Manufacturing 1 PC Takes 1.8 Tons Of Raw Material 687
remy writes "Although most of it (1.5 metric tons) is water, a study from the United Nations University details the raw materials used in the manufacture of a PC and 17" CRT. That's an incredible environmental cost per PC, and a very strong argument for trying to leverage older equipment, not to mention upgrading rather than replacing."
Make me feel good... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Make me feel good... (Score:5, Funny)
You monster!
Re:Make me feel good... (Score:4, Interesting)
A CRT will ware out in about five years. Brightness and contrast will decrease to a level which is unacceptable.
You can increase the brightness again by pumping up the voltage level on your tube, but that will only increase the rate of detoriation.
Pros/Cons (Score:4, Insightful)
Where did you dig that number up? I've got CRTs that are 20 years old and still work fine. I've seen a few CRTs with patterns burned into them from running 8 or more hours a day, but they still work for years.
The gripes I have about CRT's are:
Lead: Cathode ray tubes have landed in city dumps for decades. Got lead in your ground water, yet?
Radiation: I've already had cancer once, it was enough. I use LCD screens whenever I can now. I suspect some long term damage to vision, too, as my peripheral vision appears more acute. I still have excellent eyesight, but I'm not as old as I'm planning to be.
Deskspace: They take up too much realestate.
Power: Suck lots, though not as much as the CPU does.
On the Pro side, they've typically looked better than most LCD's, so I stuck with the behemoths until a year ago when I figured Samsung finally had one worth getting (Syncmaster 172t, it's only real problem is it's too bright even on the lowest setting!)
How much material is required to dispose of a personal computer?
Re:Make me feel good... (Score:4, Insightful)
There's probably 25,000V to 30,000V driving the CRT plus a 500V preamp.
If your monitor goes replace it. Period.
If you're emotionally attached to it take it to a qualified repair facility.
Re:Make me feel good... (Score:4, Informative)
You were taught wrong. Shorting out caps like that is a good way to destroy them, especially electrolytics. The proper way is a big resister, preferably 5 - 10 watt, about 50 ohm, on the end of a plastic rod. That way you drain the caps without damaging them, your eyes, or your screwdriver.
Mostly refining raw materials (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of the fossil fuels are probably mostly used in various refining materials process - the case, again, a lot of power needed for that. All the different materials in the PC and monitor adds up amazingly fast - remember that the actual raw materials are really cheap, so you don't see much cost due to this when you buy something in a high-street store.
-Chris
Re:Mostly refining raw materials (Score:5, Funny)
Incredible. And that's not all. In China, the amount of water it takes just to cook a single grain of rice is less than, equal to, or greater than all the water in the Pacific Ocean!!!
And in India, the amount of water used by a single red chili, from seedling to mature pepper, would be enough to, or not enough to, or more than enough to dwarf the planet Jupiter!!!!!
We should get these bar stewards before they destroy the entire Universe!!!!!!!
Order of magnitude.. (Score:4, Informative)
Google for "ton of steel" "tons of water".
-Chris
Re:Apologies for my cynicism but... (Score:5, Insightful)
1.5 tons is 1.5 cubic meters of water, which is only about a bath tub full (or two, depending on the size).
Re:Apologies for my cynicism but... (Score:5, Informative)
Water is pretty damn heavy.
Tonnes (Score:5, Informative)
1m^3 has a mass of exactly 1 Tonne (Metric) by definition
1m^3 = 1.102 Short (US) Tons
1m^3 = 0.984 Long (Old UK) Tons
I'm amazed to see ppl on /. surprised at the weight of water. Over here in Europe where we use the metric system it's common knowledge 1000Kg=1Tonne=1m^3 as it's so easy to remember.
Using up the oceans to make computers (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, these scare stories are nonsense, promoted by people that don't understand arithmetic. The major negative consequence of computers is their energy consumption during use. Newer models provide more computation per watt than older models, so old ones should be recycled and the materials they are made of re-used more efficiently. I know of at least two people that went bankrupt assuming that re-using old computers was commercially viable. That said, there is a place for old computers right now, but I hope such niches are filled by modest-performance, ultra-low-power new machines. The performance of a 486-50 grade computer with monitor can be exceeded by a hundred dollars worth of state-of-the-art hand-held hardware consuming perhaps a watt (assuming an available source of natural backlight for the 640x480 LCD screen).
The most important thing is to use that computation wisely and efficiently. Better software can help that. Replacing Windoze with smaller, less bloated OSes can do that, too. Think about how much energy is wasted computing the pixels for Clippy.
Thirsty? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thirsty? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Thirsty? (Score:5, Funny)
While I like the message... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:While I like the message... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:While I like the message... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:While I like the message... (Score:4, Funny)
What do you mean? An African or European CRT?
Re:While I like the message... (Score:5, Informative)
A metric ton - which is what he explicitly said - is 1000kg. So 240kg is near as dammit 1/4 of a ton.
Re:While I like the message... (Score:4, Insightful)
Where are the facts? Like, how much of the 1.5 tons is water? Let's take water out of the equation and compare everything else - and then get the statistics on other goods. Like how many tons to build a car, television, radio, microwave, etc.
Re:While I like the message... (Score:5, Informative)
My 486 150watt Power Supply
My P200 250watt Power Supply
A P4 350watt Power Supply
Unless you upgrade from a PC to a laptop you don't really have a a good saving in power.
Huh what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean I suppose things like fossil fuels get converted into useless byproducts, but most of the stuff would not be. This is accounting is beyond a little suspicious. I mean, how many tons of stuff does a person eat and then shit out in their lifetime. Probably a lot more then 1.8 tons.
