China bans toxic American computer junk

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
Date: Sun Jun 9 22:59:03 2002

  William, I hope you don't take this personally but you don't have a clue about what you're talking about!


At 08:33 PM 6/9/02 -0400, William wrote:
>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.

   Not when it's <2 microns thick and only <40% gold! Compare that to 25+ micron thickness and 85% gold used in HP and other high end equipment. The other materials used in most modern computers are of a similar LOW quality but I won't debate that now.



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.

  I guess that depends on what your idea of "extract" is. They might extract 98% of the USEFULL (ie profitable) material but LARGE amount still go to landfills and a LOT of other places were they can dump it without being caught. Hell, one of my best scrounging locations is an illegal dump. Steve Robertson, Mike Haas and a couple of other members of this list can verify that if you like. Not everything that goes there is worhtless :-)



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.

   Almost certainly but newspaper are hardly an environmental hazard. Hell, I don't THINK Aluminium cans are either even if they do linger around for the next century.


>
>Another point is that basically *all* corporate systems (from hoards of
>PeeCees to mainframes) get recycled.


  Ha, Ha, Ha, Roll on the floor laughing hysteriacally! Wipes tears from eyes.

     You don't honestly believe that do you????? Big companies sell/give their surplus to fly-by-night companies that PROMISE to recycle it but once they get it it's another story. It's no different from when numerous toxic waste producers "sold" their waste to third party companies for "proper disposal" that usually meant finding the nearest empty field and dumping it or sometimes just opening the valve and driving down the road till everything "leaked" out. Believe me, I worked for one such company for a few weeks when they were short handed. They had a contract to get ALL of the equipment from a LARGE U.S. electronics corporation whose name I can't reveal. But lets just call them M, OK? As long as M was assured that the company would ATTEMPT to recycle as much material as PRACTICLE (ie PROFITABLE) they were happy. Of course by the time that M reported on their "recycling plan" to the public, the public was assured that M was "recycling" 100% of their surplus and scrap material. All "100% recycled" mean
t to them was that 100% was transferred to someone else. In the end the whole thing collasped because there were too many back door deals going on at M and nearly all of the usefull equipment disappeared before going to the disposal company. They were left with nothing but unwanted computers, broken test equipment, TONS of scrap plastic and circuit boards and the like, all of it nearly worthless. We sold what we could, gave away piles more and dumped 99% of the computers into not only our dumpster but also those of several surrounding businesses. I got a number of HP computers from them but threw hundreds of others into the dumpsters.


Sure, they get tossed into a
>dumpster, but that dumpster does not end up at the dump - it goes to the
>scrap yard.

    Obviously you don't know anything about the scrap or trash businesses. Scrap dealers collected usable items in THEIR OWN TRUCKS, 100%* of the stuff in the dumpsters was picked up by the trash companies and went directly to the landfill.
  
   *Unless a dumpster diver got to it first but that was seldom since nothing that had any value was thrown away. We had dumpster divers but even they didn't want the stuff that we threw out.



 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.


  You OBVIOUSLY know nothing about dumps and the trash business.. (1) the drivers are usually too ignorant to know what's worth anything and much too busy to have the time to worry about it. (2) dumps don't put out anything, it ALL goes into the landfill. I once asked some dump employees if they ever took any of the stuff home and they told that they were NOT allowed to and that they had been warned that they WOULD be fired IMMEDIATELY if they were ever caught taking ANYTHING from the trash. (3) The dumps/landfills and their employees have NO connection with the scrappers. They don't even know who they are or that they even exist. I know because I questioned them when I was trying to find scrap places.


 It saves them money, even if they get nothing for it
>from the junkman, as it cuts doen on their dumping charges.,


   Wrong again. It could potenially save them money of dump fees but it would cost them a lot more for the manpower, space and equipment needed to soft the stuff. In addition, the dump trucks have compactors built into them so that they can crush and compact the trash as they collect it so that they can carry more in the truck. Go outside and watch one sometime. If they intended to sort the stuff they won't be able to compact it would they?

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


   TANTALUM? Show me some Tantalum in a modern PC! HIGH grade gold fingers (edge connctors) from circuit boards USED to be worth about 1 cent per contact. But the PC quality fingers are of a lot lower quality (and value) and in addition gold has dropped 2/3 in value in the last couple of years. NONE of the places that I've been to in the last year or two even bother to cut them off and save them any more.


>
>> 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.

   And a location with VERY lax environmental laws (NJ seems to be a favorite!) so that they can dispose of the waste that they create when they extract the worthwhile materials.



>
>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.

   You may be right up to a point. But OTOH we aren't likely to pay the cost of disassembling the stuff and removing the tubes and then disposing of them as hazardous waste and still GIVE the stuff to China are we? So will sending the other remains to China be economicly feasable? Probably not.

   Furthermore, the tubes aren't the only hazardous material in the e-scrap. Go back and read the article that started this thread. Burning wire and plastic to recover the metals creates toxic fumes, the heavy metals such as cadnium, nickel and lead pollute the land and water, manually breaking the glass and plastic is a hazard to the workers and I'm sure that there are other problems that we haven't even thought of so it looks to me like the days of dumping the stuff in China or other third world countries are over with.

   Joe
Received on Sun Jun 09 2002 - 22:59:03 BST