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The Scope of US E-Waste
theodp writes "Every day, Americans toss out more than 350,000 cell phones and 130,000 computers, making electronic waste the fastest-growing part of the US garbage stream. A lot of the world's e-waste is exported to Guiyu, China, where peasants heat circuit boards over coal fires to recover lead (a 15" computer monitor can pack up to 7 lbs. of Pb), while others use acid to burn off bits of gold. Guiyu's willingness to deal with lead, mercury and other toxic materials generates $75 million a year for the village, but as a result. Guiyu is slowly poisoning itself with the highest level of cancer-causing dioxins in the world. The village experiences elevated rates of miscarriages, and its children suffer from an extremely high rate of lead poisoning. TIME suggests checking out recycling brokers and accredited e-stewards the next time you're ready to toss a gizmo."
that seems a little excessive to me, even for a CRT, i dont suppose the OP would like to provide some sort of reference to support it
What's wrong with you people?
This lead is then formed into figurines, painted, and sold as toys.
I'm sorry but honestly why do I care what happens to this village in China? They aren't innocent victums, they willingly bring the toxic crap in and have their citizens work on it. As soon as they want to they can stop taking shipments when they feel the health risks are too great... Until they do that, why should I feel bad for problems they have brought on themselves?
TV's, old computers, harddrives, broken VCR's... I don't know what to do with the stuff.
If you think one of these so called certified e-cyclers is not simply shipping the stuff of to China, think again. Every report I have seen on these outfits has traced the donated stuff overseas.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Along with more than a few penguins. And the occaisional little red devil.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Most of that 7 lbs of lead is in the glass (as an x-ray shield). The summary is wrong to imply that this lead can be recovered by heating, just like circuit board lead.
China hasn't been accepting E-Waste for at least 18 months. Now it goes mostly to West Africa.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Hi,
I am a voluntary sys admin for a mental health charity, Contact, http://www.contactmorpeth.org.uk/
We take in local donations of unwanted PCs, refurbish them and give them away to people with mental health problems, their children or their carers. Some people have told me that their free PC was a life changing event (once they'd got broadband working).
Surely in America you'd be able to start up a similar scheme for charitable donations?
HTH,
Ian
Did anyone catch the recent 60 Minutes story on this. The gist of it was that even some of the most respected e-waste companies end up exporting to China, despite their promises to do otherwise. You can watch the story HERE.
Can those possibly be right? That's 127,000,000 cell phones a year and 50,000,000 computers. That's a cell phone for nearly every other person, and a computer for ever six people a year.
Cell providers try to get used phones off the market by setting up charity drop boxes for women's shelters with the idea being that the phones actually go to the shelters. In actual fact the phones get dumped overseas, and the charity receives a pittance for use of their name on the side of the box. Cell providers benefit because this forces people to but new phones which are tied to contracts.
There are legit phones for shelters programs, but if it says something like "only put the phone in the box, not the charger" then the phones will just end up overseas, not reused.
a simple fact that no technology comes without some cost associated. The goodies of Freon were soon frowned upon looking at effect of it on Ozone layers OR nuclear technology when it became clear that nuclear waste disposal could pose much bigger problem than it solves.
While appreciating all the technology breakthrough, I am just trying to justify my reasons to leave the urban world and live happily country side...enjoying everyday with farmers...appreciating beauty of nature. It sucks many ways, no doubt. But this kind of news just makes me feel better.
Back on topic, I guess a good drive of awareness about safety and other precautions should solve the problem of Guiyu. Some the reprocessing processes could be reviewed to reduce the exposure of toxic chemicals to other civilians.
hilarious
If they're generating millions from e-waste we throw away then why is it the wests fault that they are polluting themselves?
If they dealt with the waste in a responsible manner and took even basic precautions then they wouldn't be polluting their own villages.
How much of that $75 Million could be plowed back into making the whole process safer?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Guiyu's willingness to deal with lead, mercury and other toxic materials...
There's the problem. Don't do that.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I sort of gagged on the number 350,000 cell phones (130,000) computers a day? But it makes sense. in 2005 a survey found 69% of americans had cell phones. That's about 250 million users. So if mean replacement time is 2 years, that's 342K a day! Computer's last longer aparently to account for the lower discard number.