And would upgrading really make that much of a difference? You upgrade a couple of times, then you need a new mobo, and after a while you need a new case to fit your new motherboard, and you practically have a new PC anyway. Its more like a gradual change to a new computer (combined with enough spare parts to build old machines) rather then large, discrete steps.
Re:Huh what? (Score:5, Insightful)
To be able to say something about that, you'd have to quantify how much that water got contaminated, and with what substances, what treatment it gets before it again gets released somewhere, and how and when it eventually gets re-released.
If I start cutting granite using diamond-blades, and cools them by flushing with water from the nearby river, I'll probably "consume" enormous amounts of water, but if I let the water go into a pool where most of the dust will settle, and then back in the river, the negative ecological impact will be truly minimal.
Much more interesting than how many liters of waters go trough my plant is instead what contamination, if any, goes into the water before it's again released. In my example that amounts to "some amount of granite-dust which mostly settles in the pool before release, and ain't *that* dangerous to begin with".
In the case of PC-manufacture, there's obviously some amount of more harmful chemical also being released. That is something we should look at, and do our very best at minimizing.
I just don't see how this "1800kg" metric is useful for anything at all, least of all for measuring environmental impact.
Re:Huh what? (Score:5, Informative)
Heat is a VERY big contaminant! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure most of the US people have heard of the manatees- the power plants in Florida have discharge channels that are long and wide and attract hundreds of the 'sea cows' each year. Why? Because the water being returned (reclaimed) comes out quite a bit warmer than the water it's going back into.
This translates to a literal calving ground of protected, tempered water. The plants even run a little tourist center for people to come in and watch the manatees - heh there's even a little hose that drops 'fresh' water into the discharge channel. Watch the creatures pull up under it and drink from a 'novel' non-salt containing water.... I think it gets them drunk, but then again if you've watched a manatee swim you'll swear they are all drunk.
But in this case the energy return is quite benefitial to the surroundings. Usually it's not- think of the Alaskan pipeway that draws heated oil from the wells to distribution. That permafrost underneath NEEDS to be kept cold, yet we are radiating millions of therms of energy above it to keep the oil from freezing solid. So it's a complete tradeoff in that sense- the coldest environment that MUST stay cold has the hottest (And capable of generating the most heat) mere meters above it. I think the pipes are about 2.5m off the ground, to allow animals to pass thru.
The dissolved O2 problem is real, but not as big as you think. I'd place more issue around the extra few degrees in the winter than on the amount of O2 present (algae can have a more devastating effect from phosphate dumping)
Re:Huh what? (Score:5, Informative)
Like darkroom photography, this involves the use of potentially noxious chemicals.
Now, the report is quite sketchy on what all that water is used for and that is, IMO, a glaring omission. But, suffice to say that the water leaving a chip fab probably won't be classed as safe drinking water.
Here are some links:
http://www.svtc.org/media/articles/2003/benzene_n
http://home.aigonline.com/AIGEnvironmental/ind_pr
Re:Huh what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Point is, contaminating water *is* a problem, simply "using" it in some sense or other, normally isn't. Every time I take a swim in the local lake you could argue that I "use" thousands of cubic meter. That doesn't imply the ecological impact is much above zero.
Re:Huh what? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Huh what? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Huh what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ideally it is still going to it's original destination , valley basin or whatever, just rerouted along the way.
Re:Huh what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, based on your reasoning, noone is qualified to determine whether something is or isn't 'ecologically' sound.
You can give me an example of where water is being misused and I can give you an example of where water is being used wisely, but in the end, those are just examples and we have no idea what's really happening to *all* that water.
It's really easy to point fingers and say "what if", "what if", and "what if", but in the end you are just as clueless as all of us.
Don't give me the "Feed starving children" line! (Score:5, Interesting)
1L at 1.04 g/cm^3 is a cube 10cm X 10cm X 10cm and weighs in at 1.04 kg. 1500L is a cube approximately 1.15m x 1.15m x 1.15m and weighs 1560kg.
Now you'd like to transport that 1500kg across the world to some poor, impoverished nation and give some thirsty children some water?
How would you like to accompish that? Maybe put it in a truck? Or a boat? Possibly an airplane? You might have to burn some fossil fuels to move it, unless of course you will be willing to pedal and move it by yourself (note, you will need cooling water yourself in order to maintain peak performance and prevent your brain from frying due to overheating).
This new-age drivel is very annoying to listen to. You would have a better chance of relocating the affected individuals to a more 'rich' environment.
Of course, using those computers to predict where hotspots will form is a bad thing- better to be surprised by a hurricane and lose the entire crop across an entire nation, than to 'consume' that 1500L of water. Let's exclude the fact that environmental regulations strictly control what can be returned to the water table, and that fines run into the 100K's for offenses.
Personally, I'd find it prettey interesting to watch you move 1560 kg of water using a bicycle to pull an oxen cart loaded with ~5 55gallon drums of water.
Facts vs Fiction (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, on to your post- when my company built a plant in China they allowed the workers to bring their families in and shower, clean up, etc. Shanty towns sprung up next door. I'm pretty sure that it wasn't entirely voluntary, but in the end it worked out for both groups.
Now lets talk about water regulation: In the US water outlets are strickly regulated. Plants must have water monitoring tools, take samples, observe, and report any and all spills or problems, on a regular basis or face severe economic penalties.
I've seen silver sludge, as black as your heart-felt comments, come out drinkable. In fact, I watched the lead engineer down a glass that, moments before, was as toxic as your words.
Of course, I don't agree with the economic policies that force pollution out to 3rd will countries- but there isnt' a damn thing that can be done to stop it until those countries force the same regulations.
Anyways, thank you for holding up some more posters of preservation. It's been entertaining.
