Why Junk Electronics Should Be Big Business

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Why Junk Electronics Should Be Big Business

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday July 17, 2012 @09:09PM from the return-them-in-michigan-for-twice-as-much dept.

An anonymous reader writes "We've heard before about the problem of e-waste — computers and other high-tech gadgets that are tossed into landfills or shipped off to third-world countries when they reach end-of-life. But this article makes the case that there's a huge business opportunity here, with billions of dollars going to waste in the form of metals that could be reclaimed from these old and broken devices. 'At current rates of production, $16 billion (or 320 tons) in gold and $5 billion (7500 tons) in silver are put into media tablets, smartphones, computers, and other devices annually. With growth in demand for smartphones and media tablets showing little sign of diminishing in the next few years, the flow of gold and silver from deposit to waste facilities is only likely to accelerate. ... StEP claims that, in developing nations, 50 percent of the gold in e-waste is lost due to "crude dismantling processes" and only 25 percent of the remainder is recoverable due to the rudimentary technology to hand. In contrast, 25 percent of gold is lost to electronics dismantling in developed nations, and modern facilities are able to recover 95 percent of the rest.'"

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Yeah the money may be good by jaymemaurice · 2012-07-17 21:14 · Score: 1

Except the enviornment implications of even modern reclaimation will likely create a superfund site

--
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
1. Re:Yeah the money may be good by jaymemaurice · 2012-07-17 21:17 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I'd also be curious as to know what is meant by "lost" and how they plan to deal with the tons of arsenic, beryllium and other crap in our e-waste
  
  --
  120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
2. Re:Yeah the money may be good by jaymemaurice · 2012-07-17 21:20 · Score: 2
  
  And also, I am curious if it's more practical to remove valuable metals from the ewaste or the equivilant weight nothern canadian in glacial deposits.
  
  --
  120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
3. Re:Yeah the money may be good by TapeCutter · 2012-07-17 21:48 · Score: 1
  
  Presumably if that crap is in the waste then electronics manafacturers put it there and needed to buy it from somewhere. Pity there isn't a CERN style organisation with the requisite international funding to could come up with a profitable all in one recycling plant that can recycle more than just the easy to get at metals.
  
  --
  And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
4. Re:Yeah the money may be good by kevmitch · 2012-07-17 21:59 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Non rhetorical question: How much worse is mining and processing the equivalent ore?
5. Re:Yeah the money may be good by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-17 22:05 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Australia must be the dumbest country of all.
  Bans the export of batteries etc, but charges $120-250 ton for landfill.
  Everything should roll into a smelter, and you get these primary leftovers.
  1) Metals incl rare earths
  2) Flock (Plastic rubber, and nonmetal crap)
  3) Lots of Glass if doing TV picture tubes or cars
  4) Lots of lead (considered nasty) and evil.
  5) Smoke and fumes
  6) Large electricity bill + Carbon Taxes + 10% Fed Gov Tax
  7) No cheap way of getting rid of flock, and no 'credits' or tax deductions for recycling.
  Broadly recycling is D.E.A.D because some committee decided to raise a new tax on new electronic goodies, and figure the greenies got a good feeling, because burial brings in new taxes (new landfill taxes).
6. Re:Yeah the money may be good by mirix · 2012-07-17 23:01 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I wouldn't think there is much Be in e-waste. I know it was used in BeO insulators, but they are quite rare. I'd think these days it is mostly relegated to aerospace - things like that where you just can't compromise.
  AlN is supposed to be pretty close in performance, so even that may be moving out.
  For arsenic, it's only used in semiconductors AFAIK, like GaAs and GaAsP LEDs, some fast transistors, etc. But in all of these cases, it's a crystal (and generally epoxy encapsulated), so I'm not sure how much arsenic would leach from it. I Suppose powder from mechanical damage and possible thermal (from reclamation process? or incineration) decomposition products would be considerably more problematic, though.
  Keep in mind these would be in pretty minute quantity compared to the (historical at least) asston of lead on every board. Even the copper is fairly bad for aquatic life, IIRC. (seem to recall that humans can process it, but it bioaccumulates in marine life, like various heavy metals do to us).
  
  --
  Sent from my PDP-11
7. Re:Yeah the money may be good by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 00:00 · Score: 0
  
  On Earth, or in space? In the not too distant future, this may be a valid point.
8. Re:Yeah the money may be good by sohmc · 2012-07-18 00:05 · Score: 2
  
  It's not so much whether something is worse but whether something is more profitable.
  As far as know, there aren't easy ways to get these rare elements out of electronics. The ways are expensive per device. It suffers the same problem as recycling did back in the 80's. The technology wasn't there to automate it.
  I imagine that it's much simpler and easier (thus more profitable) to find the raw materials in the earth and then mine them. That technology is around now. But actually reclaiming the metals from existing devices that are getting tinier and tinier, meaning the amount of raw materials used it smaller.
  I'm not a scientist or geologist or whatever, so please feel free to correct my ignorance.
  
  --
  We don't live in Shouldland.
9. Re:Yeah the money may be good by andrew2325 · 2012-07-18 00:59 · Score: 1
  
  They use leaching to get some of the gold off of it. It's expensive to leach, but back in the later 1990's, I had a teacher who said never to throw the things away for a couple of reasons. 1. Arsenic and whatnot in them. 2. Gold connectors. It's probably best if you can to keep someone of them around and not tamper with them much, especially if they work. Eventually museums would probably inquire around the web looking for specific antique models that still work.
10. Re:Yeah the money may be good by andrew2325 · 2012-07-18 01:01 · Score: 1
  
  Also, there's the everyday use aspect. The economy may fall into a deep depression, and people may end up having to made do with 486's at times. That sounds insane, but it happens now.
11. Re:Yeah the money may be good by slashmydots · 2012-07-18 02:57 · Score: 1
  
  It may sound bad if you consider the fact that that 320 ton figure is actually complete bullshit, I'd say mining is more cost effective. They're claiming 1/5th of all gold mined in a year on Earth goes into putting an impossibly thing electroplated coat of gold onto contact pins. You could probably build 100 ipads with the gold from 1 wedding ring so I'm not so sure their estimate is anywhere near reality.
  
  The last time I saw someone get gold out of about a dozen really old processors like AMD K6 chips, they ended up with approx $1 worth of gold and spent around $60 on the chemicals needed.
12. Re:Yeah the money may be good by hairyfeet · 2012-07-18 03:11 · Score: 1
  
  Every recovery technique I've seen ends up with a "toxic sludge" that is not gonna fly in the west, and frankly shouldn't be flying in the third world except for the fact their officials are even easier to bribe than ours.
  As we have seen from our superfund sites once a place is poisoned often that's it, you have to put a fence around it and walk away, its gonna remain toxic as it'll cost trillions to clean up. There is no "profit" here except by walking away and leaving that mess behind which while you can get away with that in China frankly I don't know if you could pull that off very easily in the USA anymore. If you didn't walk the costs of disposing the toxic sludge would far outweigh the piddling amount of metals you'd get from your average cell phone, so the article is full of crap...well maybe Halliburton or Goldman Sachs can pull of that level of nasty and still get away with it, most corps i doubt could pull off creating a superfund site in the USA today.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
13. Re:Yeah the money may be good by smellsofbikes · 2012-07-18 04:43 · Score: 1
  
  Beryllium Copper is ubiquitous in electronics, anywhere you need something springy that can pass a fair current: connectors, IC sockets, cable pins. It's only like 2% beryllium, but there are a lot of connectors in most electronics.
  
  --
  Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
14. Re:Yeah the money may be good by John+Bokma · 2012-07-18 05:29 · Score: 1
  
  Most molluscs, and some arthropods, use copper in their "blood", so no idea how bad copper actually is for aquatic life. I do recall that it stops the growth of algae.
  
  --
  
  Perl Programmer for hire
15. Re:Yeah the money may be good by djl4570 · 2012-07-18 06:45 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Smelting as you describe would release large quantities of metal oxides with the smoke and fumes and contaminate a large quantity of glass with lead oxide and other metallic oxides that are soluble in molten glass. That's why glass is used for flux when smelting gold. The oxides that gas off can be hazardous, and the glass slag contains lead so use as little as possible.
  Before smelting, the material needs to be shredded, crushed and ground into fine particles and as much of the non metallic material as possible should be separated. Make the smelt as small as practical. Less material to heat, means lower energy consumption and fewer byproducts.
  Once you smelt out the base metals you are left with precious metals: gold, silver, copper and platinum group metals (PGM). At this point the silver and copper can be separated from the gold and PGM using the Miller process. Further refining of the gold once used the Wohlwill process which is expensive because of the quantities of auric acid required. Commercial gold refiners today don't talk about their processes.
16. Re:Yeah the money may be good by mirix · 2012-07-18 08:21 · Score: 1
  
  Ah yeah, I forgot all about BeCu. I usually only see it in some RF connectors, and even then it is only in the springy contact... in an alloy, under gold plating.. so again, pretty safe unless pulverized, I'd think.
  The vast majority of general purpose connectors don't use it though, and use the much cheaper phosphor bronze for spring contacts.
  