However the 7 pounds of lead in a 15 pound computer is complete BS. First most CRTs weigh about 30 pounds so this 15 pound number is perverse. If we assume that only referes to the computer itself and not the CRT we can still estimate the amount of lead using numbers from various studies:
According to this report 98% of the lead attributed to computers is in the CRT glass. (interesting the report also notes that 75% of CRTs are stored not recycled). However for a 15 pound computer system, only slightly more than half of that is the CRT. And CRT's are not made of 90% lead.
indeed this pdf article determiened that nearly all the lead in a CRT is not in the heavy panel portion but is in fact in the neck and frit seals.
most of the lead however is bound up. the leachable lead is still considerable however.
The actual amount of lead in a 27 pound CRT (19% screen) is 2.2 or less than 10%. If CRT's have 90% of the lead in a computer system then a computer is about 1% of it's weight in lead. so a 15 pound computer ought ot have about 0.15 pounds of lead not 7 pounds.
the article is BS.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
(before this gets tagged as flamebait, this was meant as a joke...)
We can't get but a handful of states in the US to put deposits on bottles, much less give people incentives to actually recycle their electronics. Put a damn $50 deposit/tax on new computer sales, and THEN maybe you'll have people recycling. Hell, we have core fees on automotive parts, why not electronics?
Laws and fines rarely push people to do this type of thing, and forget the "think of the children" ads. People get off their ass and do something when it benefits them directly, and nothing speaks louder than cash in hand.
TIME suggests checking out recycling brokers and accredited e-stewards the next time you're ready to toss a gizmo.
Even better: unless it really is broken beyond repair, re-use your old stuff or give it to someone who still can get use out of it. Freecycle what you can, recycle the rest, and throw away as little as possible.
PS! Read my tagline! ;-)
"Good news, everyone!"
There are a lot of people who actually want this stuff, and they are willing to pay the cost of shipping/handling to get it. I've asked a few of them: Why do you want an old gadget?
(1) "I need a PC that I can experiment upon."
(2) "I am a collector of old electronics."
(3) "My camcorder broke and I need a new magnetic head to fix it."
(4) "I need a cheap laptop for typing notes."
And on and on and on. Like the old saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure. Rather than toss your old gadgets in the junk, sell it on ebay for 99 cents + shipping. Somebody will buy it. Recyle.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
, would that increase costs for shipping the waste there?
Not really, the stuff is inert until you start disassembling and burning stuff. What it would do is increase the cost such that Guiyu wouldn't be making so much profit selling the resulting materials. Though substantial infrastructure upgrades(IE a PROPER recycling facility) would be more efficient, but would take decades or more to return on the investment.
ecyclers would probably look for another poor nation to accept the waste
why are these ecycler moving the waste to begin with?
Let's say I'm a recycling collection facility. Doesn't matter what I take. I collect various recyclable materials, from batteries to aluminum cans to paper to whole computers and refrigerators. I don't actually recycle anything myself. What I do is collect and sort the stuff. When I have around a semi-load of it, I get on the market for this stuff, keeping in mind shipping costs, and sell it to the highest bidder(IE who's willing to pay me the most), or to the lowest for stuff where I have to pay for them to take it.
International shipping is cheap - especially since with the trade balance ships are normally quite a bit lighter on their way back to china. So Guiyu wins the bids and gets the stuff because their 'processing' is extremely cheap and they gain enough money from the resulting materials to make a profit.
then the material would stay where it started its life cycle as waste. how would it be dealt with then?
1. If it's still economically viable to recycle in a less polluting manner, then it'll get recycled
2. If the host nation STILL insists it be recycled, you'll see recycling fees tacked on to either the purchase or disposal end to deal with the added expense. Like car tires here in the USA.
3. If they don't, it'll be placed in a landfill until an economical method to recycle it comes along(or raw material expenses goes up) making it profitable to dig it out of the landfill.
I don't read AC A human right
So your solution to the people in this village poisoning themselves is to take away their income so they starve. ???
Because, you know, meddling westerners are doing such a grand job "helping" the poor tribes in Africa.