Re:Huh what? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you make a PC, and use 1.5 tons of water, but after the fact 1.49 tons are put back into the environment, uncontaminated, how much have you really used?
Yes, there is some impact, but it means that the way these guys are painting the picture is hardly the end of the story.
I don't trust ecologists who rail against technology. If they want to study a situation and offer solutions to the problem (hey, if you do this, you will only use 1.1 tons of water), then I'm all ears. But to just say how bad it is that we are using so much material just for one PC is misleading (as some one else said, what about the 2nd PC), as well as nearly useless. I say nearly, because I recognize that without this, no one would even know there was a problem, and that is important.
I just wish they would offer a solution too.
Exactly. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Exactly. (Score:3, Informative)
However, if you run a bath every day (which on average uses around 200 liters of water), you'll be there within the week.
So if we just count the amount of raw materials used, and ignore they way these are contaminated or otherwise 'removed' from the environment, the amount of materials used
Re:Exactly - human consumption of water (Score:4, Informative)
Florida state has a web calculator [florida-water.com] for you to work out your total water consumption:
There's another one by South Central Texas Regional Water Planning Group [watershedexperience.com]
Upgrade doesn't have to mean replacement (Score:5, Interesting)
You can also do a lot with a simple memory upgrade.
This is after all the business market. Not the home user market. For office use a dual P3 is even better (with the right modern OS) then a single P4. No more lag while your wordproccessor starts up.
With such an upgrade you just doubled the life of the Mobo, memory, cpu, HD, expansion cards, cables and monitor. 50% reduction in waste. Not bad eh?
You got two kinds of water. (Score:5, Insightful)
Usually during manufacturing they use clean drinkable water wich emerges from the other end un-drinkable. There are systems in wich the cycle is closed or in wich polution does not take place but these are rare and expensive. Polluted water is in fact a useless byproduct. Unfit for drinking (for obvious reasons) unfit for cooling (even drinking water isn't clean enough for that) and unfit for production unless your a Pepsi fan.
But you can filter water to become drinkable can't you? Well yes. To a certain degree and at a cost. So if factory X takes water from a river and then dumps it back with pollution then it is taking Y amount of drinkable water from everyone down stream.
So this is probably the figure they are talking about. No water is not in itself in any danger of running out. We can always build more refining installations. But these in turn too cause pollution (how do you think they are powered) wich then you will have to clean up. Unless you like your drink with heavy metals?
Re:Huh what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The first point of interest is that industrial use of fresh water only accounts for about 15% total water consumption in this country. Use by public consumption, such as home lawns and golf courses, wasteful water use practices (long hard showers, washing small loads of clothes or dishes without selecting proper water settings, etc.) account for over 35%. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't improve the practice of making our industries more green. It does mean that the best place to start impacting water consumption as a whole is our own homes and public landscaping.
The next interesting point involves the quickly changing technology surrounding computers. In the near future, technical breakthroughs in OLED films, and high density storage, should allow us to reduce the physical size, weight, and composition of computers, dramatically reducing their environmental impact. In fact, using green sources for the feedstock to make computer hardware, and new technology for recycling old hardare, could reduce the power and resource consumption of PC manufacture by 50%-75%. This will result in saving hundreds of billions of tons of water anually.
The last interesting issue, is that water consumption is not actually the issue. Or at least not directly. The issue has never been the direct consumption of water so much as it's been moving water from places that have to places that don't. Every one of those tons of water has a huge cost in fuel needed to transport it from source to spiggot. Add up the cost both economic and environmental for the maintainance and upkeep of the delivery infrastructure, and you're beginning to look at a serious expense for doing business. With the depletion of western aquifers, set against the stiff competition for water for agrobusiness, and the growing population in arid regions (read that as an unprecedented need for water in places that have none of their own to quench a thirsty populace), and the clear and urgent need to conserve a shrinking resource becomes self evident. In the near future, any sane business program will include the environmental cost, because in the end, we all pick up the tab for maintaining an environment that is sufficiently healthy to support basic human endeavors.
Genda
-- Not only is lunch not free, it seems that the conflicting interests in our country have found ways to make you pay for it more than once...
When will people get it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:When will people get it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, this is also an argument for the slave trade too.
What the grandparent was stating was simply for goods to have in their costs not simply costs of production, but also cleanup costs. You could advocate that these costs should be levied upon the end-user, but if you advocate no cleanup costs at all, then you're going to live in a rubbish dump. Or wait, let me guess, you want to bribe some third-world tinpot dictat
Check out the Alameda Computer Resource Center (Score:5, Informative)
Wake-on-LAN? (Score:5, Informative)
"Too many computers at companies are prevented from entering their standby mode by LAN traffic, which keeps them awake and consuming power even while they are not in use, he said.
Hasn't that already been done in the form of Wake-on-LAN?
Re:Wake-on-LAN? (Score:3, Interesting)
How about: "Don't wake on LAN?"
If it's a client machine, surely no network traffic will be interesting if the machine is unattentded. No point in waking for email, not running FTP, DNS etc. If you were running those services, why on Earth would you run power management anyway?
Re:Wake-on-LAN? (Score:5, Interesting)
I work in a LAN gaming center. Most of you have probably seen the type - lost of high end gaming pay-for-play comps loaded with CS, BF:1942, CoD, UT2k3, and a bunch of other acronyms. The power buttons on the cases are really inconvienient to get to (behind one of those door things, 5' off the floor, turned to the side so the case window faces out).
Hitting all those power buttons is NOT FUN. Not difficult, just annoying. So, being the compsci student I am, I wrote a litte C proggie that sends WOL packets out to any machine I want. Incorporate a small databse of the MAC's and a tidy front-end and voila - instant 'power-on' menu. It works well. I'm also going to write a small client-side app that allows me to turn them off remotely, just for fun.
