China bans toxic American computer junk

From: William Donzelli <aw288_at_osfn.org>
Date: Sun Jun 9 19:33:51 2002

Let me just say that I am amazed at the amount of misinformation in this
thread, here and elsewhere.

> Better metals!?!?! You MUST be kidding! The metal in 99% computers
> is about one level above slag.

The metal quality in modern computers is just fine. The only thing that
really has changed is "lightweighting" - basically less material is used.
The steel shells might be thinner, the wires may be shorter, and the gold
plate may be a fraction of what is used to be. Once the metals are
extracted from the computers, none of it is so terrible that it is waste.
Gold is gold. Mild steel (minus rust) is pretty much mild steel. Aluminum
alloy is still basically aluminum. Some of the metal is basically horrible
- but that is reused for castings and still is worth saving. Nothing has
changed, other than the amount of computers a scrapper has to junk to turn
a profit. It is tougher today, so only the bigger scrapyards are surviving.

Folks, there seems to be this idea running computers are not recycled
that well, and all sorts of them go to the landfill. This is crap, plain
and simple. Computers have the distinction of being one of the most
recycled resources out there. A good yard will extract 98 percent of the
goodies out of pallets of computer junk they get. Basically, all that is
left is wire insulation (after shredding to get the conductors),
epoxy-fibreglass (after the boards are shredded to get the copper,
solder, gold, etc.), and the glass from the tubes (tubes are falling to
flatpanels, so the problem will "correct itself"). Everything else,
plastics included, are now recycled. That is probably a better record
than soda cans or newspapers.

Another point is that basically *all* corporate systems (from hoards of
PeeCees to mainframes) get recycled. Sure, they get tossed into a
dumpster, but that dumpster does not end up at the dump - it goes to the
scrap yard. Likewise, *most* computers left on the streets (with the
exception of tubes) end up at the scrappers as well. The garbage
collection companies will generally pull out computer scrap and send it
to the scrappers. It saves them money, even if they get nothing for it
from the junkman, as it cuts doen on their dumping charges.,

> The
> recyclers that I know are currently piling up the steel since it costs
> more to haul it to a recycling center than it's worth.

This is common practive in the industry from the dawn of time - when the
value of the metal is low, stockpile. There is no mystery to this. The
steel mills still pay for scrap steel, as it still is cheaper than making
steel from ore. They will not, however, give much for it, and it needs to
be in *large* quantities.

> However
> modern PCs have just about zero metal in them and virtually no gold silver
> or copper.

Modern PeeCees have anywhere from 2 to 13 dollars worth of scrap metals,
each. Mostly gold and tantalum.

> I realize that some edge connectors have gold and there is
> copper on the circuit boards but the amounts are miniscule and certainly
> not worth the labor and chemicals to extract it.

It is worth it, but it has to be done in large quantities. An investment
in special machines (in the 120,000 dollar category) is needed to get the
extraction to a reasonable cost.

Anyway, this whole China ban thing will basically change nothing. It is
basically a way for them to keep the worthless tubes out of their scrap
system. China needs scrap. Even the cheapest consumer garbage is made out
of the stuff. They will continue to buy it in the future - just now we
can't load up the containers with tubes.

William Donzelli
aw288_at_osfn.org
Received on Sun Jun 09 2002 - 19:33:51 BST