"eCycling" Pilot Program in 5 States and D.C. 91
Mr. Slippery writes: "Several /. stories have discussed the problem of disposing of electonic gear laden with hazardous materials. The EPA, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, DC, and about a dozen corporate sponsors have launched a pilot program to collect and recycle computers and electronics. The objective is to collect data to "develop a long-term cost effective system to remove computers (including
monitors & peripherals) and TVs from the municipal waste stream."
(My car is now loaded up with five monitors, 3 old HP RISC worksations, several partial PCs, an old TV, and various parts and pieces for the Baltimore County drop-off tomorrow...if any area geeks are looking to scavange old gear this might be a prime opportunity.)"
How dare you... (Score:2)
Re:How dare you... (Score:1)
Re:How dare you... (Score:1)
Before anybody says "put them to use" ... (Score:1)
Sometimes they really do need to be thrown out -- let's recycle instead of landfilling!
Cool tech (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of these places are just pure break down and destroy. Which makes sense economically, but still..
Perltop [sourceforge.net] - GTK / Perk Desktop environment
Re:Cool tech (Score:2, Interesting)
ALL of my neighbors are poor (food bank poor) and none of the ones I know into computers would settle for a 486. (forget 386's even...those sit and rot at the salvation army, for the reason I just described).
Re:Cool tech (Score:3, Informative)
Apparently, they had no problem with this. Too bad I was busy that day!!!
Re:Cool tech (Score:1)
Northern Virginia Residents. (Score:2, Informative)
middle of the road that will guide you to the exact location.
If you are in Alexandria, take Leesburg Pike and drive towards Baily's cross-roads, Leesburg
turns to Broad St. Stay on that (please go 25mph, fallschurch is over populated, it is a
residential area, and our cops are broke, hehehe)
For those of you coming from the other side of Leesburg (tyson's corner) just stay on Leesburg
and head towards Falls Church (aim at the Route 66 exit, if you have to.) and you will
land in Broad St.
Re:Northern Virginia Residents. (Score:2, Informative)
Link:
Re:Northern Virginia Residents. (Score:1)
Link:
m [falls-church.va.us]
http://www.ci.falls-church.va.us/meetingsapril.ht
Not just computers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not just computers (Score:2)
I recycle at home myself. I'm pretty good at sorting metal... I'd settle for mandatory plastic codes on all plastic items. I've tossed a few old computer cases (damaged, etc) and the plastic front covers are almost impossible to ID. And of course our local recycling only takes type 1 and 2, so I ended up landfilling it. Makes me feel kind of guilty. (No, I don't feel guilty about type 3+... that's my local gov's fault, I'm more than willing to presort it for the curb).
Re:Not just computers (Score:1)
Re:Not just computers (Score:1)
You the regulator, add a recycling fee to be paid by the manufacturer that is added to the cost of the product. This fee is based on the estimated disposal/recycling cost of the product. The fee applies to circuit boards, etc. anything that qualifies as end-use form.
Now the capitalist has incentive to reduce end-use waste disposal/recycling costs. Many items could be recycled more cheaply if the were designed to be recycled. Many monitors get a bunch of lead added to them (as balast), yet the lead is not easily recycled at the end. If the lead could be eaily recycled (ease of breakdown) the recyling fee would be smaller. Or, the manufacturer would try to redesign to reduce the dependence upon lead ballast.
By being recycle friendly (reducing the recycling fee), the product would be comparitivly cheaper than the competition who is not recycling friendly.
I'm not a big fan of government regulation. I am a fan of appropriate regulation (government or otherwise). If an industry shows itself to self-police well, government involvement can be light (and vice-versa)
Re:Not just computers (Score:2)
Redundant Technology Initiative (Score:2, Informative)
The Redundant Technology Initiative [lowtech.org] have been doing this sort of thing in my hometown of Sheffield, UK for a number of years now [lowtech.org].