Well, I hope I don't "upgrade" the wrong part... (Score:5, Interesting)
What parts shouldn't I upgrade in order to be "environmentally friendly"? I'm sure the case doesn't take a hellacious amout of natural resources. I mean, it's just bending metal. The power supply is relatively simple electronics.
So, my guess is that the biggest consumers of resources are going to be the hard drive, the memory, the processor, and the motherboard.
Which are things I upgrade. Regularly.
I think environmental conservation is an important idea, but it seems like "Upgrade! Don't replace!" just gives the manufacturers a good excuse to not explore less environmentally hostile manufacturing techniques.
Having said all that, the beauty of water is that when you use it, you get to use it again. Yay water cycle. Makes planet work good.
Resources don't seem to matter much (Score:4, Informative)
Simply bending metal is I am afraid like saying meat comes from the supermarket. Last time I checked there where no metal sheet mines. It either has to be taken from ore wich is a gigantic process involving insane amounts of rock being boiled to extract tiny amounts of metal or recovered from scrap iron. Even the later still requires a lot of work to sort it all out (I am not even going to mention the costs of removing plastics and paint from the scrap iron) melt it down and get it into nice metal sheets for bending.
Still the case is probably the least wastefull. but also the least likely to be replaced in an upgrade. Why after all. For several generations of PC's it has been ATX motherboards so one size fits all. Power supply? Unless it is broken again why upgrade?
No the biggest offender is the MOBO. Countless different materials wich are difficult to recover and only yielding tiny amounts. Scrap the case and you got a few kilos of metal. Scrap a mother board and you are talking a few grams of sellable stuff. You can get paid for a truckload of cases, you will have to pay someone to scrap the mobos.
Mobo is a bastard for other reasons as well. The case can be used over multiple generations and so can stuff like the monitors and HD's. But with each new CPU generation you need a new MOBO.
Your last comment is so wrong that I think you really are someone who thinks meat comes from a supermarket?
Water that has been used can be used again? Not unless your into watersports.
Polluted water does not magically clean itself. Sure water polluted by going through humans and animals gets cleaned eventually after several years going throught the natural cycle. Same is not true for industrial polluted water. Heavy metals have a tendency to stick around in the water supply.
Yes water can be recycled but if you are an industry then you need to do it yourselve and this costs money. A lot of it. Best would be if factories used a closed cycle. However most do not and so the water is very much wasted. Unless you enjoy drinking water with the extra tang of lead and mercury.
Drinkable water is a resource that renews itself at a certain rate. Sadly we humans seem very capable of consuming it a greater rate. Luckily we are also capable of adding to the renewal process but this seems to only happen when people or companies are ordered at pain of fines to do this.
But what about Macs, they last longer ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But what about Macs, they last longer ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Want to fix the 'disposable' economy? Outlaw ridiculously short (90 day, 6 month) warranties and force - by consumer protection law - the manufacturers to make sure their stuff is *durable* by forcing them to replace it at no cost if it fails within the expected lifecycle of the product. End result is better, more durable products with only a slightly higher pricetag.
How does this compare? (Score:5, Interesting)
So yeah, recycling really is a good idea.
Re:How does this compare? (Score:3, Informative)
Linux-Ecology-HOWTO (Score:5, Interesting)
Upgrading uses resources too (Score:5, Insightful)
i've done my bit already.. (Score:3, Funny)
Check your local laws (Score:5, Interesting)
In some states it's illegal to throw a PC or monitor into the garbage. I know in the county I live in there is a fine for dumping computer equipment because of the heavy metals and other hazmats involved, but I've never heard of anyone being arrested or fined or anything for it. There are companies that specialize in proper disposal, but of course it costs you money.
So anyway, even if natural resources don't mean shit to you and you don't want to sound like some save-the-world-with-idealism, tree-hugging liberal, it's a good idea to recycle machines for reasons other than politics. Aside from dumping laws, there is always someone you know that could use an older machine. Or you can donate it to the VOA or Goodwill for a tax credit.
-JemRe:Check your local laws (Score:5, Interesting)
Making people pay to get rid of the hazardous waste is the wrong aproach, because guess what, lots of people will opt for the free aproach of dumping the stuff somewhere.
Much better is the model used for example in Scandinavia. If you sell a certain type of electric thingie, you have to be willing to take it back, at no cost, and dispose of it properly.
This means, if you've got an old computer you want to get rid of, you can deliver it, without paying, to any shop that sells computers. No it doesn't matter if they didn't sell *this*spesific* computer.
The practical offshot is offcourse that the sellers bake the cost of this into the cost of a new computer, I've seen calculations that say these rules makes new computers $5-$10 more expensive than they'd otherwise be. I think that's a acceptable trade-off.
Let's turn this around for a minute (Score:4, Insightful)
80% of the raw material used to manufacture a PC is pure water! Water that can be recycled! Compare this to the manufacturing of a car, where 20% is water, you got yourself a very enviromentally friendly piece of equipment.
Tree huggers unite! Buy a PC and save the environment.
In conclusion, numbers and statistics are in the eye of the beholder.
Re:Let's turn this around for a minute (Score:5, Insightful)
And I'm sure you're familiar with all of the processes involved in turning the water back into its pristine state we began with.
Why, they could surely just pipe the water from the factory outlet back into the factory inlet, right?
I think you might be overlooking something, son. It isn't just shite & piss we're talking about here. Hundreds of different kinds of contaminations, many involving heavy metals.
Yes, I agree completely with you about numbers and statistics, but I don't think the impact of any amount of water contamination, or the effect if it being released unpurified, is seen by you here.
