Unintended Results From U.S. Hardware Dumps In Asia 412
Izeickl writes: "The BBC has a thought provoking story about old hardware being dumped in parts of Asia. The report 'details a group of villages in south-eastern China where computers from America are picked apart and strewn along rivers and fields.' the article also states 'The report suggested that as much as 80% of the America's electronic waste collected to be recycled is shipped out of the country.'"
anyone watch Battle Angel? (Score:3, Interesting)
That sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been amassing old computer junk in my closet for years. I'm almost to the point where I was going to pay to have them recycled [ibm.com]. But damn, for all I know, I'm probably just paying for shipment to China!
I think there has to be an upcoming business opportunity in recycling this stuff, and doing it in an environmentally responsible manner. I'd almost be willing to start the ball rolling myself. Any resources out there for learning how to do it?
Ships stranding (Score:2, Interesting)
Eat more fish they say... contains no mad cow disease... ha !
Even worse than medical waste.... (Score:2, Interesting)
The situation is quite frightening. Consequently, the groundwater (near Guiyu, China) is so polluted that drinking water has to be trucked in from a town 18 miles away, the report said.
These "high tech" waste is especially hazardous to these poor workers. Medical waste (eg used bandage) usually smells and look nasty, everyone know they are dirty. Villagers usually have no clue toxic heavy metal will leak to groundwater, burning the plastic will generate very toxic smoke... before too late.
Probably, it is now to add a "prepaid" waste recycling fee to new computers....
I thought recycling meant reusing. (Score:4, Interesting)
These kinds of things really tick me off. I've recycled numerous old systems, in the hopes that they either went to some good, or were safely broken down, to be used in other applications. Instead, they probably just got dumped in a landfill.
I guess I shouldn't be so surprised, these types of things always happen with recycling. Recycled papers sit in warehouses because companies don't frequently buy post-consumer stock. Glass & tires that were originally planned to be melded together to make a new, cheap pavement wind up sitting in their respective piles. Tires that were supposedly going to be used for recreating habitats for aquatic life are instead burned.
And now, all our old 286s are dumping mercury & lead into China. If my old Vendex Headstart 8086 is sitting over there, instead of being recycled, I'll be very, very upset.
Is there anything we can really do to ensure that our equipment doesn't wind up in some other country's landfill??
And the point is ??????? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes I know this is bad for the enviroment, but the simple fact is its not like China is colony of the US and we are forcing th govt to accept the waste, THEY ARE BEING PAID !!!!!
If CHINA chooses NOT to give a shit about its citizens it on them, and THEY should have to answer for it.
This is NOT about the US, get it understand it and live with it.
Now, the people, well thats unfortunate, it really is, BUT IT THEIR GOVERMENTS(CHINA) FAULT !
Wide spread mass industrial pollution with NO regard to the enviroment is seen on both ends, the capatilist and the COMMUNIST side, the latter aswers to noone and it is thus a fair bit worse in general, no dont belive me ? Ask all the people in eastern europe what things were like during USSR rule.
Ok, so you want an alternative use ? Lets drop all this crap out of B52's on Iraq, and all the US enemies, a hell of a lot cheaper than smart bombs, could you imagine what damage a monitor would do falling form 30000 feet ?
How about Europe? (Score:1, Interesting)
CNN and /. (Score:1, Interesting)
Anyone agree? Or think this is just silly conspiracy talk?
Archeology (Score:5, Interesting)
I keep having this picture of archeologists in thousands of years in the future going through all of this stuff, and trying to piece together an old PC. no tech manuals, etc.
Alot of their success would depend on the level of their own technology, of course.
Doesn't Work that Way (Score:5, Interesting)
The company I worked for before that had tried to donate 200 computers and a full TK ring network with switches and wiring... they turned their nose up because it meant they would have to hire a network admin slash support person to run it... this is a rural school district with almost no computers and some of the lowest SAT/ACT scores in the stat of Illinois.
