The Green Penguin - Where Does Your E-Waste Go? (Linux Journal) [LWN.net]

Linux Journal takes a look at the E-Stewards certification program for electronic waste recyclers. "That old CRT monitor the size of a small fridge. The original Apple Newton that kicked the bucket and never woke up. The early-vintage musty VA Linux box - what happens to all of this e-junk after it, if ever, leaves your basement? Ideally e-junk lands at a reputable e-recycler with the equipment to safely recycle and/or dispose of these items that are very difficult to process. What happens frequently is that a less-than-reputable outfit will pack your e-junk onto a container and ship it off to a developing country with lax environmental and labor laws, where it will wreak havoc on the environment and poor people."

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The Green Penguin - Where Does Your E-Waste Go? (Linux Journal)

Posted Nov 19, 2008 18:26 UTC (Wed) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

it's really hard to tell the difference between "pack your e-junk onto a container and ship it off to a developing country with lax environmental and labor laws, where it will wreak havoc on the environment and poor people" and "pack your e-junk into a container and ship it off to a developing country where it gets plugged in and used" without tracking down the end destination of everything (and even more complicated when you consider that using old systems for very long involves making one usable system out of several)

The Green Penguin - Where Does Your E-Waste Go? (Linux Journal)

Posted Nov 19, 2008 18:56 UTC (Wed) by aorth (subscriber, #55260) [Link]

You're right, but I'm not sure if you're implying that this turns into an
act of "good will" somehow. Anyways, the problem is that, while
some African kid plugging in your 'donated' computer may make you feel less
guilty, you're just shifting the burden of disposal to them; the only
difference is that now the land fill is in Africa.

I work in a "developing country" (Kenya) teaching IT, and our school's
computers are only around five years old but they're so dilapidated and I'm
worried about how we'll dispose of them. I joke with my colleagues
that we'll just send them to some poor kids in Africa.

It's only funny for a few laughs and then you realize it's like playing
hot potato... you don't want to be the poor sucker holding the e-waste when
the government starts fining you for owning that stuff or when it costs a
fortune to get rid of it.

Just some food for thought... now I'll go back to worrying about how to get
rid of all these broken CRTs, hard drives, network cards, motherboards...

The Green Penguin - Where Does Your E-Waste Go? (Linux Journal)

Posted Nov 20, 2008 20:28 UTC (Thu) by jpmcc (guest, #2452) [Link]

Noémi Mercier wrote a prize-winning exposé of IT's killing fields in Québec Science magazine, September 2007, which should be compulsory reading for all geeks who must have the latest electronic gadget. There's an abstract on-line; if you don't read French, there's a very short summary in my blog.