It is a dilema (Score:5, Informative)
For me, it is a dilema. Between an upgrade, you get a more efficient hardware at similar price-energy ratio, thus more energy "friendly".
But with these, you get headache junking old hardware, and suffocate our habitat.
Consider this option, Computers for Africa [computers4africa.org]
A similar report on BBC, Computers 'must become greener [bbc.co.uk]
Its not really 1.8 Metric Tonnes (Score:5, Insightful)
Donation of older systems
Businesses really do not need to upgrade as often as they do Is there really that much functionality to the officeworker of an athlon FX 64 bit machine compared to a P200? I mean Word perfect and Lotus 1,2,3 both worked great on mine under OS/2 2.1 Now I am talking for business purposes hear not gaming or rendering or scientific maches servers etc. Just your typical iffice users 8-5 kind of thing
Move more and more to clustered computing. Need a render farm after hours? Use the machines already in place. When I worked for a design firm we had a render farm but I would use the other network machines after hours to speed things up considerably and it meant I didn't have to upgrade so rapidly.
Boot diskless terminals (kind of like the reverse of the previous comment) another 10 users may equal a change in processor and memmory and the addition of a new drive no need to build an entire system for each one.
What other responsible actions can we think of to turn the tide? I know the computer manufacturers certainly dont want to see it happen but the whole situation has become quite silly.
BTW just because of this topic I am posting from my 7350 dual 180Mhz 604e server
A PC uses more than ten times its weight in fossil (Score:5, Informative)
The BBC [bbc.co.uk] is running a report [bbc.co.uk] from one of the UKs regional recycling centers [rei.org.uk]
"It says a PC uses more than ten times its weight in fossil fuels and chemicals to manufacture."
"One of the ways of extending the life of a computer is to make it more easy to upgrade, rather than the current trend constantly replacing them for a better model as soon new versions become available."
Preaching to the choir... (Score:3, Funny)
This is
Seriously, I still have my 386sx kicking around. All it has is DOS 5.0 and old games, but hey, I'm using it.
I guess computers are evil then? (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't it time we start thinking for ourselves when dealing with environmental claims?
Sometimes environmental claims are exaggerated or simply untrue. Consider that while you're still allowed to own a computer.
Environmentally friendly manufacturers (Score:5, Interesting)
You should ask... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm all for reduce, reuse, recycle... but I'd rather that other proponents of it don't mislead in order to promote the three R's. (Not to make accusations, of course....)
I'd also like to see their numbers on LCD screens.
~UP
Yes and? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure I could say that all the resources needed for making 1 pc is:
and in way I would be right. But only to people who would believe this stuff is delivered by little daemons in the middle of the night.
So the figures are the costs in raw materials used in the complete production process of a
Blame support and maintenance policies (Score:3, Informative)
Admittedly, PC hardware isn't directly affected by the withdrawal of support, because the open standard means you can swap failed bits out. However, when MS stop supporting NT or Office 97 you're shafted, because you can't run the replacement on that hardware without spending almost as much as a new box would cost. So they get you in the end.
I'm sick of the leveraging old equipment argument. (Score:5, Interesting)
Using SSH and console is ok, when I just have to pop in really quick to edit some conf file, or tail -f some log. %80 of the time i'm doing this, it's pertaining to some clients web site i'm working on.
Guess what though? Do I fire up lynx to view my changes? Hell no! I use mozilla or IE, or some other html renderer. Do I create graphics or video from the console too? Hell no, I use some graphic program, with some nice gui, and pretty little icons everywhere BECAUSE I LIKE IT!!!!
Not only do I like it for that kind of work, I like it FAST! The faster the better!
Does it look like I care about leveraging old hardware for modern content? (shameless plug)
What I do use old equipment for is an ipcop [ipcop.org] firewall. I also use it to frankenstien together stepper motor interfaces [aaroncake.net] because it IS old and I don't give a crap if it catches on fire because I wired something the wrong way.
Here's the whole wrapup to my post, i.e. the point. I read slashdot everyday, I build mosix clusters using plumpOS (couldn't remember the link sorry) My garage is filled from top to bottom with old computer crap because I know i'm not average joe sixpack user, and I will find a purpose for it even if it's just for research or fun. Average joe sixpack doesn't care about these things, he just wants his little clickety click icons to open up faster, or his OS to load quicker, or his games to run better.
And I sympathize with him %100. Thanks Joe sixpack for not taking the time to learn what I do, because I'm that car that stops outside your house to load up that PC you put out with your trash.
Then don't bother, see what happens (Score:3, Insightful)
Upgrade less often??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh-oh. Aside from the case I usually change everything in my computer every 6 months! If I'd followed this advice and still had my PC from 4 years ago I'd be trying to play Half Life 2 and Doom 3 on a P2 266 and Riva TNT this summer. Scary.
I can't see many people following this advice unfortunately.
Misleading (Score:3, Informative)
At least monitors are a somewhat stable investment (Score:5, Insightful)
At least in America, there has not really been a compelling reason to upgrade TV sets more then once a decade, unless the old set broke. Not that we didn't get new spiffy TVs with AV inputs, fancy svideo inputs, remote controls, or the new HDTVs with 3 inputs
Sadly, any thrift store that I frequent will not accept a monitor as a donation, or a TV set for that matter. It makes me sad as even a 14inch monitor for $20 = one step closer to a PC for some.
And what about running costs... (Score:5, Insightful)
Upgrading can be worse (Score:5, Interesting)
When replacing only part, I could say that I saved the environment by not replacing everything. But at the same time, I have discarded part of a system, useless to everyone but a few hobbyists.