  --
  Sent from my PDP-11
17. Re:Yeah the money may be good by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 13:05 · Score: 0
  
  Back in 1990, this was being done in significant volume in the Minnesota twin cities metro. The guy's MO was shifty to say the least. After buying many truckloads of e-waste, he would strip out and sell the chips/boards for profit. He then left a rented football field size of old building space which he filled top to bottom with plastic no one wanted. Move on to the next placed and screwed that building owner as well.
18. Re:Yeah the money may be good by jaymemaurice · 2012-07-18 17:12 · Score: 1
  
  I sold 500 pentium chips described in the auction as most having bent pins for $200 on ebay... I assume that person somehow made a profit...
  
  --
  120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
Prices by ColdCat · 2012-07-17 21:16 · Score: 1

Recycling is not only Gold and silver there are many other toxic components in our hardware.
and it certainly cost a lot to safely remove all of them.
1. Re:Prices by captainpanic · 2012-07-17 21:35 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Noble metal refineries can out multiple components from ores and make a profit. Materials are enriched in our gadgets when compared to ore. I'm sure there is actually money to be made here.
2. Re:Prices by JackieBrown · 2012-07-17 23:44 · Score: 2
  
  True, but they would then be responsible for the waste left over.
3. Re:Prices by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 00:48 · Score: 0
  
  There is today because of the very high gold price, but a few years ago before the gold bubble, it wasn't. At least for western world counties to do it. Gold isn't rare, it makes no difference if tiny amounts end up in other countries.
4. Re:Prices by moeinvt · 2012-07-18 00:53 · Score: 1
  
  "Materials are enriched in our gadgets when compared to ore."
  True, but ore doesn't contain all the hazardous chemicals that exist in electronics. Dealing with the nasty by-products (i.e. safely) is going to be the major expense in this business. As the article describes,
  "...the widely-reported practice of burning cables and printed wiring boards to recover the metals they contain..."
  Releases all sorts of carcinogens and other toxic chemicals. I cringe just to think about it.
  IMO, the only way to make this business work, say in the USA, is a "pay for disposal" fee or to have something like a bottle deposit added to the purchase price.
5. Re:Prices by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 01:45 · Score: 0
  
  "...the widely-reported practice of burning cables and printed wiring boards to recover the metals they contain..."
  Releases all sorts of carcinogens and other toxic chemicals.
  Heat everything to the point it is just a cloud of plasma, then run it through an industrial scale mass spectrometer and recombine it into pure separated elements!
6. Re:Prices by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 02:30 · Score: 0
  
  There are already Western organizations recycling these materials...
  Check out Free Geek. They use volunteers to recycle what they can, and dismantle the rest into their component parts. To cover the costs of the facilities, they sell the extracted materials (metals mainly) to other companies.
  It is probably better for the world as a whole to have organizations doing this, rather than some profit seeking companies extracting what they can and dumping the rest.
7. Re:Prices by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 02:36 · Score: 0
  
  True, but ore doesn't contain all the hazardous chemicals that exist in electronics.
  Indeed, there's all sorts of toxic stuff in electronics, like cadmium. Good thing there are no hazardous chemicals in ores, like zinc ore.
  Well, except for cadmium.
8. Re:Prices by SuricouRaven · 2012-07-18 02:38 · Score: 2
  
  This was actually proposed, decades ago. The plan was to make it economical by venting a portion of the plasma stream directly out of a tokamak into the recycleable materials. There isn't a material built that wouldn't vaporise instantly on exposure to raw fusion plasma, and the hydrogen fuel is cheap (The process would produce hydrogen as one of the output elements that could be fed straight back into the reactor). The plan failed because no-one was able to make a tokamak fusion reactor that actually worked properly.
9. Re:Prices by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 02:41 · Score: 0
  
  Heat everything to the point it is just a cloud of plasma, then run it through an industrial scale mass spectrometer and recombine it into pure separated elements!
  The plasma part is already done: http://www.recoveredenergy.com/
10. Re:Prices by amRadioHed · 2012-07-18 06:36 · Score: 1
  
  Gold isn't rare, it makes no difference if tiny amounts end up in other countries.
  By what idiotic metric is it not rare? Gold is the 7th rarest element on earth.
  
  --
  We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Yeehaw! by jpate · 2012-07-17 21:29 · Score: 5, Funny

There's gold in them thar fills!
1. Re:Yeehaw! by trout007 · 2012-07-18 00:56 · Score: 2
  
  That's funny but also a good point. Landfills are just temporary. We fill them up with things that aren't worth recycling. But someday when material prices get high enough it make make economic sense to mine the landfills. A smart owner would at least try somewhat to segregate the waste to different pits so that they are easier to mine.
  In the not so distant future recycling will be done at a molecular level and this will all go away.
  
  --
  I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Stupid article by 1u3hr · 2012-07-17 21:34 · Score: 5, Insightful

Yeah, there are millions of tons of gold dissolved in the Pacific Ocean. "going to waste" too.
Not a single figure in TFA to say how much it would cost to recover a few grams of gold from each device. Or what toxic sludge would be left and how much it would cost to deal with that.
People dealing with e-waste KNOW THERE IS GOLD IN IT. They're not idiots. If they could recover it and make a profit, they'd be doing it. They don't need some twat to tell them "Hey, you're throwing away gold!".
1. Re:Stupid article by BlackPignouf · 2012-07-17 22:09 · Score: 2
  
  Exactly.
  The main problem is that there are so many models of iStuff and e-stuff that it's impossible to standardize the process of recovering valuable parts of it.
  Planned obsolescence is a bitch, and we're only beginning to understand what the related problems are.
  Ooooohhh, shiny! The new Panasonic DMC-LX7 is out, with a new sensor and a 24mm f/1.4 lens? Let's ditch my shitty LX5!
  What was I saying?
2. Re:Stupid article by quadrox · 2012-07-17 22:26 · Score: 1
  
  Thanks for reminding me, I gave away my old LX3 to my brother since I didn't use it much after I got my DSLR. But now this LX7 looks quite nifty indeed!
3. Re:Stupid article by wvmarle · 2012-07-17 23:07 · Score: 2
  
  Old electronic scrap is big business already.
  But what holds it back is not as much the recovery technology, but the labour needed to collect and dismantle the scrap. Collection is a major issue actually, as this scrap appears all over the place. There is no "gold mine" type concentration, it has to be scavenged from households - and most have such waste only now and then.
4. Re:Stupid article by jafiwam · 2012-07-18 00:26 · Score: 1
  
  We need to inject the idea that e-waste collection is worth it into the Meth-heads. Then households just gotta take the stuff to the curb and let the skinnies pick it up.
  Heck, legalize Meth at the drop off stations and let them buy and use (can't carry) the stuff there. Problem solved over night.
  The real problem with this is back-end user fees. I bet someone doing a little research could show how much of that stuff gets serendipitously stashed in the garbage stream by someone left with 3 CRT monitors of unuseful size left by dead grandparents in their basement. People won't pay $150 to get rid of three screens to some hippy-deluded municipality to haul that shit away. They just put it in the dumpster at the Quickie Mart late at night.
  If there are disposal fees, they have to be UP FRONT and when the purchase is made. Then, anything that was made before the fees started needs to get grandfathered too.
  "Recycling" the shit is a non fucking starter if people have to pay to get it done. Especially if they SEE and FEEL the payment personally.
5. Re:Stupid article by ATMAvatar · 2012-07-18 00:37 · Score: 1
  
  That depends on the area. My city council organizes electronics recycling events several times a year, which takes in an increasing amount of old equipment. The last event net somewhere between 3-4 semi truck trailers full. The city does it to slow our landfill growth, and the business they partner with does it precisely because the large concentration of electronics collected in one, short event makes it profitable for them.
  
  --
  "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
6. Re:Stupid article by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 00:57 · Score: 0
  
  It's a lady's camera.
7. Re:Stupid article by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 01:52 · Score: 0
  
  It's a lady's camera.
  Arr, you got women's camera my lord! I bet that camera never had to flash the passing ship to draw their attention to a shipwreck raft!
8. Re:Stupid article by DerekLyons · 2012-07-18 02:40 · Score: 1
  
  The main problem is that there are so many models of iStuff and e-stuff that it's impossible to standardize the process of recovering valuable parts of it.
  Actually, there is - grind the stuff to powder, and separate all the interesting bits chemically.
  
