Computers, Society, and Nature

For those of you in Montreal: the fire stations are accepting no-longer-chargeable rechargeable batteries for disposal. This includes cellphone batteries and, I presume, computer batteries. Collection boxes are located outside the stations and they ask that you ensure they are the rechargeable kind and not regular batteries. I don’t know how they are disposing of the batteries but one hopes it’s as ecological friendly as possible.

Out comes a report that the print magazine industry is pushing hard at its advertisers by launching

a $40-million, three-year campaign … to win advertisers and try to convince them that magazines, which have existed in the United States for nearly 250 years, are likely to be here for the next 250, come what may. At the same time, the newspaper industry has begun a multimillion-dollar, three-year campaign to make over its image in the eyes of advertisers.

The make over apparently is needed because, compared to the Internet, magazines are viewed as old-fashioned. What the article doesn’t point out is the synergy between print and Internet, where traditional magazines like Ladies Home Journal offer online versions that include interactive elements like games and message boards.

Does anyone read print magazines anymore and why?

The Guardian newspaper reports that the UK Environment Agency is investigating a recycling company as containers of garbage mislabelled as clean recyclable paper are being shipped back to Britain. This follows up on an earlier post when the contaminated recyclable paper was first discovered on its way to the developing world.

Thanks, Prof. Badami, for noting the story.

With a nod to Liam, who made our only other post about toilets, here’s a report from yesterday on the announcement for the iPotty dock:

Apple Japan announces, pulls iPotty dock

Early Friday morning, the Japanese web site of Apple Computer briefly hosted pages depicting an previously unannounced iPod peripheral called “iPotty” (JPY 104,970, approx. $1000), a beige-and-white electric toilet seat featuring an integrated iPod dock on its right side. Presumably intended only for the domestic Japanese marketplace, iPotty promises to deliver music playback and an “optional scent eliminator” to drown out embarrassing bathroom sounds and smells. Availability is listed at 1-3 weeks, indicating an imminent release.

The people at No Computer Should Go To Waste are offering a city-wide (Montreal, QC, that is) disposal of computers. It’s on Saturday, April 16. Check the site for location, although I believe it’s the recycling station at Jarry.

Good news. First, the event organizers promise that computers will not be disposed of in landfills. Nor will they be sent to China or Mexico. Second, your computer could be reused as well if it meets the following conditions:

– If your computer is less than 5 years old and in working order

– The System must have Hard Drive, Monitor, Keyboard, & Mouse [but they’ll also take laptops].

– The Software License Agreements should be taped to the CPU box for installed software.

– YOU are responsible for removal of all personal information in the hard drive.

– Hardware needing repair is considered on a case-by-case basis.

You have to register your computer on the site to be eligible for the reuse.

If you run a nonprofit in the Montreal area, you could also get one of these computers free.

On April 16, as an added bonus, the people who are organizing the recycling event are promising music , entertainment , take-away green goodies and valuable awards for volunteers at the event.

From the Guardian newspaper:

More than 1,000 tonnes of contaminated household refuse disguised as waste paper on its way to be recycled in China is to be sent back to Britain after being intercepted in the Netherlands.

Dutch environment ministry officials believe that British refuse is being systematically dumped in poor countries via the port of Rotterdam, the largest container port in Europe. In one of the biggest international scams uncovered in years, they say waste companies across Europe are colluding to avoid paying escalating landfill and recycling charges.

What next? Garbage stuffed into computer monitors sent to be recycled?

Thanks to Louis-Philip for catching this.

From Madhav Badami, our professor of Urban Planning and Environment

Greetings all,

This is my first blog post ever. Actually, I was meaning to blog a couple of weeks ago, in response to the BBC news item on e-waste in the city of Bangalore in India. Unfortunately, I was laid low by an attack of acute tendonitis, and I have been back on my feet only the last three days (it is like being born again, I can tell you).

Before I proceed, I wish to declare my motivations for blogging on this particular topic. First of all, I have a strong academic interest in policy-making for waste minimization; and I am particularly concerned about the growing waste problem in low-income countries such as India (I will get to why in a bit). Secondly, and at least as importantly, I spent some of my best years living and working in Bangalore. So, this is a city I care about. Bangalore is situated on the Deccan Plateau in the south of India, and because of its altitude, enjoys year-round temperatures that are significantly lower than in the surrounding plains. I have been visiting the city ever since the 1970s, and I can even now recall how very beautiful it was then — lots of greenery, broad sidewalks, and very clean (unlike many other Indian cities). And although it has deteriorated considerably because of rapid urbanization in the last couple of decades, it is even now considered to be India’s Garden City.