When I would have bought a new system, I would have left one complete machine that could be useful to someone else. I could sell it, donate it to a school project, or whatever. It could probably run a few more years before it is useless to anyone.
So, instead of discarding useless parts into the environment, I actually only damaged the economy (because the one who gets my old machine does not need to buy a new one). That does not seem to be such a big deal.
Valorlux: ditch your old PC to access our flashy (Score:3, Interesting)
Here in Luxembourg, we have non-profit organization to handle recycling (pick-up of recyclable items, such as glass, cardboard, certains kinds of plastic bottles and milk cartons). Their name is Valorlux [valorlux.lu]. A couple of weeks ago, I needed to look up the date of their next pick-up, and was stumped by their flash-only website.
I sent them a mail about it, and got the following reply:
Subject: L'internet n'est pas...
Cher Monsieur Xxxxx,
La page 'macromedia' qui apparait est en fait une passerelle qui vous permet
de telecharger un logiciel
du nom de 'Flash 6' ce dernier etant absolument necessaire pour naviguer
dans le site VALORLUX sans probleme.
VALORLUX a choisi d'offrit ce logiciel et son telechargement entierement
gratuitement afin de permettre a toutes les personnes n'ayant pas ce systeme
de pouvoir visiter notre site.
Ce ne sont absolument pas des publicites pour des societes americaines - ni
autres - simplement des outils
facilitant l'acces au site.
Si vous n'avez pas reussi a le telecharger c'est probablement que votre
ordinateur n'est soit pas assez
puissant, soit un peu trop 'age' pour utiliser ces produits, nous en sommes
absolument desoles.
Nous vous prions de croire en nos salutations les meilleures.
VALORLUX Asbl
Muriel Fedele
Responsable de la Communication
BP 26
L-3205 LEUDELANGE
The last sentence, in English: If you have not succeeded in downloading it [the Flash plugin], it is likely that your computer is either not powerful enough, or a little bit too "old" for using these products, and we are absolutely sorry about this.
Yes, and in order to resolve this issue, I'm supposed to buy a new one, throw the old one into the trash, and waste precious 1.8 tons of raw materials. Way to go, Valorlux!
Reusability of water #. (Score:3, Informative)
" Another cause for concern is the large quantity of water used. Manufacturing a computer involves using large amounts of water to rinse off the components. Estimates say that repeatedly rinsing printed circuit boards requires 33,000 liters of water per computer and more than 12,000 liters for semiconductors (Computers and Society, p7). This water cannot be recycled because of the chemical contamination from solvent residue, and thus must be stored. However, as with any chemical storage, as mentioned above, there exists some risk of leakage. When leakage occurs, the polluted water can go into the soil and cause the drinking water in the area to become poisoned."
So before you all keep ranting on about the reusability of water and you dont have to catr because you are American and SOOOO much better than the half of the world who need that water to keep their children alive, just check your facts.
Numbers by themselves are meaningless (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't want to pay these people $35 to buy a copy of their report, nor do I have time to read the whole thing. But I suspect that anyone who does take the time will find faults with the stated conclusions. They aren't necessarily lying -- it's just that the nature of the topic is complex and therefore subject to multiple interpretations.
Due to the interconnected nature of the economy, I don't think that it is meaningful to just say that it takes a certain amount of raw materials to manufacture a computer. For example, does the figure include the water that the cow drank that went into the hamburger that the trucker ate while delivering the VGA connectors? It also takes a ridiculous amount of water [ran.org] to produce a little bit of beef, you know. Perhaps that was a bit far-fetched, but you can see how there could be lots of discretion in deciding what to include or exclude in the tally.
One way to see if their methodology is fair is to compare the environmental impact of producing computers with that of other products. Here I sense that between the UN University and InfoWorld, someone is being sloppy / misleading / sensationalistic.
I think that may be a bit unfair to compare the materials used to produce a PC and a car against their respective final weights. The goal of electronics is to fit as much complexity as possible into ever shrinking products. The goal of car manufacturers is to make their cars as roomy and as lightweight as practical. Why don't they celebrate the fact that a solar-powered calculator can compute what it used to take an ENIAC to compute? In that light, we're already making tremendous environmental progress.
What does it mean to say that water is used? If you take the water and mix it with some nasty chemicals, then it's polluted. If you use it to wash some dirt off of something, it's dirty but easily returnable to the environment. If you use it to carry away heat in a sealed heat exchanger, it remains perfectly clean but might make some fish unhappy when you return it to the river at a slightly higher temperature. If you took it from the Seattle, it's no big deal; if you took it from Ethiopia, it's a crime against humanity. How much of the 1500 kg of water in a PC is "used" in each way?
Anyway, I don't doubt that PC manufacturing has some significant environmental impact, and that we should find ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle. But I'm sure that anyone who wants to write a report with an opposite viewpoint could easily do so. Just be aware that the authors have an interest in picking the comparisons that generate the maximum shock value.
using water? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, 1500Kg's is water... How do you use water such that it doesn't go back into circulation?
I mean, are they keeping the water in the computers or blasting it off into space after using it?
Resonably, the water is put back where it came from after being used and cleaned, so really it requires 300Kg's of raw material to produce a PC.
monitor requires at least 240 kilograms of fossil fuels
Monitors run on petrol?
I'd like to know how they got these figures. I mean, they didn't do something retarded like checking how much energy is used to produce a monitor, checking how much petrol would be required to produce that energy and then just using that figure?
Depending on where you are, the energy could be coming from water/wind/sun, or some other enviromentally friendly source.
I don't doubt for a second that PC's are unfriendly to the enviroment, and we should try to recycle... but 1800Kgs, when 1500 of it is water.. c'mon...