  There's two main problems with this process however... First, there's very little interesting bits in any given device, so unless you're a high volume operation it's impossible to recoup your capital costs. Second, overall it's an expensive process due to all the toxic chemicals and waste and the large amounts of energy required, so it's a very low margin operation.
9. Re:Stupid article by mapsjanhere · 2012-07-18 02:46 · Score: 1
  
  E-waste is being recovered on a large scale. Anything looking like a circuit board is simply added to the copper refining process. All the precious metals are getting amalgamated into the raw copper, and recovered during the copper refining process. The problem is not the reclamation of the material once it has been collected, but the collection and dismantling processes. The only way to get a decent return rate is by either making it mandatory to drop off stuff at a recycling center or by offering incentives in the form of returnable deposits. Neither way is foolproof, the former leads to illegal dumping, the later to items being stolen just for the deposit. Dismantling is mostly done by running stuff through a shredder, followed by manual sorting. This is inefficient, leaving lots of value on the sorting band and adding a lot of scrap to the recyclables. True dismantling would be ideal but is unaffordable unless having third-world labor. Export to China etc would be desirable if not for the question of toxic side products; while the US and Europe can recycle all toxic materials as well, it is cheaper to just dump them if you are operating in a low-regulation country. An alternative is to dismantle thermally by pyrolysing the plastic material to collect just metals and glass filler, but the economics on that are strongly depending on fuel prices and metal value, and changes in precious metal content can quickly take it from a highly profitable process to a money-loosing venture.
  
  --
  I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
10. Re:Stupid article by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · 2012-07-18 02:56 · Score: 1
  
  My county finally got the right idea a couple of years ago and quit charging for electronics at the recycle center. Once they did that I got rid of a bunch of old equipment that I was slowly taking up to my dad's house so he could dispose of it for free. I also like that my counties recycle center will let you take stuff if you want it and have a free chemicals area. I haven't bought solvents in years, and was lucky enough to find some muritic acid there when I was doing some concrete repair on patio. I also grab stuff for my dad as his county's recycle center no longer lets you take stuff you want.
  
  --
  Time to offend someone
11. Re:Stupid article by slashmydots · 2012-07-18 02:59 · Score: 1
  
  To retrieve gold off gold-rich processor pins is approximately 60:1 on expense vs costs in the small scale and about 10:1 on a large industrial scale.
12. Re:Stupid article by slashmydots · 2012-07-18 03:00 · Score: 1
  
  (I meant "cost" as in cost of gold retrieved so really value)
13. Re:Stupid article by swb · 2012-07-18 06:39 · Score: 1
  
  I think the disposal fees should instead be collected as an excise tax on the importer/manufacturer of the devices rather than the retail consumer.
  This rolls the cost of disposal directly into the cost of the product, regardless of the point of purchase, and doesn't become another added "tax" that people see on a receipt and then wrangle to evade.
  I'm also paranoid that retailers would see it as an excuse to mimic airlines or banks and start tacking on other, bogus fees every time you bought something. Green fee, recycling fee, kiss my ass fee, etc.
I know one company by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-17 21:36 · Score: 0

Umicore, but I'm sure there are more...
Geeks don't throw away junk ... they hoard it. by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2012-07-17 21:57 · Score: 5, Funny

C'mon, y'all 'fess up! Your e-waste never becomes e-waste, because it is stuffed into drawers, closets, basements, or the rusty Chevy up on cinder blocks on the front lawn, like me. It could be a magnetic storage disk with the diameter of a Flying Saucer, and I still won't throw it away. That 'ole PCMCIA IBM Token Ring card? I'll be glad someday that I have that bastard!
Hans Reiser proved his own guilt when he claimed that he threw away his car seat.
Geeks don't toss out nuthin'!

--
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
1. Re:Geeks don't throw away junk ... they hoard it. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-17 22:34 · Score: 0
  
  Haha, so VERY true. Admit it. You spied on my dwelling!
  (except for the Chevy)
2. Re:Geeks don't throw away junk ... they hoard it. by drinkypoo · 2012-07-17 23:43 · Score: 2
  
  I get rid of anything I don't think I can sell, except cables. Every single time I get rid of a cable I end up needing it.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
3. Re:Geeks don't throw away junk ... they hoard it. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-17 23:48 · Score: 0
  
  No, but the FDA is watching you.
4. Re:Geeks don't throw away junk ... they hoard it. by tqft · 2012-07-17 23:55 · Score: 1
  
  Any offers for my LS-120 superdrive?
  
  --
  The Singularity is closer than you think
  Quant
5. Re:Geeks don't throw away junk ... they hoard it. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 00:03 · Score: 0
  
  USB or internal? USB would make for an awesome server boot disk. You could store drivers for entire racks on easily-updatable boot media.
6. Re:Geeks don't throw away junk ... they hoard it. by tqft · 2012-07-18 00:23 · Score: 1
  
  Internal unless you have an external IDE connector
  
  --
  The Singularity is closer than you think
  Quant
7. Re:Geeks don't throw away junk ... they hoard it. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 00:40 · Score: 0
  
  C'mon, y'all 'fess up! Your e-waste never becomes e-waste, because it is stuffed into drawers, closets, basements, or the rusty Chevy up on cinder blocks on the front lawn, like me. It could be a magnetic storage disk with the diameter of a Flying Saucer, and I still won't throw it away. That 'ole PCMCIA IBM Token Ring card? I'll be glad someday that I have that bastard!
  
  That's not hoarding! That's just a recognition that one big pile of e-waste is better than two little piles.
  Sure, in 1985, 8-bit ISA cards with IBM bubble memory was available at every corner computer store, but in 2012, it's a little hard to come by. I'm sorry, PolygamousRanchKid, but we're gonna have to play it again whenever I can figure out how to make an Arduino talk to this old Casio keytar:
  You can get anything you want at Natalie's Surplus Shop. (Bring the grits!)
8. Re:Geeks don't throw away junk ... they hoard it. by Chatsubo · 2012-07-18 02:24 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah but you're always glad on that idle sunday afternoon when you suddenly realise having a character LCD would be "so cool" for the thing you happen to be hacking together, you walk to the cupboard to find there's one just sitting there... begging to be ripped out of that old equipment.
  I often keep old/damaged stuff around just for assorted LED's, switches, connectors, etc. etc... The point is neither the cost nor the time. It's that I never anticipate that random moment I'm going to realise I need it. That's the worst moment to NOT have something.
  
  --
  > no, yes, maybe (tagging beta)
9. Re:Geeks don't throw away junk ... they hoard it. by Inda · 2012-07-18 02:44 · Score: 1
  
  I used to save cables. Then I gave a VGA cable to a friend. He connected his laptop to his TV. It worked fine for an hour. Then I left him to it.
  
  The next day he was pissed. The TV had stopped displaying pictures. He'd mashed the remote a billion times trying to get it to work. He'd fucked all the defaults.
  
  It was obviously all my fault.
  
  The cable was old and broken. I felt guilty enough to buy him a brand new one.
  
  Friends don't give friends cables.
  
  --
  This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
10. Re:Geeks don't throw away junk ... they hoard it. by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · 2012-07-18 02:57 · Score: 2
  
  You don't have a wife do you. They will make you get rid of stuff.
  
  --
  Time to offend someone
11. Re:Geeks don't throw away junk ... they hoard it. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 03:12 · Score: 0
  
  My solution is not not have friends that are total a*******
12. Re:Geeks don't throw away junk ... they hoard it. by drinkypoo · 2012-07-18 18:56 · Score: 1
  
  Friends don't give friends cables.
  No, of course not. If I give them away, what will I do when I need them?
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
13. Re:Geeks don't throw away junk ... they hoard it. by tzot · 2012-07-23 19:49 · Score: 1
  
  Amen to that. If this isn't one of the planet-wide fundamental truths, I don't know what is.
  
