Being Digital
Nicholas Negroponte
ISBN: 0340649305
There has been a revolution going on in information technology for more than a decade. Science fiction has often imagined a future where virtually every aspect of life is digitalized, that is, many products are changed from atoms to bits. For a realistic example of this concept, think about the music industry; in the past, music was recorded on tapes, records, and then as digital strands of information on compact discs. In all of these cases, a product had to be made from atoms. These atoms were then shipped to stores where consumers purchased them. Today, music is sent to customers not as atoms but as bits of information; the same is true of many books and especially of newspaper and media in general. One can theorize pretty easily the trend that will continue over the course of the twenty-first century; will we get to the Jetson's-type food dispensers? The book by Negroponte postulates that information that is transmitted electronically does not need resources to exist; but this simply is not true. Huge amounts of energy are needed to cool servers and power the internet in order to be able to ‘ship’ digital data. The bit, though, can be transmitted virtually instantly across the planet at a cost of only what it takes to power a computer; time and resources are conserved in a system that does not rely on an actual, physical world based upon the structure of the atom. The manufacturing-transportation-consumption loop is in the process of being transformed. With more and more people entering this digital world, though, a larger problem is emerging, and it is with the portal itself.
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We are currently caught in a digital consumption cycle that is choking the planet in e-waste. E-waste stands for electronic waste and is also referred to as waste electrical and electronic equipment or WEEE in Europe. While some e-waste is considered a commodity, most of it exists in a sort of garbage limbo-land. The unwanted electrical equipment is too costly to break down into its original material, and it is too toxic to be buried in most domestic landfills.
Most computers are engineered to operate optimally for only a few years. New technology usually replaces the old before it has a chance to even gather dust. In the case of the new iPhone, the product upgrade time frame was more like six months. This innovation loop provides an excellent source of continuous revenue for companies, but the practice of releasing a new product every few years is causing an environmental catastrophe on the other side of the world.
In addition to shortsighted innovation lifecycles, poor product integration design is compounding the problem of e-waste. Apple, Dell, IBM, Compaq, Microsoft, (the list goes on and on) all have their own operating systems with components and peripherals that are unique only to their own brand. In order to get one piece of equipment to work with the hard drive or monitor, countless cords, jacks, ribbons, cards, etc… have to be bought by the customer. When the customer buys a different brand in an upgrade, all of the peripheral material needs to be replaced also. Most people have a drawer or box in their house filled to the brim with electrical components for a computer that is no longer being used. More and more these days, people are beginning to clean out those drawers and boxes, and the e-waste is being disposed of in some pretty irresponsible ways.
A significant amount of that e-waste is being shipped from America to parts of rural Asia. Many of the computer components that are manufactured in Asia are shipped to America across the ocean in cargo ships, the components are assembled and used here for a few years before new technology renders them inefficient, then they are shipped back across the ocean on cargo ships where they sit in huge piles on rural farmers’ land and are mined for metals and poison the earth.
Wealthier nations like the U.S. tend to have more strict environmental regulations than do poorer ones. Computers tend to have many toxic chemicals designed into them, so deconstructing the humongous mounds of e-waste ultimately releases dangerous levels of lead, mercury, and cadmium into the ground and ultimately into the rivers and streams. American landfills will not accept e-waste because of the potential hazards, but a poor Indian or Chinese farmer will take it at $60 per ton and just stockpile it on their land.
In 1994 at the United Nations, a multilateral treaty called the Basel Convention was agreed upon in order to ‘lay down obligations with regard to ensuring that the transboundary movement of waste’ and ‘to control at the international level the transboundary movement and disposal of wastes that are hazardous for human health and the environment.’ (UN) Why then is e-waste with hazardous material being shipped from a more developed nation like America to less developed ones like India and China? The problem will only worsen with every new innovation that Apple, Dell, or Intel makes. It seems as though American businesses are in the habit of ignoring international treaties.
The European Union had already shipped six million metric tons of e-waste to West Africa before the twenty-first century even started; this was in the midst of the Basel Convention being passed in 1992. It too them ten years to pass the Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment, or WEEE, agreement that was finally put in place in Europe in 2002. It required computer manufacturers in Europe to take back their machines for free and recycle 65% of all of the materials. America does not do this yet.
In America, the public has always believed that industries need to be regulated so that the whole of society benefits equally. The recent financial crisis has shown us that without regulation oversight, free market systems can run amok and create havoc for the common ‘Joe’ on Main Street. Capitalism has a tendency to let greed go too far until it plays itself out as irresponsibility on the world’s stages.
It is only recently that Americans have begun to see that, even with many different businesses in the industry, the oil industry as a whole operates monopoly-like because of the high demand for petroleum-based products. The supply chain for virtually every product that is produced is inherently connected to accessing their resource. When so many parts of the free market system depend upon one source, even though there are many suppliers of that source, it becomes necessary for the government to step in and regulate prices and de-leverage influence because powerful industries tend to think that they can ignore international law if it is bad for business.
What we are starting to see now in the computer industry are some of the same bad habits and principles being acted out. The oil and coal industries were not in any hurry to clean up their respective acts until the public began demanding that the government hold them accountable. Even then, lobbyists were able to delay the clean-up and the enactment of health precautions taken on behalf of the general public’s safety. In fact, even today, pollution from burning fossil fuels is subsidized because if it weren't, the whole 'system' would come to a sreeching stop (this includes the digital world too!).