It's hard not to upgrade (Score:5, Insightful)
And all these companies who depend on hardware upgrades for incoming cashflow still need to stay in the black. So I don't think a computer recycling-culture is going to develop any time soon, until the alternatives become a little more well known.
one gallon of gasoline (Score:4, Interesting)
Other facts from the same research:
Oh, that's nothing! (Score:5, Funny)
Computers have more of a positive impact. (Score:5, Informative)
The computer manufacturing business is one of the most cut throat businesses on the planet. Every tiny bit of slack in the process must be eliminated in order to stay competitive. This means that they must use as few raw materials as possible. Energy consumption is minimized. The part count is kept to a minimum. There is as little waste as possible.
Let's talk about some of the positive impacts of computer use. I use mine with VPN to handle work for customers without traveling. This results in fewer plane rides, rental cars, and sitting in traffic. In my professional work I use computers to monitor environmental impact at manufacturing and industrial plants. I also use them to help make the processes more efficient which lessens the environmental impact of the activities.
Computers are also used to mange traffic in large cities. They are used to manage public transportation facilities. I've done work for logistics companies that manage the shipment of goods to reduce fuel consumption, lessening the environmental impact of these activities.
Let's face it. Computers are the most valuable modern tool that we have developed. The impact of manufacturing one is more than offset by all of the positive impacts of their use.
Worrying about the environmental impact of producing this valuable tool when we already know how competitive it is to manufacture them and how efficiently it is already done seems really silly.
Perhaps we should do a study of the impact of all of the CO2 that is emitted during worthless UN debates. Certainly it is impacting global warming in an adverse fashion.
Hey UN, stop worrying about inane crap like this. Last I heard there was some shit going down in Haiti that you might want to concentrate on. While you're at it, Kim Jong Il is starving his people. I'm sure there are a lot of other areas of much higher impact that you could concentrate on. You do some really good work out there. This type of study isn't helping though.
PC industry needs to change (Score:5, Insightful)
1. CPU power consumption keeps increasing at a dramatic rate, even though the vast majority of PCs are underutilized by ~80%. That is, people buy a 2.8GHz P4 because it's the lowest end model sold by Dell in a desktop (seriously!), even though they just do web browsing, play simple Flash games, and use Word. Fortunately, LCD monitors have more than balanced this out, at least for now, but with 150W CPUs coming before year's end, I don't know how long it will last.
2. Games drive things far too much. Why does every PC made since 1997 include AGP hardware? Why do you get a heatsink and fan-laden nVidia 5200 with most all-but-bottom-end PCs? Why have power supplies jumped up to the 400-450W range? Because there's a very vocal gamer market that has been driving PC hardware development. In reality, high-end PCs games don't even sell all that well. The huge selling games are things like The Sims and Roller Coaster Tycoon and generally not cutting edge 3D games.
3. PCs are far too general purpose. They're designed to do everything, but nothing really well. It's still far too common to see Xbox games that utterly blow away PC games, even though the Xbox has 64MB *total* RAM and a PC game requires 128MB of *video* RAM. You have people buying the P4 Extreme Edition solely because they spend most of their time doing video compression. Really, wouldn't a video compression chip that outperforms the CPU by 10x be preferrable? (Note: This is coming in the next nVidia chipset this spring.) Wouldn't we be better off with CPUs designed more for languages like Python, ones that use 1/10 the power of existing processors? Ericsson prototyped a CPU for their concurrent functional language Erlang, and they got *massive* speedups and a power consumption in the range of 1 watt.
4. Processor speed, memory requirements, they've all gotten very soft and meaningless. You see tables in Dell catalogs saying that 2.8GHz is good for email and web browsing, but 3.0GHz is much better for games. Hello? That's only a 7% performance difference! Similarly, people blindly advocate 1GB over 512MB without any real reason.
Re:PC industry needs to change (Score:4, Interesting)
General purpose PC's allow people to have one computer to do computer things. This allows developers to create new ideas - for existing hardware! It's a really neat trick, and pretty much the only reason that software development has taken off like it has. It's kinda like the concept of making general purpose things like, say, screws, gears, wheels, etc. Ya know, that industrial revolution thing. You got a circuit specifically built for posting on SlashDot?
Technology moves forward when people push the envelope and want more. Games use a wide range of diverse technologies, and are constantly at the edge because that's what seems to entertain the purchasers of the games the most. It's the "Ooooh! Aaaaah!" factor - keeping it means outdoing the last each time. That drive to do more and outdo what's been done is what makes science and technology change. It's the reason we're not still sharpening sticks. I'm kinda glad we've got that drive.AGP being on every motherboard probably has something to do with AGP becoming what's called a standard. Standards are kinda cool - they let multiple companies make things that work together. You seem to be arguing that there should be no internet - but rather only a copper wire stretched between any two points of communication, where the protocol is unique to each. Otherwise, ya know, it's general purpose and not all the bandwidth is always used.
Where are you getting that 80% statistic? Do you mean "When a person isn't running anything, the processor isn't getting used"? Duh. If I never used but 20% of my processor, why do some operations take measureable time? Maybe because I'm *using* the full processor... hmmm... that means - if I have a faster processor, I wait less time for results.
I remember when generating an RSA key took several minutes, and compiling a moderately large piece of software could take a day or two. I'm pretty happy to have technology that makes both doable within the time it takes to grab a cup of coffee. Sure, I'd love for them to be instantaneous, but that'd take using something like 1000% of my 2.1GHz processor. It's almost doable with distributed or grid computing with enough back end resources, but then running most of that grid software requires a general purpose PC, 'cause it's kinda new technology...
