hardware recycling

[Dave Mason]

Dave Mason wrote:
> So it behooves us to make as much use of them as possible.  That said,
> there is a point at which greater power consumption of older systems,
> and potentially worse disposal practices (although that's fairly hard
> to imagine)

Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> It's easy to imagine. There are areas of China that have destroyed the
> local water supply for generations because of the chemicals used to
> extract precious metals from circuit boards and other IT parts.

Yes.  One could argue that that is actually *our* disposal practice,
since North America and Europe have been the source of the vast majority
of those e-parts.

I agree with Evan's comment that the real cost of sending computers to
the "3rd world" hasn't been calculated, and would likely be surprising
along several vectors.

But I'll stop contributing to this thread since it's clear that a lot of
people here don't want to think of environmental costs until they have
to.  I find that sad, cuz I like to think that techies are more
responsible and aware than most, but that's my problem.

../Dave
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