  --
  I speak England very best
Many are going to Nigeria by daem0n1x · 2012-07-17 21:57 · Score: 4, Interesting

I saw a very nice documentary the other day showing what happens to a lot of our electronic waste. A fair share of it is shipped to Nigeria! There, people repair all the devices they can and sell it in a huge street market, the largest electronic market in the world. This means that a huge lot of electronic devices get to be used again instead of polluting the environment, and all the Nigerians have cheap cell phones, laptops, TVs and DVD players. Stuff that we consider outdated, they use with pride. One man's trash is another man's treasure.
We in the West are too pampered for our own good. I have a huge 16:9 CRT TV that works perfectly. I don't know anyone that still uses CRTs. I won't waste my money on an LCD TV before my current set breaks down. But most of people I know ditched perfectly good TV sets to replace them with LCDs. The same with cell phones, laptops, and even fridges, washing machines, or even cars!
Even when the devices don't get a second life, I can't believe it's cheaper to dig millions of tons of rock to extract metals and other shit than it is to recycle our trash. I don't know about the USA, but here in Europe we recycle most of our waste. Be it paper, plastic, metals, fluorescent bulbs, all kinds of oils and fats, electronic devices, everything gets recycled.
1. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by acidfast7 · 2012-07-17 22:26 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  As fellow European, I think you need to really think about your statement: "we recycle most of our waste." What really constitutes recycling of an electronic product? My guess is that it goes to a European "recycling firm" and gets exported to a Chinese/Indian "recycling firm", which then sends it to a Chinese/Indian village for possible gold/silver extraction and minimal labor cost. The remainder of the product just lies in a pile in the village ... or is buried in the village. I'm sure that it makes you/us feel all shiny inside to say you/we "recycle" something but the only difference is where the wasted end product ends up.
  Also, I lived in Stockholm until 2010 and was still using Bang & Olufsen BeoVision CRT every day because the picture was hard to beat :D
2. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by BlueStrat · 2012-07-17 22:29 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I can't believe it's cheaper to dig millions of tons of rock to extract metals and other shit than it is to recycle our trash.
  The problem in the US is that complying with the myriad environmental regulations, which were passed to protect the environment, makes the cost of dealing with all the toxic compounds that are produced and/or freed during the process of a high-yield-percentage recycling program, especially for electronics, exceed what they can recover.
  Unintended consequences are a bitch.
  Strat
  
  --
  Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
3. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by daem0n1x · 2012-07-17 23:10 · Score: 2
  
  The problem in the US is that complying with the myriad environmental regulations, which were passed to protect the environment, makes the cost of dealing with all the toxic compounds that are produced and/or freed during the process of a high-yield-percentage recycling program, especially for electronics, exceed what they can recover.
  That also happens for mining and industry. That's why we outsource them to third-world countries, where people work in the most wretched conditions for a shit pay and dump all the waste in the environment. It doesn't get any cheaper than that. Out of sight, out of mind. However, it may appear to be cheaper, but in the long run, it will bite us in the ass eventually, as always.
  Now, we have two options, we can drop our environmental and labour regulations and live happily in a festering shithole, or we can demand those poor countries to abide to safety and environmental standards. The industrial processes to recover valuables from waste are pretty young. They should have a huge lot of room to improve. The processes to extract valuables from ore have centuries of improvements to stand on.
  
  Unintended consequences are a bitch.
  That's what I'm talking about.
4. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-17 23:14 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Yes, because allowing recycling businesses to create a toxic sludge and bury it in your neighborhood will carry no long-term costs. Regulations are in place to try and force businesses to own their costs instead of passing them on to the general population in the form of poluted air, water and in the longer term increased health care costs.
  Perhaps if businesses were held accountable for the the full lifetime of their products, they would innovate more environmentally friendly products, or at least products that could be dismantled and recycled easier.
5. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-17 23:32 · Score: 0
  
  We in the West are too pampered for our own good.
  That's a nice enviro-wacko rant, but's it's bullshit. The problem is 1st world economies, not "West vs. The World". You think it's bad in the US, you've obviously never been to most of Asia- they're just as bad or worse. Take a vacation to Japan, you'll see what I mean... Korea and China aren't much different.
  
  I don't know about the USA, but here in Europe we recycle most of our waste. Be it paper, plastic, metals, fluorescent bulbs, all kinds of oils and fats, electronic devices, everything gets recycled.
  
  It all gets sent to the recycling center, but that does NOT mean it's being recycled. You do the same thing in Europe which the recycling companies in the US do- they pull out the easy to get metals, and the rest ends up in the landfill.
  
  I can't believe it's cheaper to dig millions of tons of rock to extract metals and other shit than it is to recycle our trash.
  
  It depends on the trash, and how much you want to pollute shit with the recycling process. It's not like you can hit an old computer monitor with a hammer and gold bricks fall out of it or something. Sure, you can toss the glass from an old CRT into a smelter, but what are you planning on doing with the lead, and how are you going to separate them and keep the lead safely contained? The majority of the cost is dealing with all the toxic materials which are also in the electronics, unless you're just dumping them into the environment.
6. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by TummyX · 2012-07-17 23:33 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Do you realise how much power that 16:9 CRT draws compared to an LED TV?
7. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by daem0n1x · 2012-07-17 23:43 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, I do. Still, it's a lot cheaper than buying a new TV. When it breaks, I'll buy an LCD. And my old CRT will probably make the delights of a family living in a slum in Lagos.
8. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by JackieBrown · 2012-07-17 23:54 · Score: 1
  
  Now, we have two options, we can drop our environmental and labour regulations and live happily in a festering shithole, or we can demand those poor countries to abide to safety and environmental standards.
  
  So in this case, the US should force it's values on other countries?
  Also, you don't think there is any middle ground for reducing or better thinking our current regulations?
9. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 00:15 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Do you realise how much power that 16:9 CRT draws compared to an LED TV?
  Do you realise how much energy it takes to manufacture, package and ship that new LED TV?
10. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by daem0n1x · 2012-07-18 00:19 · Score: 2
  
  So in this case, the US should force it's values on other countries?
  Absolutely NOT! When has the US done anything like that???
  You can choose what you buy, can't you? The other countries are free to choose, if they want to produce stuff that damages the environment, they can sell it to anyone else.
  
  Also, you don't think there is any middle ground for reducing or better thinking our current regulations?
  No I don't. Current regulations are not even enough. Economical activities use the environment as if it was free. It's not. It provides extremely valuable services, without which human life would not be possible. As in any trade activity, those services have a cost. You can't imagine a sane economy where suppliers are not paid for, can you? That would make my business extremely efficient, if my supplies were given to me for free. But such a model will hit a stonewall in no time.
  I'm baffled by the blatant hypocrisy of the right-wing. They tell me that working people should stop whining and be entrepreneurial, because anyone can become a millionaire if he faces any problem as an opportunity, blah, blah, blah. If "entrepreneurs" are so brave and valiant, they will "enterprene" no matter what difficulties they find. At least that's what I hear all the time. Why do they whine so so much, then? According to the right-wing, people have no right to socialised healthcare, social protection, labour rights, consumer protection, anything. But corporations should have all the free rides.
11. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by wbr1 · 2012-07-18 00:46 · Score: 1
  
  And then, once repaired, are used to spend spam/spam emails!
  Excused me, I am a Nigerian prince usering a recycled celphone. If you would be so kind to acceppt this check and sends a small cashing fee....
  
  --
  Silence is a state of mime.
12. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by BlueStrat · 2012-07-18 00:47 · Score: 1
  
  Perhaps if businesses were held accountable for the the full lifetime of their products, they would innovate more environmentally friendly products, or at least products that could be dismantled and recycled easier.
  Or they could decide, after comparing risk/reward and cost/benefit, that investing in research, development, and manufacturing of tech products just isn't worth it, sell off their factories and assets, and go into making shoelaces or something instead, or simply stick their capital in offshore accounts and collect interest.
  Congratulations! You've just killed the tech industry and crippled the entire species' technological development.
  Unintended consequences are a bitch
  Or do you prefer everyone live in an agrarian society? Hunter-gatherer, perhaps, if those nasty farms pollute too much and/or cows produce too much CO2?
  Strat
  
  --
  Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
13. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by Kookus · 2012-07-18 00:54 · Score: 1
  
  less to package and ship than a crt
14. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 00:56 · Score: 0
  
  The chances are your huge CRT is only 34", but weighs a ton. That's a tiny screen these days, especially when you get can get low end 50" plasma's and LCDs for $500. You can even get top on the line models from the last couple of years for under $1k as owners look to chase the latest.
  Your CRT will have convergence issues, they all do, don't claim otherwise. You may be blind to them. Fixing convergence is around $400 a time and needs to be done regularly. I doubt you're doing that if you can't afford to replace than ancient energy guzzling box.
15. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by BlueStrat · 2012-07-18 01:04 · Score: 1
  
  You can choose what you buy, can't you? The other countries are free to choose, if they want to produce stuff that damages the environment, they can sell it to anyone else.
  Oh, so we should just outsource our negative externalities to other places with those brown/yellow-skinned people living in poverty?
  How very cosmopolitan of you.
  
  Also, you don't think there is any middle ground for reducing or better thinking our current regulations?
  
  No I don't. Current regulations are not even enough.
  That's the way comrade! No compromise, no retreat! Gaia must be cleansed of this evil technology and industry! Hunter-gatherer society, FTW!
  You're on the drugs, aren't you?
  Strat
  
  --
  Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
16. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by moeinvt · 2012-07-18 01:08 · Score: 2
  
  "I saw a very nice documentary the other day showing what happens to a lot of our electronic waste."
  Me too. It gets shipped to Ghana and India where people burn it (or what's left over after they physically dismantle it) in open fires to reclaim the metals.
  I'd love to believe that a significant amount of this stuff goes to people who can use it, but I don't. The "used merchandise" label is often just an excuse to dump trash in 3rd world landfills.
  http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/poisoning-the-poor-electroni
  "Containers arrive in Ghana from Germany, Korea, Switzerland and the Netherlands under the false label of "second-hand goods... majority of the containers' contents end up in Ghana's scrap yards to be crushed and burned by unprotected workers."
  Yeah, healthy happy people in Ghana are watching used TVs and installing Linux on our X86 hardware using 15" CRT monitors.
17. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by Hatta · 2012-07-18 01:12 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Do you realize that you can't play Duck Hunt on an LCD?
  