> TIME suggests checking out recycling brokers and accredited e-stewards the
> next time you're ready to toss a gizmo.
I guess TIME doesn't watch 60 minutes.
'"This is a photograph from your yard, the Executive Recycling yard," Pelley told Richter, showing him a photo we'd taken of a shipping container in his yard. "We followed this container to Hong Kong."'
I know you're an AC and may be just trolling, but that is actually rather conscientious. It's still polluting, but at least in your own back yard.
"Good news, everyone!"
I wouldn't consider this flamebait.
I mean, it doesn't really matter what you're recycling, doesn't it make sense to reduce shipping and recycle the stuff where it can go a short distance to a facility to be turned into a user product again? IE recycle paper near paper mills/printers?
Same deal with our electronics.
I don't read AC A human right
Note: a longer life time does not lead to lower throw-away rates, it's just a matter of postponing the flood; the same usage leads to the same throw-away rate no matter the life time of the device.
Sorry but that is illogical. Why don't you think about it some more. Here's the factor you are not getting right: most people don't get a new computer till the old one is decomissioned (and shortly thereafter thrown out).
350,000 a day? or 127,750,000 per year... as of July 2008 there are 303,824,640 people (adults and children). So these guys believe that if every person in the US has a phone, 1/3 of them toss it out every year?
Maybe someone ought to be doing something to reduce the number of phones we "retire" every year. Since most cell phone contracts in the US are 2 years, and the phone is "free" with a 2year contract, one might be able to assume that most of the US retires their phone every two years.... I know many people that, when the battery life starts to decline, find it cheaper and easier to get a new phone than to get a new battery. They just call up their cell phone provider and get a new 2yr contract extension and *voila* get a new phone.
Soon the dollar won't buy anything, let alone electronics. I wouldn't worry about it.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
The point was windoze 7 creates LOADS of this ewaste because you need new hardware to run the bloated monster. GNU/Linux and BSD systems run well on "legacy" hardware and don't produce it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Still, I'll note that they go on about this being the 'fastest growing part of the US waste stream'. First, I imagine that it's the fastest growing part of the WORLD's waste stream. Ever considered how many cellphones China has? While yes, 350k cell phones might be tossed every day, and this seems a lot, it's scare tactics. First, the growth is unsustainable. Much longer and you'd have to assume either everybody starts carrying multiple phones or starts disposing of them faster. Not incredibly likely. After all, cellphones are starting to reach the point where they already do everything people want, so they won't necessarily trade out every couple years, plus they've improved battery technology substantially - I'd imagine that a large number of replacement cell phones were because the battery wasn't lasting very long anymore.
Second, consider appliances. How many cell phones does it take to equal a fridge? Figure a fridge lasts 20 years. That means with a 2 year lifespan for cellphones, you'd only toss 10 cellphones per fridge. Maybe 20 if you figure on being a 2 phone family. The fridge is still a LOT more material.
Still, doesn't mean we can't do more by making chargers more universal, remembering that the batteries are replaceable, and get the cell phone companies to stop locking their phones up so tight that poorer people can get a donated phone, maybe spend $20 on a new battery and add a prepaid plan chip. After all, reuse beats recycling in the chart I was taught - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
I don't read AC A human right
Oddly enough, I did a research paper on this subject my last semester. The problem with e-waste being exported is mainly that there is no real guidelines for exporting electronic waste. Most of the material is considered hazardous because of the metals and BFR's used in manufacturing.
There are companies who say they recycle the products and then just ship the junk over-seas. It's an "Out of sight, out of mind" type of thinking that is impacting other places around the world. Not only that, but most consumers have no idea of what to do with their old electronics. They (clearly an assumption here) probably know the materials need to be recycled but have no idea of how to achieve such a thing. So it ends up sitting in the closet, or storage, or gets thrown into the municipal waste. Of course take back programs are becoming increasingly more common and are now required (I believe).
As for getting the stuff recycled, when someone tries to recycle their old product, they often get charged a recycling fee, such as at Circuit City or Staples. Dumping is 'free' while recycling costs money. Of course none of these things are going to be fixed over night. Just how can this be solved?
