Low Impact

I finally got rid of 2 old computers today that had been sitting under my desk since around the year 2000. What finally lead to me doing something about them was a computer recycling day hosted by the Australian National University, and Dell.

I only found about it on the day, so I threw the 2 computers into the boot, and went off to the nominated place. It was all very well organised - a friendly face directed me in to a course marked out with witches hats, some people opened my car boot and took out the old PCs, checked that was all, and I drove off. Around 3 minutes, tops! They were doing a thriving trade - there was a big pile of components such as PCs and monitors already there, along with a forklift driver maneuvering pallets around.

Recycling computers is actually a big deal. Computers have become commodity items, and some homes turn over their computers every year. Not only does a lot of energy go into manufacturing a PC, but the motherboards are full of nasty elements like heavy metals - if you just throw your old computer into landfill, those toxic substances can leach out into the environment. By recycling the components, not only are those toxic elements prevented from leaking into the environment, but it can reduce the environmental cost of manufacturing the next PC - its less impact on the environment to extract copper, for example, from a computer motherboard than to dig it out of the ground and refine the ore!

This event was a one-off to raise awareness of the recycling options. But Dell Australia (and possibly elsewhere) have an ongoing program for computer recycling which is open to all makes of computers, on a fee basis. Furthermore, they also offer to take away your old computer for recycling when you buy a new Dell PC. You can find the information on Dell Australia’s recycling program at http://www.dell.com.au/recycle.

Thumbs up Dell! Here’s hoping that the other major computer manufacturers follow in their footsteps.

Categories: environment, green, recycle