, and nigeria and iberia exist, to accept our refuse. God save them, and the Queen.
I'll take them. I can put Linux on them and use them as random servers or whatever.
Or they could do the smart thing and give them to students.
Care about privacy? Read this!
...or at least a big part of it, they have such a stranglehold on the OS market and they don't make any operating systems designed for reusing old PCs, and the prices they charge for their OS's make them impractical for installing on PC's of such low worth. Yes, there are leftover copies of windows 98, but it's unstable, unsuported and a hassle to set up.
Just imagine all those in a beowulf cluster!
While probably not solving the problem but displacing it, how about using old computers for the $100 computer initiative for developing countries.
They would definitely use more power than the $100 computers designed for this purpose but chances are they would provide the same amount of processing power, better graphics, more hard drive space and would have available monitors and network/WiFi adapters.
As I said, that this is displacing the problems as now the developing countries will have to deal with the waste at some point in time. But, it could give their economies & education systems a much needed boost.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Anyone got a link? I've always thought this was so much enviro-hippie BS, but I'd be willing to change my opinion if someone can actually explain how lead that's locked in CRT glass can end up in the water table.
North Hempstead isn't even in northern Long Island (on which it lies), much less upstate New York. Hope the rest of the facts aren't so liberally interpreted.
Instead of destroying old computers that work, why not put them to other uses? A small computer store where I live does exactly this, and they have made a killing at it, too. For poor income families, and casual computer users, it's a win-win situation. In fact I was a customer: I bought a maxed out IBM PC300GL for 25 dollars, and I had no problems with it. Most Modern software worked beautifully on it. While it wasn't a gaming computer, it did just what I bought it for.
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
1. Each thing sold must be taxed for its recycling (kind of an additional VAT, with standard amount for item category and the possibility for sellers to certify a different packaging or item composition which gives em a discount)
2. Consumers can either choose to dump stuff in the bin or go to recycling sites and get refunded for the amount and quality of the material they give back.
IMHO that would pressure producers to consider packaging more carefully, let consumers get something in return for the effort of getting stuff properly recycled, and somebody might want to sort garbage to get a lil money.
I know that the idea of tax is not popular. But we pay anyway in the end in a polluted environment.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
It could be just me. I was just shopping online for a second external hard drive after the first one got full, with some useful but mostly 'can't delete yet-might need in future' kind of stuff.
Next thing you'll be saying is Pacman is gay. Hello? Ms. Pacman? Pacman is a red-blooded heterosexual disc with a triangle cut out.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Until they aren't recognizable as computers.
I still have a 640 Meg SCSI drive with netmare 2 or it that I filled with 30-06 holes. It has a few jagged edges but now it's a good memory.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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NYT article, need I say more?
"While federal law regulates the disposal of electronics by businesses and government agencies,..."
Say what? Our environmental folks say there is no federal law regulating electronics disposal in the USA by businesses, although there are state laws.
Does anyone have a cite on this alleged federal law?
Thanks,
Bob
There is a place close to me, called erecycler, that resells a bunch of things - mostly used computers from businesses and schools. This is a really good way to cut down on the waste. (Yes eventually it does wearout but this gives it a longer life.) I've bought stuff from them with good luck.
This message was brought to you by "Lack of Sleep."
If a person company wants to build a bridge or building or something, then the effect on the public and environment is often considered.
But if a company decides to make millions of widgets and sell them to the public, the effect of this is often overlooked.
Company says the consumer bought the toys containing plastic and lead, so claims that the problem is offloaded to the consumer.
But the consumer does not decide how to make the widget or what it is made of. This is what the company and government regulation does.
The way to control waste is not by creating "recycle" programs after the fact, but rather to more tightly control product creation to reduce waste from the start. This applies to anything that can fill up the landfills/ditches, or create a hazard.
Brewer and Stringer are promoting a new City law, Intro 104, to require manufacturers to recycle products in a complete product lifecycle:
The Council's Technology in Government committee is running a public feedback survey on recycling.
When the World Is Running Down" by the Police
--
make install -not war
It's largely an economic consequence of cheap energy and expensive labour. It's much cheaper to have machines make a new thing on a production line than it is to have humans recycle or refurbish something old.
Of course, humans are particularly expensive because the government levies a 30-40% tax on their use.
