Growing Problems With Electronics Waste 207
eldavojohn writes "The BBC is reporting that many countries are dumping their e-Waste in poorer African nations. From the article, 'The world's richest nations are dumping hazardous electronic waste on poor African countries, says the head of the UN's Environment Programme (Unep).' The problem with e-Waste (versus other wastes) is that the gases and chemicals that make up a lot of electronics are particularly harmful for the environment. I suppose nobody takes their computer, TV or Radio to the repair shop anymore since a new one is a fraction of that cost down at the local convenience store."
Re:repairs vs new (Score:2, Interesting)
I keep all my old electronics (Score:3, Interesting)
Mandatory recycling (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ironically (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Not just price... (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, TVs and other consumer electrics may be getting more proprietary in their construction, but people are also less inclined to fix them, although examples exist that demonstrate that it is possible.
I think you're in danger of harking back to some "good old day" that never existed whilst also ignoring the fact that most people these days don't want to fix a TV or mess around with a soldering iron in the back of their hi-fi. It's easier, quicker and nicer to buy something new: We don't fix things any more because we don't want to, not because we can't.
Re:repairs vs new (Score:1, Interesting)
How about deposits? (Score:4, Interesting)
Often impractical (Score:3, Interesting)
A small repair shop must often gamble on which parts to purchase, and deal with incessant customer grumbling over repair costs. Here are some stories [siliconchip.com.au].
I don't take my computers to the recycling place. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:repairs vs new (Score:5, Interesting)
I've had mine for over two years now and I don't think I'll be upgrading until either the battery or the screen completely dies. It's a 1.5Ghz Pentium M with 2 gig of RAM. Linux/GNOME runs like a dream and the only time I need more speed is when I want to compile something... more of a FSB issue than anything else. This just means that I'll stick with pre-compiled binaries as opposed to a gentoo solution for the moment.
Hardware has become cheaper. China has happened. Then there is Linux. Linux is now mature enough as a desktop environment. Very little extra bloat is needed for the Linux desktop... it only needs cleaning around the edges with a standardised interface. Historically the driving force behind increasing PC power usage has been bloatware (the old wintel alliance). Linux has a different business model to MS and is forcing MS to slow down its bloat process. If MS continues to force bloat, then it will open a door for Linux to be installed on smaller, cheaper, less powerful hardware, thus lowering the TCO for a Linux based network operating system.
Personally, I think we are about to see a rapid decline in new PC hardware sales, moving instead towards notebook style PCs. DIY PCs are about to become a thing of the past. Vista is likely to be the last MS operating system that requires a generational hardware upgrade, the maturity of Vista as an operating system is astounding. It appears that the relationship between MS-OS-revisions and maturity is "Maturity = ln(revision number)", where the function ln is the natural logarithm. After the upgrade to Vista, the only need to upgrade further (other than aesthetics) will be to reduce power consumption with efficient hardware, which itself will take on an exponential relationship.
The only place I still see bloat in the MS machine is in the active directory, and this isn't PC based, its network based...