I've always said, companies should be responsible for the entire lifecycle of any product they produce, including its safe disposal. The way things are now, they are allowed to just dump that cost onto the public, and everyone has to pay the price of mass-consumption, which is mass-disposal.
If your company's monitor costs $30 to dispose of properly, that cost should be your company's responsibility. Of course, the company will just pass the cost on to the customer, but that's OK, since it's the customer who's wallet is hit, not the general public. Products that are toxic and cause cancer if they seep into the groundwater SHOULD cost people much, much more, to disincentivise companies from making them in the first place. Maybe higher prices for toxic difficult-to-dispose goods would get people to repair things instead of just tossing them into the bin. At least the extra cost would get them to consider that whatever they are buying is expensive to toss into the Earth.
As it is now, people just buy the cheapest product they can find without regard for the damage it does to the environment, because that damage is done to "those other people somewhere". Make that damage hit their wallet, and you'll see change.
so when they are all dead..... we can ...attack the next chineese village with poisons ...ye syes we will pay them wiht worthless american money that they all end up lending back to the usa.....and at same time take out village after village. /me grins evilly
Let's just pick an appropriate spot in the worlds oceans, and build one of these with the E-Waste: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_reef
Divers would love to see baby Moray eels popping out of the slot in old VCRs.
I wouldn't worry about the hazardous material being toxic. Many of the oceans' species are millions of years old, they know how to deal with toxic waste.
Probably.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I used to do that too, but now eBay in their infinite greed, is forcing everybody to take PayPal.. Which means the fact that you put "AS-IS" in your auction description, and the fact that there are NO returns, is ignored by PayPal, who cheerfully refunds the buyers money, and usually you are out your item AND your $$$. When I sold "as-is" electronics, I described the item extensively, took lots of pix, and took checks/mo's only... Worked fine, from 1998 to now... Now with the inmates running the asylum at eBay, I'm steering clear of it until/if the eBay Board of Directors finally say "enough" and can JD..
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
In the Seattle area, you can give your 600mhz or better PC to Interconnections, they will refurbish it and send it somewhere to be used.
It can be recovered by what amounts to pressure washing, I don't see why they couldn't get it from heating. My guess is that lead dust from CRTs isn't nearly as valuable as solder from circuit boards which is much easier to reclaim and far more valuable to resell.
In europe lead, mercury and other materials are illegal in consument electronics. It's a law called RoHS, Restriction Of the use of Hazardous Substances in electric and electronic devices. China and other countries have similar laws, as does some of the states in America.
It's really strange that USA haven't adopted a similar law, thus preventing the problem.
Don't forget that the FCC-Mandated digital TV switch will likely result in tens of millions of perfectly good televisions going into the trash heap this year. Legally enforced obsolescence has some side effects.
On one hand, it is obvious that criminals are running these recycling operations and there needs to be stronger environmental regulations to make sure it is done safely. The situation in China is shocking and particularly there are technologies avialable to keep the toxins out of the environment, but they are not being used. Recycling done properly can be done safely and cleanly with no release of waste. We should not give up recycling, we desperately need to continue recycling, but we need to make sure it is done safely. It is possible that the earths supply of iron and copper will be depleted by the end of this century. We need to start reusing and recycling all copper and iron, if we dont there could be a major economic disaster as these become scarce and hard to obtain. We need to develop the technical expertize to recycle 100% of metals cleanly and safely, reusing them and keeping them out of landfills.
So you are running Fedora 10 on your 486SX?
Didn't think so.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Can be seen here
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
I get asked about that at work just about every day. It's fine, people are just curious about what's going on, but do you ask every police officer you see if they execute people in cold blood? Or every biker if they're a drug smuggling gang member?
I truly appreciate this kind reporting, but this is an update to two older videos, this isn't a new problem, and not everyone is part of the problem regardless of what the news would like to tell you.
The problem is that there are also junk hoarders. People who fill their homes with this technology that they managed to get another year or two of use out of, and then it ends up in the garbage.
I for one hoard my E-waste until I find something better to do with it than tossing it out. So far I got a radio, a cable and DSL modem, a netgear router (Don't by this crap, it breaks fast), a CRT monitor (which actually works and I have used it when one of my LCDs burned out), an LCD monitor, a laptop, and an old desktop from which I still scavenger parts sometimes.