Deleted
My dad was telling me his community (Arlington, TX) had a recycling fair this past week for items such as old computers, monitors, old cell phones, etc. I understand a number of companies participated by taking the waste to recycle. I commented that it would be nice to have such an event in my city because I have several old computers, monitors, keyboards, printers, and old cell phones that I'd love to be able to get rid of without feeling guilt over just throwing them away.
http://www.redmeow.com/But just "recycling" isn't enough - in fact it can be worse than landfilling it in North America!
Why? Much of tech waste sent for recycling ends up in China and other countries where unprotected workers burn material in open fires to separate out the metals from the plastics, and use hydrochloric acid (again unprotected) to isolate gold and other precious metals. It's a horrible practice. Visit the web site of the Basel Action Network for photos of the conditions. Included in the photo gallery are American municipal, hospital and school identification stickers from material at these overseas sites.
In Ontario there is only one company that truly recycles electronics - Noranda's plant in Brampton, Ontario. They have a lead smelter on-site, and you have to pay to send material to them. There are many companies that will take your electronics waste for free, but guess where it ends up. Not at a proper recycling plant in North America, that's for sure.
Always ask the company who is picking up your e-waste where it is going for processing.
They help hardware being used longer and spread computing freedom at the same time: http://www.freegeek.org/
Here in ireland, we had a price hike on absolutely everything that costs money to recycle. We call it WEEE here in europe, its a good initiative to be honest, it seems to be working here, WEEE Ireland has more details . But there is also a very large market for PC Recycling, where the old machines are taken, upgraded and then sold as systems primed for solely surfing the web. With a DSL modem and a recycled pc, you can be surfing the web for less than $300.
Charge a decent deposit on manufactured goods, and you would see a lot more e-cycling happen. People might go chuck out an old computer and monitor, but if they got 50 bucks (whatever, it would have to be significant though) back for taking them back to the store, I bet that would happen most of the time.
What's all this hubbub about "recycling e-waste"? Ain't no one ever heard of the "Recycle Bin"? Geeze.
The funadamental problem with computers is the nature of their design, or rather, the current easiest/cheapest methods. Take a look at a lot of the current day products and how easy some of them are to recycle. A lot of kids toys are made of one giant piece of plastic, all the same kind of plastic. Most food containers are now that way too. Computers can't be made that way. They are a very diverse collection of parts, assembled in ways not meant to be disassembled, and the parts are so small and so numerous that even if you wanted to take them apart it would be very difficult work. I can't imagine how long it would take someone to take apart a motherboard into recyclable pieces. Optical drives, power supplies, fans, none of these lend themselves well to recycling. We can't just keep burying our trash, that doesn't make the problem go away, it just pushes it off on the next generation to deal with. Eventually we are going to have to deal with all our trash.
Really it would not surprise me if in say, 50 years, there is an entire industry of waste reclamation, where a company bids on and BUYS a landfill, and sends in machines to process the garbage and make a proffit off what's reclaimed.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I don't typically post, much less as a grandfather, but here goes. Someone somewhere got me interested in the profitability of electronics waste(recycling). If I remember correctly, to be a recycler, all you have to do is do one of three things. Store it, sell it, or recycle it "properly" (EPA guidelines, etc--probably pretty expensive). So what do these recycling outfits do? In order to maximize profit, they charge you to take it off your hands. Then they sell as much of the stuff they "recycle" as possible, and store the rest of it in giant warehouses. What recycler would actually have any incentive to turn this stuff into non-hazardous waste? Do a google search for electronics recycling and look how big their warehouses are (typically).
Forget this. In memorial.
"Four pounds of lead in a monitor" is a bogus issue. It's in the form of leaded glass. The glass is not soluble in water.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
This doesn't apply only to the computer science industry of course: what big corporations in, say, hollywood marketing that make plastic happy meal toys for movies, and plastic super-soaker water guns are doing is shortsited and wrong too. There's plenty of more sustainable forms of entertainment: like chess, checkers, and capture the flag with bamboo water guns. Sure, we'll probably never run out of aluminum and steel. But that doesn't mean finding such resources is as easy as digging a hole in a field. No, in today's world resources are getting harder to find and aren't often the easy berries in the field anymore. It's gotten to where some companies in metal mining have investigated and are seriously taking into consideration mining under the ocean
http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business /stories/technology/10/08/8goldrush.html and in oil, well most people have their own suspicions.