RTI is an arts group based in Sheffield, England. It started in 1997 with a group of artists who wanted to get involved with information technology, but didn't have the resources to buy computers. So instead they went about getting their hands on trash computers, finding new ways to be creative with old technology, then exhibiting the results.
Now RTI has accumulated hundreds of machines and has raised money to open a media lab, called Access Space [lowtech.org] where people can learn, create and communicate using trailing-edge technology. At last, after a series of frustrating delays, Access Space finally opened on April 6th 2000.
We had a fairly groovy Wireless Internet Workshop too at Access Space last November [lowtech.org].
Don't throw it away, give it away (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not affiliated with the site, I just swapped some shit there recently.
It's better that it goes in the office than the landfill.
Re:Don't throw it away, give it away (Score:2)
Re:Don't throw it away, give it away (Score:2)
Most of the time, I can get away with just throwing pop cans out of the window of my car, especially if I'm on a country road with nobody around. Carrying that crap around just isn't worth the hassle.
Look, I know I cut corners and don't always do the right thing, but are you really arguing for filling landfills with stuff that may have value to someone just because anything else isn't worth the hassle?
Does this include Media? (Score:2, Funny)
I would require that the maker pay the refund fees.
We could do Data mining with a shovel and dig up the landfills. Just think we could at last bring down AOL by a forced return of all those CDs they send out.
Excellent. But will garbage still kill us? (Score:3, Insightful)
We should be reducing our consumption of computing equipment, and thankfully huge performance gains in recent years allow us to own them longer.
Reuse is a great second consideration. You probably have very high standards for you computer's performance...but I bet you neighbor doesn't! GIve the damn thing away to someone who can make real use of it.
Finally recycle. A great first-step approach here would be to start a business that takes disposed of computers, strips them down and uses the parts to create ultra-low-price boxes that can be resold. For example - consider two individuals discarding PCs because of resource starvation in one aspect of their systems. Jimmy drops of a Pentium with a twenty GB hard drive. Ann drops off a PIII with hardly any disk space. Well, combine Jimmy's disk with Ann's CPU and you have the start of a PC that you could actually sell for maybe $200. Of course you would be obligated to cleanly dispose of the parts you don't use, but you get the idea. I'm surprised someone hasn't tried this.
Re:Excellent. But will garbage still kill us? (Score:2)
Besides, you could at least be creative. For instance, I have a friend who heats his house in the winter with some Vaxen. He also gets some free cpu cycles out of all that heat too, even if it means VMS. That's what I call reuse.
vote (Score:2)
Everybody who thinks that people who THROW AWAY UNIX BOXEN should be banned from posting on slashdot, raise their hands.
Re:vote (Score:1)
"Me too!"
Oh, sorry.
Thought I was in USENET.
Re:vote (Score:2)
Re:vote (Score:2)
T'was a hard thing to do, definitely. (And if this had gone up sooner, and I've have seen the posts from locals who were interested, I'd have saved them out from the pile.) I thought about putting them up on Yahoo auctions, but shipping would be very difficult and expensive - the boxen themselves are small, but the monitors are monsterous. (I'm not even sure you could ship them in a standard cardboard box. If only I'd been able to get them to work with my Linux boxen...I tried but no luck.)
But the hardware isn't supported by any of the free Unices, not even NetBSD, and the OS that's on there is a beta release of Trusted HP-UX - which means that to get anything done with them you have to mess around with the MaxSix trusted networking extensions. That's a pain that outweighs any potential usefullness.
Still, they're being recycled, not just dumped - so their component molecules will yet have a chance to participate in the Great Chain of Computation.
New York? (Score:2)
Re:New York? (Score:3, Informative)
Since it sounds like you're looking to acquire old hardware rather than discard of it, check out the Rochester Hamfest at the end of next month. Info is at www.rochesterhamfest.org -- the swap meet is huge, and I've gotten tons of toys there over the years. Right up the street from RIT.
