I haven’t talked much lately about Sustainability and my strong feelings about the environment. One of my “conflicts” in terms of working with computers is that throwing out old equipment is hazardous to the environment, leaching nasties such as cadmium, lead and mercury into the groundwater. Though PA has mandated electronics recycling, there are no programs in place to accomplish this. So, what do you do with the stuff?

I did some research into it. There are a bunch of outfits locally who will take my old stuff and “recycle” it for a fee, but further research has shown me that most of them are undesirable to work with since they’re just shipping the stuff overseas, usually to China, and just polluting there instead of here. The Chinese outfits who buy the stuff are grabbing out some of the more readily accessible elements and just dumping whatever they don’t or can’t use. They’re also making Chinese workers very ill in the process, since there are few environmental safeguards in place for the workers.

Well, I’m still looking for a way to recycle properly in the Delaware Valley, but if you’re in Europe there’s already a program set up. Even better, the equipment is being put to use by schools and social service organizations in developing countries, so it’s a win-win situation. It’s called Computer-Aid.org. Now, the one question they’re not answering here is what happens to the stuff after the third worlders get through with it, but at least it’s getting a longer use-life.

One can only hope that this issue will someday be resolved. Too bad it’s so expensive to get stuff off of the earth’s surface . . .

Technorati Tags: Sustainability, Environment, Computer Recycling

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 at 12:43 pm and is filed under Sustainability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.