Growing Problems With Electronics Waste

eldavojohn writes "The BBC is reporting that many countries are dumping their e-Waste in poorer African nations. From the article, 'The world's richest nations are dumping hazardous electronic waste on poor African countries, says the head of the UN's Environment Programme (Unep).' The problem with e-Waste (versus other wastes) is that the gases and chemicals that make up a lot of electronics are particularly harmful for the environment. I suppose nobody takes their computer, TV or Radio to the repair shop anymore since a new one is a fraction of that cost down at the local convenience store."

Comments

repairs vs new

[56ker]

nobody takes their computer, TV or Radio to the repair shop anymore since a new one is a fraction of that cost down at the local convenience store."

Yep, case in point - I gave someone a quote of £175 to fix their laptop. They preferred instead to spend £339 on a new one. Even if the cost is lower for repairs people still prefer to buy new (which doesn't make much sense to me).

Re:repairs vs new

[mccalli]

I gave someone a quote of £175 to fix their laptop. They preferred instead to spend £339 on a new one. Even if the cost is lower for repairs people still prefer to buy new (which doesn't make much sense to me).

£339 - £175 = £164. £164 for an upgraded laptop starts to sound ok, doesn't it. Now take broken'ish laptop and put on ebay and you reduce that £164 figure still further, depending on age and how broken it really is. Suddenly the choice is obvious - unless this laptop is a current model, you're as well geting rid and buying something more up to date.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:repairs vs new

[scum-e-bag]

when was the last time you upgraded your laptop?

I've had mine for over two years now and I don't think I'll be upgrading until either the battery or the screen completely dies. It's a 1.5Ghz Pentium M with 2 gig of RAM. Linux/GNOME runs like a dream and the only time I need more speed is when I want to compile something... more of a FSB issue than anything else. This just means that I'll stick with pre-compiled binaries as opposed to a gentoo solution for the moment.

We just deal with slow outdated laptops untill they're too slow and outdated, then we bin them or give them away. What's changed?

Hardware has become cheaper. China has happened. Then there is Linux. Linux is now mature enough as a desktop environment. Very little extra bloat is needed for the Linux desktop... it only needs cleaning around the edges with a standardised interface. Historically the driving force behind increasing PC power usage has been bloatware (the old wintel alliance). Linux has a different business model to MS and is forcing MS to slow down its bloat process. If MS continues to force bloat, then it will open a door for Linux to be installed on smaller, cheaper, less powerful hardware, thus lowering the TCO for a Linux based network operating system.

Personally, I think we are about to see a rapid decline in new PC hardware sales, moving instead towards notebook style PCs. DIY PCs are about to become a thing of the past. Vista is likely to be the last MS operating system that requires a generational hardware upgrade, the maturity of Vista as an operating system is astounding. It appears that the relationship between MS-OS-revisions and maturity is "Maturity = ln(revision number)", where the function ln is the natural logarithm. After the upgrade to Vista, the only need to upgrade further (other than aesthetics) will be to reduce power consumption with efficient hardware, which itself will take on an exponential relationship.

The only place I still see bloat in the MS machine is in the active directory, and this isn't PC based, its network based...

Ironically

[Alioth]

Ironically, the EU regulation RoHS (which is intended to cut down on hazardous materials in electronics) is likely to make the waste problem worse - since it bans solder with lead in it. Lead free solder is quite inferior to leaded solder - it tends to be more brittle, and tin whiskers are more likely to form. This means electronics using lead-free solder will fail more frequently and earlier, and therefore need to be replaced more frequently, increasing the volume of waste - and probably more than negating the intended effect of RoHS in the first place.

Re:Ironically

[sonamchauhan]

> Will I get a replacement battery?
Yes, for an old laptop, that could be a bad idea. :-)

My experience: I sourced a replacement battery for a 5 year old Fujitsu laptop direct from Fujitsu who had it stocked all these years. Even though the new battery was virgin, it had deteriorated in storage.

Instead, repack your battery ( http://www.google.com/search?q=repack+laptop+batte ry )

Ah, the old reverse 419 scam

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, my name is Robert Johnson and I have recently come to aquire 10,000,000 computers that I need to smuggle out of the country...

E-Waste

[timgradwell]

"The BBC is reporting that many countries are dumping their e-Waste in poorer African nations."

I always wondered what happened to the spam emails after I deleted them. Now I finally know where they end up.

Re:I keep all my old electronics

[ColdWetDog]

You do realize that most of the world isn't interested in starting an antique electronics museum. Besides, you're just procrastinating. Someday, someone will want to dump the stuff.

Re:I keep all my old electronics

[YrWrstNtmr]

I don't remember the last time I threw away anything electronic.

You're not married, are you?

Not just price...

[Kris_J]

"I suppose nobody takes their computer, TV or Radio to the repair shop anymore since a new one is a fraction of that cost down at the local convenience store."

Or because you can't actually get them fixed. The insides of even a semi-modern TV are surface-mounted, machine-soldered ICs and small components, not servicable by most humans, particularly since many individual parts aren't available to repair companies. So, you have to buy an entire "module", only available as a "spare part" that costs roughly 75% of the price of the latest model.

Companies should be forced to include, with your electronics purchase, two small parts likely to fail early.

VISTA should greatly increase e-waste

[Proudrooster]

Just think about the impact MS Vista and Office-2007 are going to have on e-waste. If you want the new MS bloat code with the almost as good as MAC interface, then you are going to need (minimum) a 64-bit processor, liquid cooled video card, and 2GB of RAM. Africa needs to brace for the boat load of PIII's and low-end P4's about to show up.

It's really sick that modern computers have such extreme processing power relative to 20-years ago, yet we must continue to upgrade.