recycling

[Guy B. Purcell]

[* Recasting the subject a little to keep it more clean/clear.  -Guy *]

On Jun 11, 2004, at 17:24, Alvin Oga wrote:

> On Wed, 9 Jun 2004, Jeff With The Big Yellow Suit wrote:
>
>>> I think it's our responsibility, as the ones who replace the
>>> failed components, to do our level best to get this
>>> stuff recycled.
>>
>> An acquaintance of mine runs a junkyard.   His real money maker
>> is old electronics.  He sells to them in bulk to Chinese firms which
>> extract the precious metals.
>
> that's a lot of junk they'd have to ship back to get back some $$$
> 	- presumably they just want the fingers of the pci cards
> 	to get the gold out of it

Actually, they extract trace amounts of all sorts of stuff from 
machines that can't be reused--including the gold, but also lead, 
nickel, & zinc, to name the few I know of for sure.

Someone else (sorry I've forgotten whom & have deleted the message 
already) brought up the very good point that much of this reclamation 
gets done by poor peoples in other countries without proper extraction 
facilities--a health hazard.  While I don't have a reference, I recall 
seeing a documentary about just this same thing, and I sympathize with 
those people; however, I see fixing this problem as something that will 
have to happen in version 1.1 of our tech. recycling program:  the 
first thing to do here in version 1.0 is just to get the stuff to be 
recycled in the first place--get people thinking about not just tossing 
it in the landfills.

> - for local recycling ...
> 	- monitors is a pain in the butt to recycle ... though
> 	bfi and others seem to take it away and dump at the local
> 	dump site ( not a good thing )

No, they don't _if_ you don't just toss 'em in the dumpster with the 
real garbage.  Monitors (and other tech. equipment) turned in for 
recycling get recycled; those placed in dumpsters don't, and end up in 
our landfills.

> 	- ups batteries ... more of a pain to properly get rid of

Again, BFI recycles these along with all other batteries (so if your 
company lacks a recycling bin for all those pager, cell phone, and so 
on batteries, get/make one--even if it's just a cardboard box sitting 
on your desk that everyone knows about, like mine).

> - recycling 386/486/pentium, 500MB, 1GB disks are good to do too
> 	( am interested in helping out
>
> 	- problem is what to do or where to send the refurb'd boxes

[...and other examples...]

Technically, you're talking about "reusing" here & not "recycling"--a 
necessary distinction in these times of (elementary) environmental 
focus.  Reusing is much better, if it's possible to do:  no energy gets 
wasted in remanufacturing.  But remember, this thread originated from 
the mention of failed components which, by definition, aren't reusable.

-Guy