  --
  Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
18. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 01:51 · Score: 0
  
  Business being held accountable for their externalities. WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO. If it causes some industries to be exported then so be it, eventually those people will not want to live in polluted squalor either, and using up someone elses resources on the cheap before we use ours is not exactly a bad thing.
19. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by NJRoadfan · 2012-07-18 01:55 · Score: 1
  
  16:9 HD CRTs regularly show up at thrift stores around here for $20. They even have HDMI ports on them. I have also been noticing a surge of P4/Athlon era motherboards on ebay.... from China. I am beginning to suspect they are e-waste pulls being resold back to the US!
20. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by antdude · 2012-07-18 02:16 · Score: 1
  
  Ditto. I still use my Toshiba VCR, 20" Sharp CRT TV, etc. but it's rare these days. I even wear my Casio Data Bank 150 calculator watch! They still work for me. :)
  
  --
  Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
21. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 02:23 · Score: 0
  
  We in the West are too pampered for our own good. I have a huge 16:9 CRT TV that works perfectly. I don't know anyone that still uses CRTs. I won't waste my money on an LCD TV before my current set breaks down.
  Your CRT is using up to 5 times the electricity a comparably sized LCD would. CRTs generally make more heat as well.
22. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by khallow · 2012-07-18 02:23 · Score: 1
  
  Perhaps if businesses were held accountable for the the full lifetime of their products, they would innovate more environmentally friendly products, or at least products that could be dismantled and recycled easier.
  As long as you're on the hook for your share of the full lifetime costs of their products. Let's keep in mind that a lot of those costs aren't due to the products or their hazards, but how people like you decided those products should be used and disposed of.
  
  You should be coughing up personally for the recycling program rather than passing those costs on to businesses and their customers, for example. After all, all that stuff could be shipped cheaply to Nigeria.
  
  I find the hypocrisy of the modern environmentalism movement very unseemly. They use the economic language of externalities to describe pollution and justify regulation, but ignore the externalities created by the regulation they propose. How come it's worse to make someone's health a little worse via pollution, but virtuous to waste someone's time a little with recycling programs or pushing around a bunch of mandated paperwork?
23. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by M8e · 2012-07-18 02:51 · Score: 1
  
  You have to compare the manufacturing, packaging and shipping of the new LCD/LED with moving an old CRT nowhere.
  Using the old CRT doesn't have any additional manufacturing, packaging and shipping costs(both environmental and $)
24. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 02:56 · Score: 0
  
  Overpopulation rules out re-establishing a hunter-gatherer society, at least in the short term. But if I had to give up some technology in order to have clean air and clean water I think I would would be OK with that. However, every discussion doesn't have to live in the extremes. There is room for technology and a healthy envornment or at least in a better balance than we have right now. If we promoted competition in terms of environmentally "friendly" tech, I think we would find wonderful inovations. Instead we deify CEOs that push costs to taxpayers for short term profits and bonuses for themselves and then go through great lengths to avoid taxes that pay for the cleanup and call for tort reform to avoid litigation. It isn't a sustainable system.
25. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by slashmydots · 2012-07-18 03:02 · Score: 1
  
  Also, it makes a high pitched noise that harms your ears and the refresh flicker damages your eyes, costing you and/or the US government money in health care. Other than that, I'm sure it's great.
26. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · 2012-07-18 03:08 · Score: 1
  
  This is why I am keeping my old LCD, it gets used some but not not much.
  
  --
  Time to offend someone
27. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 03:23 · Score: 0
  
  Much of the electronics is actually recycled by mining/smelting companies(like boliden in Sweden).
28. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by daem0n1x · 2012-07-18 03:52 · Score: 1
  
  The problem is 1st world economies, not "West vs. The World". You think it's bad in the US, you've obviously never been to most of Asia- they're just as bad or worse. Take a vacation to Japan, you'll see what I mean... Korea and China aren't much different.
  Granted. By the "West" I meant "rich countries". Your definition is more correct.
  
  It all gets sent to the recycling center, but that does NOT mean it's being recycled. You do the same thing in Europe which the recycling companies in the US do- they pull out the easy to get metals, and the rest ends up in the landfill.
  How is it any worse than just dumping everything right away without extracting any valuables?
  
  I can't believe it's cheaper to dig millions of tons of rock to extract metals and other shit than it is to recycle our trash.
  It depends on the trash, and how much you want to pollute shit with the recycling process. It's not like you can hit an old computer monitor with a hammer and gold bricks fall out of it or something. Sure, you can toss the glass from an old CRT into a smelter, but what are you planning on doing with the lead, and how are you going to separate them and keep the lead safely contained? The majority of the cost is dealing with all the toxic materials which are also in the electronics, unless you're just dumping them into the environment.
  I'm so glad that I can hit rock with a sledgehammer and 24 carat gold bars come pouring down. See, easy, no chemicals, no pollution. Do you really want to take your bullshit any further? Who the fuck are you, a mining company executive? Or you just hate everything?
29. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by cdrguru · 2012-07-18 03:53 · Score: 1
  
  You are missing the point. There is a simple way to deal with all of this. Bury the electronic item and in 500,000 years the gold and other materials will have been recycled and available as ore again.
  This potentially leads to a boom-and-bust cycle where all the ore is extracted and made into nifty devices over a 200 year period and then everyone gets to sit and wait for the natual recycling processes to result in ore again - in 499,800 years.
  I guess you just have to take the long view.
30. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by skids · 2012-07-18 04:05 · Score: 1
  
  So in this case, the US should force it's values on other countries
  Either that, or deal with the resulting military cost of protecting our interests during the inevitable social unrest results from environmental contamination by the establishment forces in those countries.. as already happens in China, though so far this has presented us with little economic threat to U.S. interests.
  You can only shit around for so long before the locals get pretty fed up with living in the shit.
  
  --
  Someone had to do it.
31. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by wisdom_brewing · 2012-07-18 04:15 · Score: 1
  
  Completely with you on keeping electronic goods until they break HOWEVER - what is the cost of property per square metre/foot in you area?
  
  When you are looking at expensive cities/areas (over $10,000 for 1m^2) replacing a large CRT with an LCD/Plasma makes a LOT of sense...
  
  --
  I am very sucseptible to "let's have another drink"
32. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by daem0n1x · 2012-07-18 04:19 · Score: 1
  
  I also saw one in 60 minutes about a town in China called Guiyu where most of worldwide electronic trash is sent to. It's a horrible place. They also do that burning thing, too. The soil has nearly deadly concentrations of heavy metals and poisons. The filming crew was kicked out of the place by thugs when someone noticed them.
  I was trying to give a good example of the value of electronic waste. The Nigeria case I saw is a great example of ingenuity and efficiency. Unfortunately, Guiyu, India and Ghana are on the other side of the same coin. The Greenpeace solution of forcing manufacturers to be accountable for the whole life cycle of their products seems OK. But it won't go there without a fight. The poor people in those countries have no voice, and many will most likely think the current situation is good for them. And the people in the rich countries don't give a fuck about what happens in Africa or India.
  There we go again, the environment can't defend itself. Leave everything to the free market to decide, Earth and the poor will always get a raw deal.
33. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by Gizzmonic · 2012-07-18 04:25 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, so we should just outsource our negative externalities to other places with those brown/yellow-skinned people living in poverty?
  We 'should'? No, that's what we actually do.
  That's the way comrade! No compromise, no retreat! Gaia must be cleansed of this evil technology and industry! Hunter-gatherer society, FTW!
  Do-nothing inertia, tragedy-of-the-commons and willful ignorance of consequences until it's too late/incredibly expensive to fix! That's the Plutocrat way! Grab your monocle and cigar from the butler, old sock!
  
  --
  (-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
34. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 06:26 · Score: 0
  
  That's nothing. Our main TV is a 19-inch CRT that was built in 1978. Our secondary TV, which the kids use with the Wii, is a 13-inch CRT built in 1981 i think.
35. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 06:44 · Score: 0
  
  As long as you're on the hook for your share of the full lifetime costs of their products. Let's keep in mind that a lot of those costs aren't due to the products or their hazards, but how people like you decided those products should be used and disposed of.
  I don't get to fully decide how to use my electronics, there are numerous constraints placed on them by the manufacturer to through contracts, licenses etc. And the consumer has limited/no input on how an item is manufactured so how can a consumer-based recycling policy allow for environmental innovation. Now if there was full disclosure of the environmental impact of each device I could use that information to let my purchasing power force change, but would industry really do that on its own?
  