All this junk is made in China.....it's simply being returned to it's point of origin.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
At least the people in the village are developing resistance to cancer causing chemicals and lead poisoning at an accelerated rate... good for them, I guess. And maybe in the future we can harvest their genes to develop a cure for cancer.
How are we supposed to contact you? :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The scope of course is immense, as is the US consumption.
(both in absolute and in relative terms)
So what is the news here?
*Everybody* needs to reduce their waste footprint.
I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 (that's the current LTS) on my 6 year old or something AMD 1.2GHz with a whopping 450 megs of RAM. And it's running smooth like a baby's ass. CompizFusion and all.
So cut the crap dude.
These guys have a video of hard drives being shredded http://tbfcomputing.com/main/content/view/15/29/
http://www.Gigoit.org is a website that helps you find others in your area that want your old stuff; electronics, furniture and anything in between.
I got a half working laptop from a guy on the site and was able to use most of the parts to repair mine. Both probably would have ended up in the trash otherwise.
Every goddamn device that comes out absolutely must have a connector or power cord that is incompatible with every other device. For example, the Thinkpad T43 and T60 have incompatible power cords (not to pick on Lenovo; it's just typical). This lack of standards leads to the junking of millions of electronic items every year.
When your cell phone battery burns out, it costs almost as much as a new phone to replace it. Often, a battery for a phone more than a year old is simply unobtainable, and a perfectly usable phone goes in the trash. There is a dizzying array of battery and power cord types. They come in an endless array of forms and types, all of which are mutually incompatible. Power cords often contain transformers that are packed with nasty chemicals. That we throw so many of them away unnecessarily every year is criminal.
The FCC needs to get with standard boards such as ANSI and IEEE to create standards for connectors and power cords for small electronic devices.
Were all electronic appliances to work like this, you would have to have an electrician come install a different plug for every device (TV, fridge, microwave, dishwasher, blender, griddle, desk lamp, alarm clock, radio, etc) that you own.
The current system in large part owes to corporate greed. Companies are motivated by the ability to charge exorbitant prices for their one-of-a-kind accessories. The Obama administration should step in and implement a "green" measure that would quickly make us all better off.
The way the US economy is going, you should regard this as your future. Once the Chinese become wealthy, who else is going to clean up their mess?
The HowStuffWorks article Why do CRT monitors contain lead? has an explanation The thick glass of the vacuum tube of CRT contains the lead in order to improve optical properties and shielding from the radiation of the electron gun. The lead amounts to 25% of the volume of the glass.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Doing a little Googling, I ran into this PDF.
http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file30300.pdf
Only the neck and funnel of the tube are infused with lead. The only way to separate it is through smelting or electrolytic action. But the paper does seem to support what you just said. It's not economically viable to recycle lead from CRTs.
Life is not for the lazy.
Yeah, the old process involved using a cutter to separate the front from the funnel while under a constant spray of water to keep lead dust from killing people, though I believe I misspoke and they actually leave the leaded section leaded until it's reprocesses. The front section is typically vacuumed or washed out to remove the phosphorus powder (which is a bastard to clean up when you break one sometimes) and then different glasses are separated and graded before being sent to smelters or glass to glass recyclers.
Most newer methods of seen involve updraft systems that basically keep the air moving away from any personnel while the cutting and breaking is done, although in my experience many places using this method don't appropriately maintain their ventilation systems which are prone to clogging (and then becoming completely useless, even though if you try to check it by hand you can still feel the air current)
Virtually no one is using the millions of 386 and 486s out there. At some point, the items sold on eBay will end up being effectively worthless, and the question is, what then?
One way to increase recycling is to pay people to go around scavenging recyclable materials from litter, trash cans, etc. To do this cost-effectively, though, you don't really want to pay them more than a few bucks an hour, certainly not the minimum wage. So, enter the CRV, a way of paying bums a (very low) commission to do the work.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It seems "recycling" is a gimmick is at best delaying the inevitable. So once Bob in Africa can no longer the old Motorola I donated to some freecycling group, he's going to throw it away. How does this really help the environment aside from making the original donator know he's not going to be the one directly throwing the phone away?