But most people planning on buying new computers probably don't consider this; while many people buy computers on a need basis, I suspect many others probably buy when they don't need to to keep pace with technology. With the allure of time conveniences and great performance associated with new technologies, its demanding, but as long as nerds takes steps similar to prolonging the use of an old computer to save resources, at least part of the population is not going to run into a doomsday dumpster world.
While I myself am all for unregulated business, I think it's important to achieve sustainability, not so much for the current general population, but for my own interest in the future population. For example, I read on a website that
http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu24ee/uu24As an example of the importance of recycling or continuing using copper and other such things in computers now, diesel used to be 10cents a gallon when my grandpa just started fishing with his own boat in the 1950's or so; I'm sure the price of copper and other such things have risen similarly. And I suspect that's the way its going to continue rising from today on. If something's scarce, recycle it and make a buck longterm while at it.
North Hemptead on google maps.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
There's a ton of good software to run on that Alpha. You can run the latest version of NetBSD, for instance, with nearly the entire collection of packages. And I mean the most current up-to-date packages available.
Obviously, you won't be able to run Microsoft Word 200x or Visio on it, though.
Well I got it as a dualboot system running NT4 and Redhat. In Windows NT4 I was able to get a few shareware programs but only one commercial program installed, Borland C++ PowerBuilder. I've hardly used Linux, when I ordered the computer I didn't get a modem with it as the builder only offered one of the two competing 56k versions however my ISP used the other one. I figured I'd get a compatible modem myself but I wasn't able to find a compatible one with the 56k version my ISP used. Now that I've setup a small home network and have cable access I've been thinking of getting an updated Linux that way I can use it. But I'm wondering what I'd use it for as I recently got a new pc with Linux preinstalled and am planning on getting a Macbook Pro in the next week or two. I've been thinking of donating it to someone who can use it and has the knowledge to make use of it, but I wonder how many do, I run into a lot of people who don't know how to work with an Alpha.
Obviously, you won't be able to run Microsoft Word 200x or Visio on it, though.
I tried installing Office 97 but it gave me the message that the processor what the wrong one. I've never used Visio. Other than Windows and what comes with it, and Office 97, I don't use MS software.
FalconShould there be a Law?
It seems to me that a potential future solution to the e-waste recycling problem is some form of nanotech. Imagine a strain of bacteria genetically engineered to "consume" some environmentally hazardous substance -- say arsenic -- and produce some environmentally safe substance as a waste by-product -- say nitrogen.
:-).
Obviously, IANAGE (I am not a genetic engineer)
Alternatively, I can imagine some form of nanomechanical device that "disassembles" e-waste into more easily dealt with components.
Just my 2 yen.
Don't underestimate the power of The Source
step 1. business plan (get accquired by )
step 2. interview homeless people (to be done by perl AI program written by fifth grader)
step 3. issue tinfoil hats to new homeless employees, have them eat the lead out of the monitors
step 4. profit
step 5. oh wait this one is the profit step, get accquired
lick the cancle button (at least thats what our Chinese QA says)
From TFA:
old Commodore Plus/4's with cracker crumbs in the keys
Aaaargh! A Commodore Plus/4 should not be thrown away/recycled. I would pay up to $100 for a Plus/4 depending on condition and serial numhber, and it's irrelevant if it's filled with cracked crumbs or not.
This is like saying "Oh, I'll just get rid of these 2000-year old Roman coins, they can't be used in the store anymore."
If you have some old 70's or 80's (or "exotic" 90's) hardware in the wardrobe, please please please don't get rid of it before first spending 5 minutes on google to see if there might be collectors that are looking for *your* wardrobe-"junk".
I'll lie sleepless tonight, thinking about morons who might throw away their old Commodore C65 or Commodore MAX without having any idea how invaluable they are. Even common things like a C64C are still in demand, although you won't get that much for it.
Instead of just grinding up 4 year old computers, they can be put to other uses. There ought to be more effort put into reuse before recycle. For instance, if you have some old computer you need to get rid of, at least post it up on the free section of craigslist or freecycle first. You don't even have to make a big fuss about it. Just tell people to pick it up off your porch, or say you've put it on the curb for the trash collectors the next morning, someone hurry and get it if they want. Just communicate! It doesn't take much effort.