--g
Donate (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Donate (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Donate (Score:1)
Re:Donate (Score:1)
If you really want to help out your neighborhood school, donate money. Money allows schools to address what their real needs are because they actually see the pain points. For all we know, a school may have just received an incredible budget to buy new computers while being denied a budget for books.
Re:Donate (Score:2)
Re:Donate (Score:1)
Please tell me your kidding. While I'll admit a P-II might not cut it for CAD or video editing and 64MBs of ram is a little tight, they can make pretty good Linux and probably Windows boxes. Up to a couple of weeks ago my main PC was a k6 233 running Linux and it was quite usable. Almost everything that came with Mandrake 8.2 (other then some of the games) was usable. Sure it might take a couple of seconds to launch OpenOffice but it wasn't that bad. Hell, some schools still have Apple IIGS labs. Even a 486 would be an improvement.
cost benefits ratio (Score:2)
I see a problem with cost. Proper disposal of a computer in the United States normally costs between $5 and $10, compared to $1 or less in third-world countries.
Tech Trashing of Asia (Score:2)
www.ban.org [ban.org]
includes photos, a pdf version of the report, and you can even order a 23 minute video [ban.org].
Re:cost benefits ratio (Score:2)
"..I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted.."
-Lawrence Summers, Cheif economist at the World Bank, 1991
Trenton Computer Festival (Score:3, Informative)
If you want free computers (Score:4, Interesting)
We actually had one of these today.. (Score:1)
Re:Malda's Story (Score:1)
Then I take a bong hit, laugh my ass off, and start wondering why these people would suffer through reading it, even partially, every time they post it.
Then I start thinking about what would happen if those same people actually started writing their OWN stories instead, and what an incredible wealth of
Then I take another bong hit and realize that its better to reproduce this disgusing, but well written, peice than to have these brain-dead sacks of protoplasm try to form complete sentences on their own.
flea market. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:flea market. (Score:2)
Wow ... (Score:1)
I can't say how happy I am that this is now available, and in my home town no less! and its even cooler that Baltimore County got mentioned on the front page of Slashdot
-----
California Proposal (Score:1)
Buzzzzzzz (Score:2)
Yet Another Confusing Buzzword, from people too lazy to do more than stick "e" or "web" in front of some mangled, ambigious collection of syllables. Here's the real definition
"E-cycling: the inevitable, cyclical, occurance of ill-defined buzzwords formed by mindlessly attaching the letter "e" to some word or pseudo word. See websturbation."
Existing organizations (Score:1, Informative)
Here's what I know of
http://crc.org - in the SF Bay Area, recycles computers and related stuff, refurbishes whatever it can, donates it back to charity service. Giving equipment to the organization is itself a charitable donation (for which I was about to take about $2500 in donations in this years taxes).
If you are a Fremont CA resident, BFI operates a drop-off center on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 8am-4pm. There's a $10 fee for dropping anything off. They accept limited types of equipment (personal computer, portable TV, console TV, plugin stereo systems). Phone is 510-657-3500.
The Recyclery, at the Newby Island Landfill, this is at the I-880/Dixon Landing Road exit, the place where there's a big BFI landfill. They take stuff the Fremont dropoff center will not take. THere's a fee, and they're open mon-sat. Phone is 408-262-1401
- David
Philadelphia & Nationwide (Score:1, Insightful)
Nationally (Internationally, actually), there is the Share the Technology [sharetechnology.org] site which has a great database setup for registering materials available to give away or wanted (primarily by non-profit organizations/NGO's.)
Then, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA... there is what is known as, well, actually there are SEVERAL efforts. I represent one called the Please Take M.E. [pleasetake.org] (M.E.=Materials Exchange) which is a co-operative membership unwanted materials exchange run under the wing of a non-profit charitable organization called CARP, the Creative Arts Resource Project [pleasetake.org] which accepts unwanted materials of MANY different kinds.