  You should be coughing up personally for the recycling program rather than passing those costs on to businesses and their customers, for example. After all, all that stuff could be shipped cheaply to Nigeria.
  I already pay for recycling when available. The idea of passing costs onto business and its customers is misguided, after all it is their costs to begin. They should own it. And if you actually paid the real cost of the item, the items that created tons of downstream costs in healthcare etc would be abandoned and replaced with better engineered items that provide the same or better features. I am pretty sure that is how this "capitalism" thing is supposed to work.
  
  I find the hypocrisy of the modern environmentalism movement very unseemly. They use the economic language of externalities to describe pollution and justify regulation, but ignore the externalities created by the regulation they propose. How come it's worse to make someone's health a little worse via pollution, but virtuous to waste someone's time a little with recycling programs or pushing around a bunch of mandated paperwork?
  Pollution will need to be cleaned up eventually, its a cost. The hypocrisy is that industry is allowed to force non-customers to pay for the cost without the benefit of using the product. Mandated paperwork is necessary due to the lack of transparency in industries and their willingness to do harmful things in the persuit of profit. If they would self regulate effectively, we wouldn't need government oversight. Also, due to the cozy relationship with government regulators we wouldn't need outside agencies watching them.
  And seriously, wasting someone's time with paperwork is worse than the health effects of pollution? I am sure there are many people in Japan that would agree with you.
36. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by Tailhook · 2012-07-18 06:51 · Score: 1
  
  Do you realise how much energy it takes
  Very little — in terms of cost. The energy is produced at low cost in places devoid of meaningful regulatory oversight and the finished product is sent to me duty free on a boat. This arrangement enables me to be an uncompromising and morally scrupulous advocate of each and every existing or proposed limit on domestic industry while still enjoying the benefits of industrial production.
  
  --
  Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
37. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by CCarrot · 2012-07-18 09:02 · Score: 1
  
  Do you realize that you can't play Duck Hunt on an LCD?
  ...except with a Wii, that is.
  
  --
  "I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
38. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by khallow · 2012-07-18 13:09 · Score: 1
  
  I don't get to fully decide how to use my electronics, there are numerous constraints placed on them by the manufacturer to through contracts, licenses etc. And the consumer has limited/no input on how an item is manufactured so how can a consumer-based recycling policy allow for environmental innovation. Now if there was full disclosure of the environmental impact of each device I could use that information to let my purchasing power force change, but would industry really do that on its own?
  So what? I don't see a reason to care here that your actions and their consequences aren't fully customizable to your preferences.
  
  I already pay for recycling when available. The idea of passing costs onto business and its customers is misguided, after all it is their costs to begin. They should own it. And if you actually paid the real cost of the item, the items that created tons of downstream costs in healthcare etc would be abandoned and replaced with better engineered items that provide the same or better features. I am pretty sure that is how this "capitalism" thing is supposed to work.
  My point is that you aren't paying fully for the externalities caused by the recycling program. But it is you who is backing such programs.
  
  Pollution will need to be cleaned up eventually, its a cost. The hypocrisy is that industry is allowed to force non-customers to pay for the cost without the benefit of using the product. Mandated paperwork is necessary due to the lack of transparency in industries and their willingness to do harmful things in the persuit of profit. If they would self regulate effectively, we wouldn't need government oversight. Also, due to the cozy relationship with government regulators we wouldn't need outside agencies watching them.
  Unless it isn't an externality and hence, wasn't pollution to begin with. I'm not argue against any degree of government oversight, but I think it's long gone past the point of reasonable oversight for most of the developed world and gone deeply into anti-business and technology hysteria. For example, consider your emphasis on "profit" in the above paragraph. Everyone has motives that are often running counter to the overall benefit of society. The profit motive has the virtue of being not only a very transparent motive, but an easily steered one. Just put a cost on externalities and you make them not externalities. Recycling and these other mandates go well beyond any such idea. And they similarly fail to deal with the profit motive, instead providing more opportunities to profit at society's expense.
  
  And seriously, wasting someone's time with paperwork is worse than the health effects of pollution? I am sure there are many people in Japan that would agree with you.
  The dose makes the poison. And a small dose of air pollution can indeed be a lot less harmful than the harm of paperwork. Not sure what your point is about Japan. Sure, they have hysteria people there too. They also have people who aren't. I am sure there are plenty of people who would agree with me.
39. Re:Many are going to Nigeria by retroworks · 2012-07-18 18:24 · Score: 1
  
  Well, well, well. Quite frustratingly, the gentleman who wrote TFA actually cites a group which presented (along with Fair Trade Recycling groups) to the Pan African congress in March 2012. And the jist of the actual presentations he cites is that the hand-disassembly is good. The "geeks of color" (repair and reuse) jobs in Lagos and Accra, which were studied from 2010-2011, are actually quite good jobs. Most of them are in reuse and repair, and the studies Mr. Halloway would appear to have read state that 85% of the used electronics imported into Nigeria and Ghana are reused (the only possible explanation, actually, since the gold and copper value does not cover the cost of transport). This inane article results in people recycling the false stereotypes about African geeks, by pretending to cite a study and actually inferring that the study says that boycotts are the appropriate response to labor-rich nations which actually do things like recover the rare earth magnets from hard drives which Europeans and Americans shred. The new thinking in research, presented at the Pan African Congress, is that geeks are good, and we should export more used electronics rather than less. http://tinyurl.com/7nbd7y3 This contrasts with the "white mans burden" approach being recycled in TFA.
  
  --
  Gently reply
The usual techno-utopian view is by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-17 21:57 · Score: 0, Offtopic

that we will mine asteroids. Makes plenty of sense. We're running out of resources, but we'll have plenty of resources to build nearly magical machines to do things that have never been done before, and we'll have the energy to power these machines. To go get the same materials that are already here. For about a billion times the price. Yup, I'm convinced.
1. Re:The usual techno-utopian view is by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-17 23:35 · Score: 0
  
  The amount of various elements we have on earth is limited. Even if you extract everything the crust has to offer and perfectly recycle everything, there can still be cases where we benefit from having more. A very visible example is that the price of copper is always increasing, and that's not because it gets lost in people's attics faster than we can mine it. It's because we keep needing more and more of it in active use. (note: I'm not saying we should mine copper in space. Copper will always will be a poor choice for asteroid mining because there's no process to form concentrated veins of its ores. If we ever really desperately need more copper than exists on earth, we'd have to go to mars, and that would suck.)
2. Re:The usual techno-utopian view is by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 02:08 · Score: 0
  
  Ladies and gentlemen, a techno-utopian cornucopian.
Re:Ron Paul is the new Sarah Palin by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-17 22:05 · Score: 1, Informative

I broke all protocol and read the article just to see if Ron Paul was mentioned. He wasn't. Are you suggesting he should be recycled for his gold content?
Re:Ron Paul is the new Sarah Palin by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-17 22:06 · Score: 0

Well surely if he has any say in the matter (which he won't) then the price of gold will skyrocket.
Better than gold ore by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-17 22:11 · Score: 3, Informative

The swedish Boliden built an new facitlity in order to extract gold and other metals from e-waste. E-waste yields 100g/1000kg of material compared to 8g/1000kg of ore.
http://www.boliden.com/Press/News/2012/New-facility-makes-Boliden-world-leader/
1. Re:Better than gold ore by mangu · 2012-07-18 00:01 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  E-waste yields 100g/1000kg of material compared to 8g/1000kg of ore.
  Only for some definitions of "E-waste".
  That amount you mentioned is after you remove the circuit boards from its enclosure. The bitch is taking apart the enclosure.
  Each piece of equipment is closed with a different kind of fastener, some, like Apple, are glued together. It takes a lot of labor to pry apart the circuit board from the plastic and metal structures around it. That's why recycling is outsourced to third world countries.
  If the government really wanted to increase recycling, the first thing they should regulate would be how enclosures are put together. Make philips type screws mandatory everywhere, no glue, torx screws, or any other fastener that requires special tools.
2. Re:Better than gold ore by drinkypoo · 2012-07-18 01:08 · Score: 1
  
  If the government really wanted to increase recycling, the first thing they should regulate would be how enclosures are put together. Make philips type screws mandatory everywhere, no glue, torx screws, or any other fastener that requires special tools.
  "No glue" is enough. It's not difficult or even expensive to get all the tools any more, you can order direct from China now, remember? No need to buy from Sears that has stuff made in China.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
3. Re:Better than gold ore by RobertLTux · 2012-07-18 01:39 · Score: 1
  
  i have next to me a set of "security" bits from Harbor Freight Tools that set me back ten bucks all it is missing is the iStar bits so NO GLUE is good enough (philips heads strip too easily).
  