Even if we tried to recycle the plastic (as in melt it down or whatever), wouldn't that cause worse emissions?
I don't know what the big deal is with Barack Obama. I mean everyone is praising the man and he gets man of the year for what? The man has not even started his Presidential term yet and we are all kissing his ass like he accomplished Middle East Peace and solved world wide poverty in 3 days. If anything I think Mr Obama winning should be attributed to the energy and drive of the American people. The voters are the ones who should get praised for electing the first African American President in the history of the nation.
Too often these days we seem to attribute grandeur and greatness to our elected officials even though we should be looking inwards towards ourselves. Without the will of the people, do you honestly believe any of the policies towards social equality or change would have happened throughout the history of the nation? Poiliticans move when the people light a fire under their asses and at no other time. Mr. President Elect Obama is no different and not that he will be taking his new role we need to keep the pressure on for him to carry out the positives he has stated he would accomplish. What we should not be doing is putting portraits of him up all over the place, and talking about the man like he is the second coming. Obama is not the King of the United States, he is our representative and he thus represents something greater than himself. We need to stop focusing on the person and focus more on what he will do and how he will represent the 300 million people in this country.
Democratic supporters have been very notorious in doing this (Although Religious Republicans of the last 8 years are equally guilty) since their political ideals seem to shift more towards a centralist Government in Washington. A lot of these guys who voted for Obama seem to want to go towards a point where the Federal Government has complete control over the average citizen. Since when did we surrender the power of self determination and submit ourselves to a bunch of rich guys in Washington? You cannot blame the Federal Government, we elected these guys in and you will get what you vote for. I think it is high time we forego these cheap bailouts of OUR tax dollars and these quick fix rebate checks. This is only free money to those who don't pay taxes and will further hurt us down the line.
A while ago I was responsible for disposing of a number of old computers and CRT's in California. Both my boss and I had a strong preference for donating it to charitable causes, but as it turns out, I had a significant amount of trouble *giving* the stuff away, to *anyone*, for free--they simply didn't want it. Even the charitable organization I contacted didn't want it. Finally we wound up getting rid of them when someone else in the company held a yard sale and was able to sell them.
I rebuild old machines, install Ubuntu, and give them away to people who need an email-and-web-and-maybe-openoffice machine.
So far this year I have given away two Ubuntu laptops and 1 desktop machine.
If you have old kit that you aren't using, and are willing to pay shipping, please contact me
larryish@gmail.com
This resource CAN be recovered. What is needed is for a little bit of RD to be done to figure out how to automate the recover of resources and stored for later use, or simply sold. It is crazy that the west buys products from China, and then pays to ship back the "trash" when it contains USEFUL resources.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
>>>usually you are out your item AND your $$$
Spoken like a person who knows absolutely nothing about Paypal. (1) I've sold AS IS items, and Paypal rejected the buyer's claim. And (2) Yes buyers can get back their money on false-advertised goods, but not until AFTER they return the item and can prove it's been returned (tracking). The buyer doesn't get to keep the item.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
lead does not migrate. All this does is make a future gold mine for whoever is smart enough to own the land and hold on to it till the metals are valuable enough.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Look up your local Freecycle group then.
Interesting article but at least there is one state doing something about e-waste. Oregon E-Cycles is a new statewide program that began January 1, 2009. It provides free recycling of computers, monitors, and TVs. The program is financed by electronics manufacturers and jointly implemented with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, who maintains a list of manufacturers' brands and compliance status. Oregon retailers may only sell those brands that are listed as pending or compliant. For more information about the program, go here: http://www.oregonecycles.org/
Agrisea Tsunami - Epyc Servers... https://agrisea.net/products
A few years ago, I breached the question of the digital transition for television and its inevitable environmental impact as hundreds of millions of TV sets go this route: http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/09/21/2128220.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Actually, judging from this article, we've not only ignored the iceberg, but invited it in for a hot cup of tea, and asked how many people it would like to kill while ignoring the sinking ship entirely.