CARP [pleasetake.org] is also involved in a collective which is known as the Philadelphia Reuse Collaborative which is an organization of organizations that include a number of organizations that recycle/reuse old computing equipment, give it away, etc.
CARP [pleasetake.org] is ramping up activity majorly right now, and is actively seeking any potentially interested parties, especially in getting the word out to science teachers, art teachers, and hobbyists of all the fun geek and nerd kinds.. robotics, electronics, etc etc etc. so please get in contact or pass on the word to anybody in the region you think may be interested. If you dream of being SRL, Negativland, or on Robot Wars, Junkyard Wars, etc. then you should get involved with CARP.
AND if that doesn't sell you enough, then how about the fact that pleasetake.org is currently hosted on slackware.com? It's gotta be cool. :D
http://www.recycle.net/ (Score:1)
and if anyone wants 14" monitors or 3/486's contact me. free except for shipping.
The idea is welcome everywhere... (Score:1)
I think there's something to be learned elsewhere as well. So far, if I want to get rid of for example monitors that I don't have time or skill to fix, I have to either pay 5 euros a piece to get them into some place that strips them into pieces and dumps them away - or hope that someone will take them for free and make use of them.
The thing is - I figure any country with at least some history in computers and nerds(wait, isn't that almost every country) needs some place that manages this. The reasons are obvious and it seems to me that it wouldn't be a huge waste of money and it might be a nice step to enviromentalism.
I'd like to see the people working in these kinds of places to include a few with some hardware knowledge...
"Wanted: geek to play around with second hand hardware. Benefits: all the old skool junk you can carry"
The end result would be larger towns having a large hall somewhere at the edge of town where rents are cheap, with a lot of hardware stuff in some sorts of categories. Maybe a few trucks to drive around the country across smaller places, gathering stuff now and then. Some of it will be reused by people wanting to play with stuff. Perhaps the staff might work to fix some things that could be sold for cheap or donated to some place that needs them, like poor countries, schools, clubs etc. Of course some would go to waste, but properly recycled.
The key thing is - don't just gather the materials, gather the potential uses as well. For example, a 486 or even an old pentium might be useless for most places, but consider the geeky uses for such things, consider places that don't have any computers. Value in dollars or euros? Little. Value in practical use? Large to very large.
Ship it to Chicago (Score:3, Informative)
They have an automated shredding and separation system for electronics. Such systems have been around for a while. A combination of grinders, screens, AC and DC magnets, cyclones, and float tanks separates out ferrous metals, nonferrous metals, dense plastics, and low-density plastics. Once separated, the metals have some value, the high-density plastics have some marginal value, and what's left is no worse than household waste.
CRT recycling is still a problem. There are very few plants that can cut up a CRT and recover the leaded glass for use in making new CRTs.
Re:Ship it to Chicago (Score:1)
Misleading Title (Score:2)
Recycling in my apartment building (Score:2)
I picked up a moniter and a nice keyboard a few months ago. They go well with the 486/66 that work was throwing out a couple years ago. (Actually I picked up two of them.)
Last week there was an Epson printer, but I was in a hurry, and didn't have time to look at it. I might have taken it, and replaced it with my HP Deskjet 500. :^)
I'm hoping for a 17" monitor next!
Not if you're looking for a police record (Score:2)
Be careful if you decide to root through the recycling center's collection of old stuff. Many municipalities consider the property their own, making it a criminal act to pilfer from the recycle piles. My own town refuses to let you walk off with recylced computer junk due to hazardous waste laws: It would be like letting you browse through all the discarded pesticides and chemicals, picking the ones you want to take home with you.
Abuse of the term 'eCycling' (Score:2)
What about cases? (Score:2)
What kind of places would take them?
-prator
Just what do they mean by "recycling"? (Score:2)
Cary (Score:2)
response (Score:1)
PDP-11s And PDP-8s Go To Me, Please (Score:2)
Care MUST be taken (Score:2)
Atlanta Area Computer Recycling (Score:1)