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  Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
4. Re:Better than gold ore by bosef1 · 2012-07-18 02:39 · Score: 1
  
  I would like to second the motion that the screw-heads be other than Phillips. I like that that Phillips cruciform shape keeps the drive bit from sliding off the screw, but I feel like I've stripped more screw heads from Phillip's "cam-out" than I've broken screws or drivers from over-tightening.
5. Re:Better than gold ore by phorm · 2012-07-18 03:01 · Score: 1
  
  It takes a lot of labor to pry apart the circuit board from the plastic and metal structures around it.
  Maybe for somebody who only does it once in a blue moon, and is concerned about saving the housing. For other stuff, it's pretty easy to tear apart electronics (even iDevices) if you don't care about being able to put it back together afterwards.
  After a few different times, I can pull my stuff apart in a reasonable amount of time without damaging it. If I didn't care about the damage it would be a *lot* quicker.
6. Re:Better than gold ore by slashmydots · 2012-07-18 03:04 · Score: 1
  
  Of course soil isn't stuffed full of Mercury, Arsenic, Lead, plastics, glass fibers, electrolytic fluid, magnets, etc. It's mostly silicates aka dirt :-P
7. Re:Better than gold ore by painandgreed · 2012-07-18 09:33 · Score: 1
  
  If the government really wanted to increase recycling, the first thing they should regulate would be how enclosures are put together. Make philips type screws mandatory everywhere, no glue, torx screws, or any other fastener that requires special tools.
  Because phillips head screws are there for one reason, to cam out and strip rather than damage what they go into for easy use by machines. Otherwise they are a crappy type of screw. If you consider torx special tools, I'm really surprised that you also don't consider anything besides a flat head as special. Even then, there are different sizes and you'd still have to go buy a special kit to get the small ones to get into something. Really, torx and robertson heads have been in every cheap changable screwdriver I have bought for the last decade. They're hardly special anymore and all have their uses rather than trying to make things easier for lowest common denominator.
Well, we do have a surplus population by Rogerborg · 2012-07-17 22:42 · Score: 2

What matter if a handful, or I dare say more than a handful, of the undeserving poor be obliged to toil in the Reclamation Mines? To what better use can they put their meagre bodies than to serving their fellow Man by prying the riches of El Dorada from the cast offs of their betters?
Indeed, it shall doubtless enrich their souls, even as it puts food in their swollen, suppurating bellies, and seven toes on their endless broods of mewling, conjoined offspring. Two heads, it is said, are better than one, and many of our Reclamation Miners shall grow to enjoy those benefits first-hand.

--
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
1. Re:Well, we do have a surplus population by couchslug · 2012-07-18 06:30 · Score: 1
  
  So DON'T send them work, which is what e-waste represents to THEM.
  The choice of overpopulation means that there will never be good, safe jobs for everyone.
  Industrial Revolutions are paid for in blood just like armed revolutions, sometimes with more casualties.
  We EUSians are sitting pretty because our predecessors were expendable. They died in the mines, on the railroads, in the fields they sharecropped, and in industrial accidents. When it became affordable to take better care of workers in DEVELOPED societies, things changed.
  
  --
  "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Do it your self by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-17 22:55 · Score: 1

Try
Experiment: Can You Mine Gold From Old Motherboards?
Tom's Hardware Recovers Gold And Silver From CPUs
1. Re:Do it your self by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 04:29 · Score: 0
  
  In that first article, the little BB of gold he gets at the end is probably less than what I've seen experienced panners get from one pan of pay dirt. There are places in California where you can pay a modest fee to pan, and there are even some public areas where you might have a shot (although they are probably panned out not too long after the Spring floods have washed out new flakes).
  Between the gas, wear and tear on the car, food, and camping fees; I think I'd be happy to break even and have the gold pay for what ammounts to a Sierra camping trip with some work thrown in. It's just an idea I've been toying around with though. There are people who still make a decent little income as artisanal miners; but you have to devote some time to it.
  That's the best way to get gold directly that I can think of. The MoBo mining just doesn't... pan out.
TUNE by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-17 23:27 · Score: 0

Disposalble society, has thrown away.. the best of me.
320 tons of gold? by syntheticmemory · 2012-07-17 23:32 · Score: 1

$16 billion will buy 10.11 tons of gold at current prices.
1. Re:320 tons of gold? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 00:11 · Score: 0
  
  10.11 tons = 10.11 x 2000 x 12 troy oz of gold
  At $1580/troy oz that is $383M
2. Re:320 tons of gold? by dkf · 2012-07-18 01:41 · Score: 1
  
  10.11 tons = 10.11 x 2000 x 12 troy oz of gold
  At $1580/troy oz that is $383M
  A pity for your argument that a ton is 29166.67 troy ounces; you're about $80M short. Still, much less than $16B...
  
  --
  "Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
3. Re:320 tons of gold? by slashmydots · 2012-07-18 03:05 · Score: 1
  
  That 320 ton number is also bullshit, just case you didn't catch that. That's 1/5 the amount that Earth mines in a year total and considering jewelry vs a CPU uses approx $0.15 in gold, I think someone pulled that number out of their ass.
Hoarders by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-17 23:49 · Score: 0

Well,
Actually, this morning, as "I was walking to my truck, I look at the pile of interface cards for an old 500K hard drive (97 lbs or so) and think, "I'm never going to actually get to this project; it's been more than 20 years. I should clean this up". I pick them up, walk halfway to the trash can, halfway back and admire the hard drive controller made with 7400 series chips. I can't do it. I guess I need to pass it on and open up some room in the garage for kids junk instead of adult junk.
Not worth it by Darkness404 · 2012-07-18 00:08 · Score: 1

It really isn't worth it to get scrap gold from plated items including CPUs and motherboards. Tom's Hardware did a thing on how to do it and I tried it only to come up with a tiny chunk of gold (if 100% pure still only worth about $4 today). Industrially it may be possible to get gold/silver but I'm not sure how economically viable it is due to labor being very expensive and it being a labor intensive process.

When it comes down to it, if you have to pay to recycle something, the recycling is not economically viable. If they pay you to recycle it, recycling is economically viable.

--
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Education? by coofercat · 2012-07-18 00:19 · Score: 1

I wonder if education might help here. We all have a lot of mis-placed vanity, and I wonder if knowing more about what's involved in our purchase might help slow us down a bit.
Just this morning I was looking for short, cheap optical cables. I found this one and had a little chuckle to myself:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Resolution-Professional-suitable-HD-Surround/dp/B003F60WWM/ref=sr_1_7?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1342613690&sr=1-7
Yep, it's a 24ct gold plated optical cable. I'll bet it's just a crappy polymer optical fibre, but it's gold plated for "BEST DIGITAL SURROUND SOUND". The smallest bit of education would render sales for this pretty difficult ;-)
Sounds good but.... by gr8_phk · 2012-07-18 00:47 · Score: 1

If you look at the dollar value of materials in a cell phone, and then compare it to just the labor cost of thowing it into a machine, I think the plan will fall apart. While tons of precious metals sounds like an opportunity, getting it out of millions of devices may cost more than that. I really can't say, as I'm not familiar with the recovery process. If it's so profitable, stop writing about it and get going!
I'm not sure it's "missed" by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 00:57 · Score: 0

I don't know much about the places they're talking about, but around here it sure isn't a missed opportunity. People pick up any kind of old electronics, stockpile it, and break it down for metals on their own. I know a couple of people that harass retail store QA departments for the damaged computers they sometimes have to throw out. In fact, they'll take anything metal that's not nailed down anymore; I have even seen streetfolk tearing down stolen shopping carts, metal lawn chairs, etc.
Sometimes they don't even wait until the stuff is thrown out or left outside unattended. A lot of the thrift stores don't sell computers anymore because people will open them up and strip the memory sticks' "gold fingers" right there on the salesfloor. I know at least one case of people stealing brass doorknobs from a small business during hours.
So what I think is... these "developing nations" must be lazy! Not like our enterprising folks!
I actually do this by Hunter+Shoptaw · 2012-07-18 01:21 · Score: 4, Informative

I work for a company that takes care of e-waste. The problem we face is that many times we are outbid by companies that then ship the waste off shore or simply stripped and tossed. The company I work for actually has teams in our warehouse that comb through every piece and find pieces that are available for resale. Those pieces that aren't are them dismantled, categorized and shipped to certified recyclers so that each and every piece that can possibly be recycled is. We even recycle most of our shipping materials. There are costs associated with recycling your systems, sure, but it's better than paying the EPA fines if your caught even once. Also, some recyclers, including the one I work for, will actually pay you for your electronics in some cases, depending on type and condition. Many times there are lots of things that we could be doing differently as a society to increase our ecologic awareness and minimize our e-waste impact. We simply don't because it's not the most convenient option. As I'm not trying to plug my company, I'll leave out the name. If your interested ask for it in the comments.
1. Re:I actually do this by smellsofbikes · 2012-07-18 04:51 · Score: 1
  
  I'm interested. I have boxes of circuit boards, immersion-gold-plated, that I'd like to get rid of. About 1/3 are either stripped of major components or bare, the other 2/3 have discretes and a few IC's.
  