It's sad that seven years down the line, the obvious severity of the issue has not only gone ignored, but even condoned to date. Hell, even as I write this, I'm on a 5 year old Tablet PC that I also use for graphics (using an Intel graphics chipset, *gag*), most of my electronics are over 5 years old. What's the oldest electronic devices you use today, hmmmmm?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
I agree. I've loked at the Time's slideshow and googled some more pics of the place. It a frigging GEEK HAVEN. I've been searching for a 5.25 360kb drive for the past year, failed and had to remod a 720k to get it to work on a XT clone I'm restoring. These drives are really hard to come by overhere, tho I've been told people mostly hunt for their servo motors to use in robotics experiments.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
It's only fair considering most of this trash was made in China to begin with.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
So if I toss my garbage in your garden, or pick up my dog's mess and put it in your mailbox then it's your fault for not preventing me from doing so?
Poor people desperate for money will accept extraordinary levels of personal risk in order to earn a living. At the beginning of the last century in the US it was often the case that low paid workers had appalling and dangerous working conditions, suffered crippling industrial disease etc. Then regulators stepped in and said that no man should be subjected to such conditions and enacted health, safety and welfare legislation to make it so. Child labour was common, and the wealthy factory owners ruthlessly exploited their workers whose poverty forced them to accept this exploitation. Society became more civilised and such exploitation is now regarded as morally wrong.
Exploiting the poor of other countries is no less morally reprehensible than exploiting the poverty of US citizens as was done in the Victorian era.
Real happiness lies in the completion of work using your own brains and skills.
But from the point of view of lead content, plasma screens can be thought of as an array of pixel sized CRT's - the lead content by weight is similar. Disposing of lead containing articles such as CRT's in the UK is a costly nightmare and I was somewhat surprise by the analysis, and then cost of disposal, of our waste plasma screens.
There are lead free plasma screens now commonly available, but the first of these was only developed in late 2006 by Panasonic, and their adoption has by no means been universal.
LCD's are mostly lit by cold cathode fluorescent lamps containing elemental mercury, i.e. not just mercury salts, but some mercury metal too.
The change to LCD/Plasma has not eliminated the toxicity of e-waste, merely changed the nature of the toxins. It's work in the EEC such as the WEEE & ROHS directives, and similar regulations brought in primarily by California then spread through the rest of the US to some degree, that are making areal impact.
Real happiness lies in the completion of work using your own brains and skills.
But surely that makes the assumption that people dispose of product at end of life, which is not the case. People most often dispose of working tech product because technological advance makes them obsolete long before they reach end of life.
Cellphones are a great example, they must have quite a few years service life, 10 or more, but I always change mine every year, and I expect most people do the same.
Real happiness lies in the completion of work using your own brains and skills.
Everywhere I have lived....you still just throw the tv/monitor out in the trash like anything else and they pick it up curbside and haul it away....
Hell, if there IS a recycling place for stuff like that in the city...I have no clue where it would be.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
In most of Europe that would now be illegal
My outsiders perception is that California leads the US in environmental legislation, and certainly it has enacted laws similar to the WEEE directive of the EEC. Our press says that similar laws are being enacted by other states and on a federal level, hence the idea of environmental legislation rooting in California and spreading across the US.
Real happiness lies in the completion of work using your own brains and skills.
Yeah...in many ways, CA has fucked things up for the rest of the states. Because of them, it is getting damned hard to get a car you can modify, with after mkt. exhausts and all that have not had performance sucked out of them...due to needing to be CARB law friendly or something like that. It sucks because the rest of the country doesn't have the special needs CA does (smog, etc)...yet the manufacturers cater to their needs, and just make all cars and such based on their needs. Cheaper I guess.
I wouldn't want to live out there...I hear that the cops can pull you over just to inspect your exhaust system...certainly not many of my cars or bikes in the past would pass....I like to mod my car...at least you can still do it in many other states, but it is getting a little more difficult. At least in some places I live..they don't do any kind of sniff test....and some places dont' do inspections at all.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Title=Body
It's the recyclers who are shipping the ewaste overseas. If you don't want it to go there, you need to just toss it in the trash, and from there it will be burried in a landfill.
http://www.viceland.com/int/v14n9/htdocs/ctrl.php?country=us for another article to rtf
isn't lead poisoning what lead to the roman empire's downfall? http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/perspect/lead.htm