Windows

Help Reduce The PC-To-Trash Cycle

Posted by on May 21, 2010 | 2 Comments

There should be an image here!Do you recycle those old PC towers, keyboards and monitors like you should? As trash accumulates, green thinking is imperative. We should all get in the habit of recycle, reduce, and reuse everything. Of course that is difficult when Windows makes new technology that refuses to work with our old machines. The best defense is to comb through Lockergnome tips for ways to keep the old stuff going.

The hard fact remains that a lot of the waste produced by the U.S. is composed of recyclable and reusable materials that only need to be sorted and dismantled to collect rare earth elements and parts for re-manufacture. Until that situation changes our trash may very well be another nation’s treasure. Employment to recover valuable material is still employment. We may hear horror stories about children picking through sharp rubble at a great health risk, but what is the alternative source of sustenance for that child? Would they be forced to mine for blood diamonds or become prostitutes if that occupation did not exist. In some societies there is a division of rank in the population. Different treatment of lower classes is accepted and as much as that condition causes disgust in a person that values all life equally, we are not in a position to mandate that all peoples of the earth be treated fairly, even if that solution is unethical or harmful to the few to advance the development of the many.

Another consideration to be looked at is if the “poorer” nation actually has a better method of dealing with certain wastes that are not feasible in the more developed nation. It is hard to argue that a desert that does not lie near any seismic fault lines would not be a good place to store toxic or radioactive wastes. High temperature solar incinerators are being studied to potentially destroy any kind of waste ranging from Bio to Chemical to municipal. If transportation costs can be managed, solar incineration might be a profitable industry for developing nations and a better place to dump the barges of trash leaving New York City every day.

Zitiboat is an environmentalist tree hugger that uses electronics to help change the world one person at a time.

[Photo above by Bert van Dijk / CC BY-ND 2.0]

  • http://thirdworldcounty.us David

    “High temperature solar incinerators are being studied to potentially destroy any kind of waste ranging from Bio to Chemical to municipal.”

    And thermal depolymerization plants have been used to manufacture oil out of everything (bio-waste) from turkey offal to raw sewage, with “by-products” of mostly reusable heat and clean water. Imagine municipal sewage treatment plants that pay for themselves with the oil they manufacture from waste.

    As to discarded electronics… *sigh* I have little knowledge of how to do such a thing. *heh* I generally dismantle old electronics for useful components, down to capacitors, screws and wiring. Envision drawers and jars and boxes and shelves of parts n bits n pieces… Discarding plastic and metal cases is notsomuch of a problem, since recycling for such materials is well-established. Some old computer cases are simply too good to discard. Imagine a massive old server tower converted into a “kitty tower playhouse” (sharp edges ground down, covered, whole thing “upholstered” in glued-down remnants of old carpet, etc. :-) ) Or a wind chime constructed of platters from old hard drives that’ve been thoroughly erased, then disassembled for various uses/recycling (the neodymium magnets from old hard drives have many, many applications, for example, and I have loads and loads of the things still waiting to be scrubbed and disassembled).

    Old CRTs are an issue for me, though, as it’s 75 miles to the nearest recycling center that’s certified to handle the things properly, and it charges an arm and a leg to take my “waste” (and then resells the salvaged components, rare earths, etc.). Irks a bit.

    Still, I do have some useful 17″ and 19″ CRTs around to connect to older computers… or older computers I may “Frankenstein” from the parts bins from time to time. (Yes, I still have an old 286 around… in the parts bins :-) )

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