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Major Linux Hardware Donor Is a CNN "Hero"

Posted by kdawson on from the making-a-difference dept.

christian.einfeldt writes "James Burgett of the Alameda County Computer Resource Center calls himself a 'tattooed freak' and a recovering drug addict, but CNN is calling him a hero (video) for diverting tons of computers from landfills, installing Ubuntu Linux on them, and giving them out to schools, non-profits, and poor people. Burgett's filmed interview is currently leading a CNN contest among videos of 'ordinary people' whom CNN considers everyday heroes, narrowly edging out the video of a man who is saving gorillas from extinction. In his interview, Burgett points out that the people working for him are also recovering drug addicts or recovering mental illness patients." Update: 10/02 23:46 GMT by KD : Reader stefanlasiewski posted a journal article describing how, bewilderingly, the state of California is threatening to shut down Burgett's ACCRC.

2 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. California doesn't like him.. by nsanders · · Score: 4, Interesting
    He's in a bit of trouble with the law too: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/16/computer-recycler-th.html

    The Department of Toxic Substance Control of the California Environmental Protection Agency has issued the ACCRC a violation that could make it very hard for the group to stay in business. And, quite frankly, that's a damned shame.

  2. Life imitates art. Unbelievable. by Tackhead · · Score: 4, Interesting
    > He's in a bit of trouble with the law too: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/16/computer-recycler-th.html
    >
    >The Department of Toxic Substance Control of the California Environmental Protection Agency has issued the ACCRC a violation that could make it very hard for the group to stay in business. And, quite frankly, that's a damned shame.

    And when I wrote Natalie's Restaurant more than two years ago, I thought it was fiction. Shit, the only thing I got wrong was that I imagined a San Francisco bureaucrat, as opposed to a Berkeley bureaucrat, and that my imaginararily-awkwardly-named "California Computer Recycling Use Fee Commission" wasn't long enough to match the actual bureaucracy's name (namely the "Department of Toxic Substance Control of the California Environmental Protection Agency").

    Because nobody, not even in the Bay Area, could be so dumb as to suggest that tossing a bunch of working hardware into a container ship bound for a crusher/smelter in China, was somehow a "more green" solution than reusing (and giving away) perfectly functional hardware so that it doesn't go into the waste stream in the first place.

    But then again, that's the difference between recycling as done by folks like the ACCRC - which is interested in reducing and reusing as well as recycling - and recycling as done by a government bureaucrat, to whom the only "green" that matters is how many taxpayer dollars can be milked out of an operation.

    So we'll sing it again when it comes 'round on the guitar.

    Can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day, diggin' through their closets and attics, findin' somethin' that still works, and givin' it to someone who ain't got one? And friends, they may think it's a movement...