This doesn't go for just computers. You might be surprised how easy it is to get rid of everything from old clothes to building material to cellphones.
At least in the UK.
I'm setting up a computer recycling project at work - I'm still wondering if it's going to be workable in the long run due to all the legalities and associated costs.
* Need to register as a Waste Carrier (we got a note back saying we're exempt as a charity)
* Register as a Hazardous Waste Producer, due to things like the lead in CRTs. Cost £18 (but for us, closer to £30 because we can't get a debit card and have to do it by snail mail + cheque)
* Make sure that the donor is either a household, or a business which only throws away the equivalent of 6 computers per year - anything else and they have to register as a Hazardous Waste Producer and give us a premises code
* Each time we take something away or pass it on to a waste management company, we have to do a waste transfer consignment note with details of the category of waste, weight of kilogrammes etc. This needs to be 100% spot on, and copies kept by all parties for 3 years.
* Every quarter, we have to do a Consignee Return to the environment agency which costs £10 PER COLLECTION (or £19 for us, because we can't do it online) - this cost will add up very quickly. I'm working with the EA to see if there's any way around this as a charity, but initally they said it was per ITEM, which would be miles worse!
Considering there's so much pressure to reuse and recycle, they sure do put a lot of legal and financial hurdles in the way.
Unfortunately, many such landfills tend to become "other things" after the landfill is closed - most commonly tract homes, golfcourses, and industrial/business complexes. Many people would be surprised to find out that they live, work, or play on top of a former dump. How these developments would impact any future material reclamation mining is unknown (I suppose it would depend upon the longevity of the new site use in question). There is also the issue of whether there exist accurate maps of former landfills in city records. I would imagine that over time, older landfill zoning maps are either lost or discarded after ownership and use changes hands...
Even so, you are right: there is likely a fortune to be made from old dump sites (just in metal reclamation alone - think about copper and alluminum, for example)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
You see, beureacracies have this problem, called CYA, er, "cover yer a**" - ie, fear of liability. When they wing it, these entities will do whatever they can, damn the consequences as-long-as-they-don't-get-caught. That is their attitude, and how they work. They don't do things for the common good. They won't just give you stuff. They might not even sell it to you (unless you are willing to pay a lot of money, or you at least look like someone they can transfer that liability to - ie, an electronics recycling company). Most of the time, they'll just pat you on the head, say thank you for bringing it up, and then dump the crap as quickly (and hopefully) as clandestinely as possible. It wouldn't matter if it was a pallet of today's latest Dells or a pallet of "boxed up" bag-kit'o'parts for brand new Altairs - they don't care about the worth or rarity, they just care about liability.
So - sometimes, depending on the item(s) in question - sometimes it is better just to "leave well enough alone", and let it sit. Keep an eye on it, and maybe somebody will come along with a change of heart (rare, but it happens). Or, maybe they will "find" them, and decide to give them away, or maybe they will pitch them in the end. Regardless, if you stir things up now, you likely will cause them to be pitched, never to be seen again.
Now, in the case of these Vectras, probably "big deal" - but I once caused the destruction of something potentially more valuable simply by trying to buy it. I once went to a local equipment recycler here in Phoenix, and offerred to purchase two cases worth of 5.25 inch Apple IIe floppies - I am pretty certain there was a complete copy of Eamon (including expansions) in there, among other great pieces. I had the intention of transferring all of that over to disk images for emulation usage (and releasing on the internet what I could that was legal to do so). Unfortunately, when I took the items to the office to be priced, they informed me that they could not legally sell any software without the manufacturer's permission, and that they had to take those floppies and destroy them (they wouldn't let me buy them for any price, and they wouldn't let me put them back - once found, they had to destroy them). I was pretty angry, but there wasn't much I could do. I also quickly realized that a lot of their equipment had to be worthless (at least from a hobbyist perspective) as well (much of it was electronics manufacturing and industrial equipment) - since much of it relied on computers controlled by software to operate - software they probably had to erase or destroy before selling.
Since that time I have been very reluctant about such things when I find them, especially software or data, especially when it is very old and likely nobody cares about. Unfortunately, this is way the computer industry is - forever recycling its history, to hell with the ultimate consequences...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon