recycling Re: throw away (was "Re: Datacenter tools?")

Sat Jun 12 08:45:20 PDT 2004

On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 05:24:34PM -0700, Alvin Oga wrote:

> 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
> 
> 	- they'd probably want the wires to get the copper out of it
[...]

Actually, there are plenty of interesting materials, especially the
gold, but in such small quantities that it is only cost-effective for
very poor people to extract them.  So they get shipped way the heck out
to the middle of nowhere, to be disassembled with mallets and other
inexpensive tools.  Other trace amounts of lead and mercury leak out in
the process and contaminate the groundwater, helping to kill the people
who are disassembling your PCs for the lowest price.

Or, I read something like that.

So, try to get some info on who is going to be doing the recycling how.
There are plenty of, say, poor African countries who could probably use
your machines, but shipping to Africa is more expensive, because they
are not sending us huge container ships full of manufactured goods that
need to be sent back.

Sincerely,
-danny