My best friends wife's company tried to donate pallet loads of computers and office furniture (they make it in Iowa) to their local school district... same thing, no interest.
For every school that is progressive and interested in donations in this country, there are four who would rather not. Piss on our education system, the liberal economy and politics of the 70's and 90's has totally screwed this country... we have gone from #1 to #11 in the world.
Re:anyone watch Battle Angel? (Score:2, Interesting)
The same theme played out in the fantastic but much overlooked CRPG "Septerra Core."
And our culpability in this is...? (Score:4, Interesting)
2. While the cities I've been to in the last five years have considerably cleaned up their act, China still has an enormous problem with littering. Ever seen the commercials showing the roadside trash from the early 70's in America? That's China nowadays.
3. Many electronic components are desoldered and reused by small mom-and-pop outfits that want to get into business, and don't mind cheaper used components. When you've got lots of people who want to get ahead in life, they will use any resource at their disposal.
Re:If they want... (Score:3, Interesting)
How do other countries handle this? (Score:2, Interesting)
Also reminds me of something that happened while I was visiting a client in Tokyo.... while riding the high-speed train to the convention center... he pointed to the land surrounding the convention center and said "this used to be ocean... how do you think we got this land?"... I said "I dunno"... He said "every year japaneese throw out old electronics and buy new electronics. We put electronics in bay and build convention center on top.".
Now... I never knew whether or not he was serious - I suspect he was... .but after reading the article - and pondering this... isn't that bad for their environment?
Make the manufactures consider disposal (Score:2, Interesting)
Think about it. GE should be the one to pay for getting rid of CFC's from the refrigerators that they manufacture. This would force them to either raise the price of what they sell, or find a better way to manufacture it (without CFC's for instance).
Computers are built with the knowledge that they will be obsolete in a few years, so it should come as no suprise that if they sell X number of machines in one year, that in 3-4 years that many machines will need to be recycled.
At the very least, a law like this would prevent AOL from producing millions of disks that get thrown into the garbage unopened, or from someone even proposing a throwaway product like DIVX (old DIVX, not new Divx
Re:anyone watch Battle Angel? (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't vouch for an entire culture, but I can speak to this personally.
My TV is a 28" set that was thrown away for a $3.20 vertical deflection IC. The AC cord (because the owner cut the old cord) cost more than the fix. I picked it up because (a) I didn't have a TV, and (b) I figured I'd have more fun, and learn more, by fixing an old one than buying a new one, (c) If I could fix it, it's 100 pounds less landfill. If I couldn't fix it, I'd put it back on the curb where I found it, and (d) I'm a cheap bastard.
My DVD player was born as a P166MMX with an ancient ATI card that had TV-out, but no MPEG2 decoder support. I got lucky and found a BIOS upgrade for the motherboard that would let me run lower voltages required for a K6-III. So now it runs (FSB overclock) at 500 MHz and decodes the stream with brute force. (The only time I got glitches in the video stream was when I forgot to enable DMA mode on the DVD-ROM).
My current computer is 3 years old. It began as a C366. It's now at 1GHz. The only component I've upgraded was the CPU for $50. Won't play Wolfenstein at ultra-high-res, but it's good enough for my computing and gaming needs.
My monitor was a 19" Sony flat-screen CRT. $125 at a surplus store. (And I was able to hand my 17" to a friend.)
Just last weekend, I recovered some data off a 15-year-old 40M Seagate ST-251 and an old '286. (Moral of the story, make two CDs for backing up data, in case one of your CDs gets zorched.) A couple of twists with the wrist to loosen the bearings and get the stiction-killed drive to spin up, and a couple of BIOS-based cylinder seek tests to spread the lube along the rails. (First run, it'd seek OK for a while, then pause for 1-2 seconds on some problematic cylinders. Second run, it got a little "better" at moving the head. 10 minutes later, it was fine. I was amazed.)
Getting more life out of "junk" hardware by fscking around with it can also be fun.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)