Responsible Disposing of E-waste
E-waste recycling is a multi-billion dollar market today. We have fallen into the mindset of accepting that replacement is cheaper than repair, at least for electronic goods. That means, we get rid of our computer equipment more often than we used to. This is a difficult task mentally and environmentally.
A laptop that served you, that kept with you in good times and bad, deserves a good send off. If not a wake, a private “I will miss you” would be nice. The riddance itself could mean careful planning. Dumping the computer dude in a dump is a serious offence, just like DUI. Most electronic components are non-biodegradable and some are even toxic.
Brian Reich has a wonderful article about responsible disposing of computer equipment. Of the three R’s — Recycling, Reducing and Reusing — he says that while the former is catching up, the latter two are preferrable.
For those in a hurry, here is the gist of the article. But don’t forget to bookmark this and get back to it later.
1. Buy quality products. Consider that extra pay as an investment than an expense.
2. For reasons of law and security, wipe your hard drive clean before initiating disposing. Before you do that, back up.
3. Resell and consider buying resold goods.
4. Donate. Libraries, charity organizations, poor students,…
5. If you can’t resell or donate, recycle. Earth 911 and UNICOR Recycling Program can be your place to start. If these services don’t offer any viable solution in your locality, you can always call the service center of the company from which you bought the hardware and give it back to them.
Thanks for referencing me! : ) That’s probably the most useful article I’ve ever written. Since I wrote that I have played around with recycling computers myself to make a little money from working parts and scrap metal, and this is what I found:
1. Computers and other electronics are as much if not more plastic than they are metal. Unless you can recycle that plastic it defeats the purpose of recycling (and I haven’t found a way to do it).
2. It’s too time consuming on the small-scale to be worth it. You might as well send your electronics to a recycling center with a grinder that can quickly break down and separate materials.
3. There are ways to extract precious metals from various components, but again, on the small-scale I’m not so sure it’s worth it. And I lack the bravery and the location to play around with the acids required for the process.
I think a service like UNICOR is still the best bet for computer recycling.
Thank [i]you[/i] once again, Brian.
2. Reminds me of Wall-E.:-)
3. I’ve a couple of enterprising friends who used to work on some e-waste plant building. A mechanical engineer and a metallurgical engineer. I think they made good progress with prototyping, but funding for green projects in India is very difficult. I think they had to abandon it.
That’s a shame to hear that they had to abandon that project! This video I found on YouTube really made me want to try… perhaps it would give your friends some ideas as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n0wOnLNXwc
Thank you for the video, Brian. I sent the link to one of the two; it’s his birthday. :)
I contacted b5Media about this and haven’t received a response yet, but it looks to me like another site has stolen your content. I noticed it because when they copied this article, they also copied the link to my site and so they showed up in my “incoming links” last night.
Please contact me to get the URL, as I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of giving them an incoming link.
I’ve noticed that too, Brian. There were actually two of them. I contacted b5media and their legal department apparently sent them a “Cease & Desist Letter”. The legalese frightened one; but the other one remains persistent.
Ironically, they have both even copied by Types of Blog Fraud post:http://www.thatdamnpc.com/types-of-blog-fraud/. I intend to write an open letter to the remaining blog this weekend and see whether it copies that post too.
Sad story.