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Classifieds

Issue date: June 09, 2000

Pressing the delete button

By Megan Lindow

These days, computer, software and semiconductor companies do their best to get consumers and employers to update their systems as quickly as the manufacturers churn out new products.

The problem is, there are no provisions for the disposal of the old monitors, circuit boards and hard drives. And, as environmentalists note, these components contain more than 1,000 different materials, many of which are toxic. Lead, mercury, phosphorus and plastic additives are examples.

Gold, silver, copper, platinum and palladium, which may not be toxic but are valuable, are in there too.

According to the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, an organization that monitors the environmental impacts of high-tech industries, the average 60-pound desktop computer contains nearly four pounds of lead and 14 pounds of environmentally harmful plastics, including toxic, flame-retardant polyvinyl chlorides (PVCs) and polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDEs).

The presence of toxics in computers is generating concern for environmentalists and city officials alike, who worry that the shortening lifespan of computers, paired with increasing consumer demand for them, will clog our landfills with toxic-heavy electronic waste.

The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition predicts that the average lifespan of a computer will fall to two years by 2005, a two- to four-year decrease from 1997.

It is also estimated that 315 million computers will become obsolete by 2004. This translates to 1.2 billion pounds of lead, 2 million pounds of cadmium, 400,000 pounds of mercury and more than 4 billion pounds of plastic.

People like Ted Smith, founder of the coalition, hope these materials won't continue to end up in landfills, where they could leak into soil and contaminate drinking water.

Smith said the rapid accumulation of computers is a particular problem in communities where general affluence, coupled with the prevalence of high tech, make people more likely to replace computers and other high-tech gadgetry as they become obsolete.

"The digerati are concentrated here in excessive numbers," Smith said. "But I don't think a lot of these people want to throw these things out. If they could find another useful life (for their electronics), they'd do it."

So in many cities, including Mountain View, the old conservation adage applies: reduce, reuse, recycle.

The mounting piles of electronic scrap are also a concern to city officials because state law requires municipalities to reduce their waste by 50 percent between 1994 and this year.

The city of Mountain View recycles its obsolete computer hardware. According to recycling coordinator Papia Banerjee, computers that can still be used are first offered to the local schools. The rest are auctioned off through a private auction house. If those efforts prove unsuccessful, nonprofit organizations and businesses in the Bay Area that recycle used equipment are contacted.

Because of more stringent environmental standards and growing concern about keeping discarded equipment out of the wrong hands, large companies are seeking means of recycling their electronic waste, and thus spawning a whole industry of electronic scrap recyclers.

However, such methods of disposal have not yet trickled down to common folks with unwanted old Pentiums from the mid-1990s in their garages. Last year the National Safety Council's Environmental Health Center reported that computer recycling is on the rise among large corporations but is uncommon among small businesses and individuals. The study estimated that only six percent of computers were recycled in 1998.

"From the point where John Smith has a computer in his garage, it's just a matter of a phone call, yet people are throwing the stuff into the weekly garbage," said Robert Fox, founder of Fox Electronics, a scrap recycler in San Jose. Fox added that according to the Institute for Scrap Recycling, 150 million computers will go into landfills by 2004 because people don't know about services like his.

Fox is one of the pioneers of a growing, competitive industry. He estimates he makes about $20 per computer -- from both the re-marketable components salvaged from the computer's innards and the leftover scrap metals and plastics he sells in bulk to recyclers.

Resource Area for Teachers (RAFT), a nonprofit organization, operates a warehouse full of old computers and other reusable materials that teachers can buy for their classrooms at reduced rates (a salvaged Pentium in working order costs $50).

RAFT receives hundreds of computers each month, mostly donated by large corporations like Hewlett-Packard and 3-Com, said Director Mary Simon, a former teacher. But before you dust off your old machine to bring in, keep in mind that they don't take anything less advanced than a Pentium.

Currently, if a resident of Mountain View puts a broken computer in the trash, it goes to the Sunnyvale Garbage Transfer Station, where recyclable materials such as paper and metals are extracted from the waste pile. But recycling is not always the solution one might think it is.

According to Debbie Sargent at the Transfer Station, only select precious metals within the computer, such as the traces of gold, silver and copper found in the computer circuit boards, are recycled. The 14 pounds of plastics still end up in the landfill, she said.

"A lot of people think that recycling is the complete answer, and it's not," said Ted Smith. "A lot of the recycling is not very environmentally friendly. An awful lot of components in computers are not valuable in terms of taking it apart and trying to salvage something."

But ordinary people often have trouble finding operations that will recycle just one computer, as most operations are set up to deal with electronics by the truckload because it's more cost-effective. A ton of scrap metal sells for between $15 and $20 per ton.

Fox Electronics will take computers from individuals, but charges 75 cents per pound for monitors because of the hazardous waste inside them.

The current problem is that there is no incentive to recycle the hazardous wastes such as monitors and plastics, particularly in consumer electronics, Smith said. He argues that the companies that produce computers and other electronic gadgetry should ultimately be made responsible for their "end-of-life management."

This idea is echoed by Banerjee and the city as well. Recently hosting a conference on electronic recycling sponsored by the California Resource Recovery Organization, the city brought together staff, computer industry representatives and recycling experts from across the state and beyond to learn about how other municipalities handle their recycling efforts.

"We wanted to emphasize making computer recycling a component of computer manufacturing," said Banerjee "so that companies would think about how their product can be manufactured in a way that makes it easier to recycle later on."

According to Banerjee, representatives from Germany and France reported that Germany has a green dot law, which makes the company responsible for the life of the computer. Thus it is in their best interests to be environmentally conscious in the packaging, to use refurbished materials and to salvage materials when computers are disassembled.

Banerjee did admit, however, that the consensus at the conference was that there is not a lot a city can do. Because the economy is so competitive and market-driven, manufacturers and consumers are not used to thinking green at the front end. Therefore, the best way to resolve the issue could be through federal legislation. Whether businesses will be supportive of this kind of legislation remains to be seen, she said.

In the meantime, Banerjee describes her approach now as "more educational, to let businesses know there are avenues for them to recycle, and to know that it's cost-effective."