I'll agree with that to some degree - but it's because there are so many factors that contribute to what a 'requirement' is and there's a finite time to test before shipping a product. Say you have a program with an embedded web browser.... How much RAM does it need? Well, maybe 10MB... Wait - what if the browser goes to a page with a 5MB bitmap on it? And at the same time, a Java VM starts up? What if the user can open multiple windows - as many as she wants until memory runs out? Most companies set requirements based on the minimum levels that feel 'responsive' under slightly averse conditions across a finite set of hardware. It isn't going to be a hard number, because different people use software different ways, and there are a *lot* of hardware configurations out there.
1GB = 512MB * 2. Twice as much means you can run twice as many programs or use software that requires twice as much memory. I've used quite a bit more than 1GB of RAM before, and it's a lot faster reading from RAM than swapping to disk and back, test it out sometime :) Even if you're blind, you can still hear the hard drive chugging....
Maybe not, but I sure hope it's a troll that just got poorly moderated.
Who marked this one up to a 5? It's almost as bad as the bloody article....
The thing about water (Score:4, Interesting)
Economies of scale (Score:5, Insightful)
240 kilograms of fossil fuels
22 kilograms of chemicals
1,500 kilograms of water
Far more than $250, right? But these corps can acquire all that, turn it into a 17-inch monitor, ship it to me, and make a profit. It boggles the mind.
Somewhat misleading (Score:5, Interesting)
1500 kg of that is water. It's not used up--it's supposed to be treated and then sent down the drain. It gets recycled fairly quickly. My monitor doesn't contain a ton and a half of water--does yours? So where did that water go? We each use about 200 kg of water per day just in our homes--washing laundry, flushing toilets, showering. 1500 kg seems like a lot, but we each use that much every week.
240 kg of fossil fuels. Well, that's a possibility. How is that assessed? That's (ballpark) a hundred gallons of gasoline. That's what someone living 25 miles from work might use in two months of commuting. It's not enough fuel to get your motorhome to the Grand Canyon and back for your vacation this summer. The figure also assumes that all the energy used to produce the computer comes from fossil fuels. If nuclear energy was used, that 240 kg of fuel corresponds to roughly 2 cubic centimetres (half a teaspoon) of unenriched uranium. If hydroelectricity was used, the cost would be kinetic energy from many tons of moving water. (See note above regarding the recycling of water.)
22 kg of 'chemicals'. Well, that's certainly vague. Water is a chemical. Some of those chemicals are acutely nasty. Some are moderately unpleasant. Some will be relatively harmless. Does that 22 kg include the finished product? I mean, the computer itself with CRT is probably up around ten or fifteen kilograms...
Other posters have already noted that a useful report would compare these totals to the resources used in the production of other products: home appliances, automobiles, cotton. (The Aral Sea is drying up largely because of cotton growing in the area. It takes about 5000 kg of water to grow one kilogram of cotton. The environmental costs of the pesticides and bleaches used in cotton production I will leave for another post.)
Wheels of industry (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem I have with this kind of nonsense is that making PCs keeps the economy going somewhere. Not making a PC has economic and social implications that are far reaching. Those resources getting consumed feeds millions of people down the supply chain and keeps the wheels of industry turning. Simply stopping that would not be a good thing.
This statement is based on BS (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit! What are we doing, fusion? The 1.5 metric tons of water doesn't disappear. It gets recycled in one way or another. Yeah, the fabrication process is very chemical intensive, but the big manufacturers (Intel, AMD) have strict environmental policies. They recycle where they get, purify their outflows, and use as little material as possible.
Both for cost-cutting sake and environmental law sake.
So that 1.5 metric tons of water is reused over and over and over in making each PC. The actual specific waste per PC should be measured as the material that leaves the manufacturing factory per day (as waste) divided by the number of pieces of hardware it made that day.
For computer geeks, you guys are really stupid.
That is, unless your PC weights 1.7 metric tons.
Duh?
RMI's work with STMicroelectronics (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of the highlights:
They were able to reduce energy consumption at one plant by 60% with better design.
[rant]One of the things I don't like about these studies that tell you how much water it takes to build your car or get you a hamburger patty is that they are aimed at consumers. Maybe we should increase the cost of water and fossil fuels, or the penalties for being wasteful, so that manufacturers might get with the program and stop being such hogs.[/rant]
Re:even tap water... (Score:4, Informative)
You run your water through a double distiller or something?
For most municipal water supplies it goes like
- Filter large crud and let dirt drop out of suspension
- Add a flocculant and coagulant to settle the fines (micron sized particles) to the bottom and drain them off.
- Chlorinate / UV treat the water.
- Pipe to home.
Whilst there is some loss from pumping the settled crud from the bottom of thickeners , it's nowhere near 50:1
Not at my house! ...I run @ no loss (Score:3, Interesting)
The down side of it is that since it isn't fluoridated , my kids definetely had more cavities (seven among three kids) than my brothers kids (none!! among
Re:That seems to be a heavy PC (Score:3, Interesting)
that's what the bulk of it is, and it's used at different factories around the globe.
and in other news making paper takes chemicals and water as well!!!(not that I care anymore since they just don't dump the chemicals around here back to the lakes anymore - and we have plenty of lakes)
Re:tons (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Can anyone provide more explanation? (Score:4, Informative)
You must take interesting showers (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, er, no. My shower head is a 2.5 gpm water saver, but let's consider an old fashioned 6 gpm water waster mega fountain. Now, I like long showers, but more than 10 minutes? I don't think so. So 6 gpm times 10 minutes is 60 gallons, or 229 kg - a far cry from 1500 kg!
Now, since I am using only 2.5 gpm and it has an instant on-off button on it, I only need maybe 50 kg even for a 10 minute shower.
BTW, the water saver shower heads provide a very satisfying output.