Without regulation, computer manufacturers are unwilling to accept the costs of either making less toxic computers or of recycling them in an environmentally friendly manner. Without regulation, hundreds of millions of obsolete computers from America will make their way to undeveloped nations to be ‘recycled’. Rules need to be created, free market systems need to be enacted to ensure that as innovation allows wealthier nations to upgrade their technology, less developed countries do not have to pay the price of giant mounds of e-waste leaking toxic chemicals poisoning their groundwater systems. This is what the Basel Convention set out to prevent.
Many computer companies advertise their recycling programs, but their ‘recycling program’ simply collects computers here in America and then ships them to rural India and China where what occurs is more like scavenging. Consumers are more than willing to drop off their e-waste product where they think they are doing the responsible thing. Once the product is taken ‘away’, the consumer forgets about it and goes on to upgrade to a newer computer that will become obsolete in another 2 years; the process has been an endless cycle for two decades now. The toxic material is beginning to pile up.
When a computer is scavenged, an average computer will yield only about $2 worth of materials such as shredded plastic, copper, or aluminum. In many undeveloped parts of the world computers and all of their peripherals are beginning to line the streets, awaiting deconstruction, or 'recycling'. In workshops, employees break apart the computers and either shred or grind large plastic pieces into smaller parts (in some places it is just burned). They snip and pry apart all of the pieces and collect the materials that will then be resold. Since computers were not manufactured to be taken apart easily, the process of 'recycling' a computer is laborious and hazardous to the health of the people doing it. It is also very costly; this is why wealthier nations are shipping their e-waste to less developed countries.
Part of the process of disassembling the computers is to pass the circuit boards through red-hot kilns or acid baths in order to dissolve the lead, silver, and other metals. The metals are harvested, but the process is not a without its side-effects. A lot of the chemicals used in the circuitry of the computer end up being rinsed away with water used in cleaning the parts, and the water ends up in the river and entering the food chain. Greenpeace recently conducted their own experiments that sampled the dust, soil, river sediment, and groundwater in some of the areas in India where e-waste recycling is currently going on, and what they found was that toxic concentrations of computer-based heavy metals were present. If the trend continues, those concentrations will only get worse.
In the United States, people simply do not know what to do with outdated computers. It is estimated, in this country, that nearly a half billion obsolete computers and their accessories all sit idle, waiting for the end of their lifecycle. While the Basel Convention at the United Nations sets the framework for how hazardous materials should be handled, we are still waiting for its enforcement. Most large computer manufacturers are struggling with the definition of responsible computer recycling. They are currently using their legal funds to argue the definition of hazardous material, so that they continue going along with the 'status quo'. Big Computer is acting like Big Oil and Big Coal, that is, they are trying to find a way around the regulations that were set up to protect the public. Is it responsible to ship toxic material in any quantity to less developed nations?
Since the U.S. government turns a blind eye to the computer industry and doesn't ban or even monitor their e-waste exports, individual states are beginning to pass their own laws separate from the federal government that create e-waste recycling regulations in line with the UN Basel Convention. These new laws hope to cut down on the corruption and smuggling of e-waste that is currently guiding the industry’s recycling program.
The problem is that people who design computers do not figure the end-use of the lifecycle of their technology into their manufacturing process. Many of these factories that assemble computers have one-way tickets for their products. Their products are like most everything else that is manufactured on the market; they are designed to be used once and then thrown away. This might work for, say, paper towels or toilet paper, but computers have toxic materials in them and do not decompose in ways that do not harm the environment around them.
A more responsible approach to electronic equipment in general in needed to ensure the safety of the groundwater supply worldwide. This is particularly true with computers because of the innovation curve associated with new technology. For only a few dollars more, computer companies can design computers that are disassembled quite easily. They can save money by developing a recycling program that reuses components, be it plastics, metals, or chemicals, but first the U.S. government needs to enforce the international regulations that are already in place.
Computer manufacturers like Dell or Apple have the potential to save money in the long run by changing the design of their computers. Of course, this kind of financial incentive is ineffective if computer manufacturers can skirt international treaties and run their recycling programs through the use of corrupt smuggling practices.
E-waste really is not an insurmountable problem, but it will become one if we don't start tackling the problem now. Computers have only been mass-produced for about two decades. If computer manufacturers simply change the design of their product to make recycling unwanted computer parts easier, then the industry will seemingly have an endless supply of material from which to build new innovations upon. The fact that many computer brands are not interchangeable is an issue that will need to be addressed in the future sometime.
While there are many businesses in the oil industry, they all make one type of gasoline that runs all cars. In the same way, computer companies need to start designing products so that software and hardware from different manufacturers work together; one computer platform for all should be the slogan. Mac and PC should be friends; they should move beyond whatever makes them think that they are not both one and the same thing...a computer.
In the future, Apple, Dell, Microsoft, IBM, Compaq…all of their products will have to function interchangeably if the world is going to be able to sustain the next one billion users that come online in the next decade. Industries have always needed to be regulated for the betterment of society, and in this case, it is becoming imperative that we do something soon regarding e-waste before we embark on the mission of connecting the whole planet in a digitalized world.
_________web recommendation
Earth 911
www.earth911.com
This website is a giant portal of information relating to everything to do with recycling. Do you have a refrigerator? A computer? Used motor oil? Not only will this site help you find a location near to where you live to recycle virtually anything, but the site also has articles and opinions on things that you don't usually think about. Going green is really the practice of going conscious. No longer can we look at 'away' as somewhere else; there are just too many of us on this planet for any 'away' place not to be someone else's home.
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