Skip to main content

The more I study this e-waste problem, the more I see the hand of runaway capitalism. Computer manufacturers must sell an ever-increasing number of new computers. Which means that reasons—or new software and operating systems— have to be created to make old ones “obsolete”. It’s a false scarcity economy that’s filling our landfills with toxic sludge and our water and air with poisonous chemicals.
in reply to Hal Pomeranz

silverwizard
silverwizard
•

@Hal Pomeranz I decided in 2021 to only ever buy used computers and phones, and... I am upset at how easy it is to feel like I have too many computers and too much computer power - it's honestly really nice.

But it makes me more and more upset and I feel your pain.

@Hal Pomeranz
in reply to silverwizard

Hal Pomeranz
Hal Pomeranz
• •
@silverwizard I got started on this because I wanted to pick up surplus computers for a project of mine. But, heaven help me, I’ve continued to monitor the surplus equipment web sites. Hundreds of 5-10 year old computers being surplussed EVERY WEEK on these sites. Most of it likely headed for landfills. What a tragedy.
@silverwizard
in reply to Hal Pomeranz

Funes
Funes
• •
what surplus sites are you looking at? Stuff like govdeals?
in reply to Funes

Hal Pomeranz
Hal Pomeranz
• •
@funes Yep. GovDeals and PublicSurplus. Between UCF, UF, and various state and county government agencies it’s never-ending.
@Funes
in reply to Hal Pomeranz

Hal Pomeranz
Hal Pomeranz
• •

The volumes of waste are just ridiculous. Orange County (Orlando and surrounding area) just put a warehouse full of stuff up for auction. 300 desktop PCs, 275 laptops, 25 pallet loads of networking gear, and much, much more. And that’s just one county this week.

You’d need a large team of people and a bag of money just to absorb and then refurb (or part out) that much equipment. And you’d need “customers” (paying or not) wanting to receive the end product.

And you would need to do that every week, all over the USA.

in reply to Hal Pomeranz

Adrian Sanabria
Adrian Sanabria
• •

I hate to add to the despair, but...

dude, do you know about disposable e-vapes? Hundreds of millions of lithium ion batteries are going into municipal landfills every year after getting recharged 2-5 times.

in reply to Bryan Whitehead

Hal Pomeranz
Hal Pomeranz
• •
@Bryan No, not usually. You have a short window to schedule and go and inspect in person if you want. But there’s going to be a bunch of hardware that’s 5-12 years old (5th and 6th gen Intel stuff mostly—though some as recent as 10th gen) that works but the hard drives/SSDs have been removed.
@Bryan Whitehead
in reply to Hal Pomeranz

Kai Ming McK
Kai Ming McK
• •
Especially because computers have evolved to the point where they can be made quite small and quite durable, while their power is now more than enough for all ordinary personal uses. Everyone could have a computer the size of paperback book that would last for fifteen years.
in reply to Hal Pomeranz

Infosec V'ger
Infosec V'ger
• •
See also current win10-11 situation. Will create lots of ewaste for negligible benefits to users.
in reply to Infosec V'ger

Hal Pomeranz
Hal Pomeranz
• •
@andrewdwilliams Yep. Again creating the problem just to sell new hardware that nobody really needs.
@Infosec V'ger
⇧