  --
  Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
2. Re:I actually do this by retroworks · 2012-07-18 07:56 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  I actually do this, too. And I export a good percentage which would be specifically banned for export under the legislation which the article says is "stalled". This legislation was profiled in Slashdot earlier this year. http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/02/12/1431208/its-not-all-waste-the-complicated-life-of-surplus-electronics-in-africa The UNEP studies found that 80% of the goods exported to Africa were reused. The bans against imports came from dictatorships in places like Egypt. The best solution to the problem is Fair Trade Recycling, which is a threat to Redemtech and other financial sponsors of the bill in question, who want to ban other countries from competing for proper reuse and recycling of used goods. Most of the goods shown at the dumps in Africa and Asia (by anti-export groups) were used productively for years in those countries before they were discarded, most USA and EU electronics are domestically recycled, and most of the remainder which are exported (85%) work. This is an anti-reuse (planned obsolescence) campaign rigged to look like an environmental protest.
  
  --
  Gently reply
Already happening by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 01:27 · Score: 0

A lot of circuit boards from e equip goes to Afirca where it is piled up and lit on fire, the resulting dross leaking out is then sold.
Money by Taibhsear · 2012-07-18 01:34 · Score: 1

I don't think the article writer has any idea how much the waste costs to recycle. If the cost to extract the metals and whatnot is more than the price of them on the market, there is no financial incentive to recycle them. It's not like you just toss it in a wood chipper and centrifuge the stuff out.
1. Re:Money by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · 2012-07-18 03:15 · Score: 1
  
  That is basically what ends up happening to vehicles after they have been striped of anything useable at the junk yard.
  
  --
  Time to offend someone
We give dead PCs to be mined by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 01:52 · Score: 0

Our local e-waste person found himself unemployed a couple of years ago. Unable to find a job, he started a recycle company that picks up dead computers from area computer stores and pays them $1 per machine. The computers are broken down into the component parts. The parts are brought to a foundry where they are melted down. Cables are stripped with the copper added to the mix. Recycling 1700 PC's yields 4 ounces of gold along with larger amounts of other precious metals.
The total metal in each PC is worth close to $4. So, the recycler makes $3 per machine.
I appreciate that this is being done locally instead of shipping the dead machines to China, giving them free precious metal.
Dangerous chemicals aren't really an issue by captainpanic · 2012-07-18 02:36 · Score: 1

Meh, true. But such refining processes typically deal with loads of elements anyway, and they use strong acids to extract stuff out, or to create an electrolyte or so.
What nasty by-products are you talking about anyway? And how are those produced now?
Regarding to the whole recycling: it's all a matter of scale. A really large process will create large enough waste streams that it is worth it to purify those too.
I don't think that that's true by slashmydots · 2012-07-18 02:51 · Score: 3, Informative

All humans total mine approximately 1714 tons of gold per year in the entire world so I have a hard time believing that 500-micron thick electroplated electronic contact pins result in 320 tons like the article states. Consider how many solid gold rings are made in jewelry stores in every country in the world and how almost every married person has one, it's probably closer to a 10000:1 ratio instead of 5:1 like the article implies.
1. Re:I don't think that that's true by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 10:53 · Score: 0
  
  I don't have any better numbers than the two of (TFA and you), but let me help you rethink your own argument:
  I could maybe scrounge up half an ounce of gold from jewelry for my family of 5 and 40 years of life. Most is 12-16 karat, meaning it's 50% gold.
  Meanwhile, I cant' even count all the gadgets with gold-looking contacts I've still got in my house, let alone years of PC and phone and stereo discards.
  TFA was working off how much is consumed by the industry, which someone at Newmont Gold and every other mine/refinery is tracking. There's a chance they're making statistical abuse, but gut feeling isn't the best mechanism compared to asking mines and manufacturing economists for their sales or purchase quantities into the electronics industry.
Would not touch that business by codepunk · 2012-07-18 02:54 · Score: 1

I want no part of that business, the regulations would be a absolute nightmare.

--

Got Code?
Lifecycle of a product is part of the design.. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 02:54 · Score: 0

Once a product leaves the manufacturer, their responsibility does not end.
Germany has increasingly introduced and enforced "take-back", an industry commitment to recycle what they make at the end of the products life-cycle, making it a closed loop. This takes a range of measures, not just legislation by government, but industry commitment and will to realize the benefits.
All German cars are now designed with their recycling in mind, from reduction in the types of plastics used, to clear labeling to identify materials as well as designing the vehicle to come apart easily at the end of its life, so all those raw materials can be reborn on their next trip through consumer hands and realizing a net reduction in raw material requirements.
A nice article on this dating from 1997: http://www.newint.org/features/1997/10/05/return/
Moving by phorm · 2012-07-18 02:57 · Score: 1

I have a huge 16:9 CRT TV that works perfectly
Lots of stuff gets dumped un-necessarily, but there are a few good reasons to replace a CRT
a) Resolution. For anyone who plays games, a CRT isn't likely going to meet the resolution requirements. No games aren't a "necessity" in life (but neither is TV)
b) Size/space. Depending on the dimensions of your house, an LCD is going to allow you to fit into a smaller floorspace.
c) Weight. I left my CRT behind while moving, along with a bunch of furniture which I sold off. It was just too damn heavy to lug around
d) Power consumption. An LCD (especially LED-backlit) generally consumes less power than a CRT of equivilent size
That being said, for those that have the space, getting an LCD TV doesn't mean the old CRT needs to get tossed in the dump. Got an old console or two to go with it? Stick it downstairs or somewhere the kids can play, as many older games actually look *better* on a CRT than modern LCD's or plasmas.
Re: eliminate e-waste before you make it. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 03:00 · Score: 0

Start by halting production of crappy android devices that companies "shipped" but never sold.
cheaper, greener way to recover gold by slashmydots · 2012-07-18 03:08 · Score: 1

Anyone hear the story about that guy in New York city who walks around the sidewalks with a metal detector and finds a couple hundred dollars a day in gold earrings and chain links and stuff that people drop? Sounds like the greenest way to recover gold to me. I think he nicknamed it urban mining.
Microwave by Fatch+Racall · 2012-07-18 04:26 · Score: 1

I swear, a couple years back, I read a story about someone who invented basically a high power microwave that melted away plastics, etc, and left the rest intact. The plastic sludge that was left was then fed into diesel generators to power the whole thing, and you ended up with whatever the plastic was on sitting out. I'd think that would be a pretty good start to an efficient recycling of e-waste. Imagine it: old cat5 cable fed in, fuel and copper out.

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#include <disclaimer.h>
It already IS big business... by gosand · 2012-07-18 04:41 · Score: 1

My neighbor collects trailer-truckloads of old electronics, sorts the parts, and sells them off to some company in Germany I think. He said it was one of the largest recyclers. It has overhead, but the metals (not just gold) that they get from electronics can make him about $10k per load. OK, so not HUGE big business, but the larger the scale, the more efficient it becomes and the more money you can make. You can't really make anything off of a few parts.
I had another insane neighbor about 5 houses down that had about 200 old P4 systems that he was trying to chemically strip the gold out in HIS GARAGE. I only met him twice and briefly, but he was a scary guy that you would expect to be killed by chemicals in his garage.

--

My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
already exists today by azery · 2012-07-18 05:26 · Score: 1

recycling precious metals from e-waste is already done. see http://www.umicore.com/en/ourBusinesses/recycling/
Remedtech by dave562 · 2012-07-18 06:00 · Score: 1

These guys have been in the ewaste business for a long time, and have developed and patented (I know that's a bad word here on /. but whatever) a lot of processes around extracting value from eWaste.
http://redemtech.com/
tl;dr version - the capacity is there. Companies just need to start using it.
In all likelihood, companies will not follow the processes unless mandated to do so by the government. Even then it will only happen after a few of their competitors are hit with multi-million dollar fines for not complying.
no market here by THE_WELL_HUNG_OYSTER · 2012-07-18 07:21 · Score: 1

At current rates of production, $16 billion (or 320 tons) in gold and $5 billion (7500 tons)
And it takes just about $16.1 billion to recover that gold, and $5.1 to recover that silver.
You all been living under a rock? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 14:06 · Score: 0

Don't you realize that evil corporations are going to profit by junk electronics while poor, juvenile rag and bone pickers in third world nations will contract all sorts of exotic forms of cancer while they harvest all that commodity goodness from those used camera phones?!!! You didn't know that?? YOU PIG!!!
Any Rags Any Bones Any Bottles Today...? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-18 14:17 · Score: 0

Any Scrap metal....?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrU-2udvUbs