Now, about the changing waste situation in India. India began liberalizing its economy in the early 1990s, and ever since then, urban incomes and consumption have increased dramatically. Not only has consumption increased, the kinds of things that are consumed (and discarded) have changed as well. For example, electric household appliance use has grown by leaps and bounds (and so has energy consumption). Western fast foods, with all that they entail, have become popular, and the amount of packaging has increased. And so, just as consumption has changed (both in terms of quantity and quality), so also has waste. Waste in Indian cities used to be predominantly organic (food, yard wastes, and so forth), with very little non bio-degradable stuff, such as plastics. Recycling rates were very high, and the bulk of the recycling was done informally. For example, a chap would come to our house (and every other house in the neighbourhood) once every two weeks or so, on a bicycle, and pay to take away all the newspapers, and any bottles and cans that might have collected since his last visit. The newsprint would be (and still is) converted into packets for groceries, vegetables, and snacks. Very little was allowed to go waste. The only thing that was thrown away was food leftovers. Incidentally, most Indian households use stainless steel utensils and cutlery that are handed down from generation to generation (we do too, in Montreal, and many of our stainless-steel vessels come from my wife’s and my parents). And milk was typically collected in a stainless vessel in the morning, from the local dispenser (earlier, when I was a child, it used to be brought home by the local milkman, on his bicycle. )

But with the rampant consumerism in the 1990s, the amount of waste generated has increased, and the composition of waste has changed, as discussed. The share of non-biodegradable materials, and materials that either cannot be recycled or are very difficult to recycle, and hazardous wastes in the waste stream has increased significantly. Enter the computer industry. Simultaneously with liberalization in the early 1990s, the computer software industry started booming, mainly in Bangalore; this was in large part because over the past four or five decades since India gained independence, Bangalore had been the centre of several manufacturing and hi-tech industries (earth moving machinery, aircraft, electronics and telecommunications, precision equipment, and so forth), and the centre of higher education in the sciences. As the computer industry in Bangalore grew, it began to attract many major foreign multi-national computer firms (IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Oracle, to name a few). The city also became the headquarters of giant home-grown multi-nationals such as Infosys and Wipro. So much so that Bangalore has come to be known as India’s Silicon Valley. With this of course has come the problem of computer wastes that the BBC article talks about.

It is bad enough that municipal waste has been increasing dramatically in Bangalore and other Indian cities. These cities were already finding it difficult to cope, given the lack of infrastructure for waste collection and safe disposal. But the growth in computer wastes, and wastes from, for example, discarded mobile phones — it is estimated that two million units are being added every month, month after month, in India — has made a difficult problem significantly worse; and to add insult to injury, a lot of the computers used by people like us in the West end up more often than not in South Asia (and China), after we are done with them. All in all, a waste crisis. This is because many of the wastes from computers, mobile phones and other electrical appliances are hazardous, and if not treated and disposed of properly, can leach into groundwater and travel up the food chain.

As long as consumption levels were low, and the bulk of the waste was bio-degradable, the fact that infrastructure was inadequate was not a problem. But as the waste stream has become more complex and dangerous, more and more sophisticated and expensive technological systems and regulatory regimes are required to collect, treat and safely dispose of waste (note that sanitary landfills, for example, involve millions of dollars to construct, operate and maintain). Indian cities, given their meagre resources and multiple urgent priorities, simply do not have the wherewithal to put in place such measures. Also, as long as consumption levels were low, the population of Indian cities was not a serious problem. But just imagine the situation when you have 10-15 million people (as you do in some Indian cities), a rapidly growing number of whom are beginning to consume like North Americans, but with nowhere near the ability of North American cities to deal with the waste generated.

I would like to close with this one final point. The advent of the computer and software industry in Bangalore and other Indian cities has undoubtedly produced many socio-economic benefits — among other things, it has created tens of thousands of high-paying jobs, and generated vast revenues to the exchequer by way of corporate taxes, and billions of dollars of foreign exchange reserves. At the same time, it is causing negative environmental impacts, of which computer wastes are only one. With the growing incomes has come dramatically increased motor vehicle ownership and use, causing major traffic congestion and air pollution, and severely straining the already inadequate road infrastructure. And many low income people have been squeezed out of the land markets within the city, and have had to locate in the periphery, in areas not well served by transit, as real estate values and rents have sky-rocketed (it would be interesting to consider if a manufacturing industry with similar employment levels as the computer industry and located in the outskirts, would have had this effect).

As we discussed in class, one of the environmental promises from the new information economy is the emergence of virtual goods. Bill Mitchell calls it “dematerialization”. We will increasingly read e-books instead of paper books and listen to mp3s instead of buying difficult-to-decompose compact discs.

Feel great that you got an iPod and are therefore helping the planet? Check out the latest offering from the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition: From ipod to iwaste: trash in your pocket. Why are we targetting Apple?. Maybe dematerialization isn’t the solution to environmental degradation it’s sold to be.

Feel guilty yet? (Paraphrasing Charleton Heston, “Take my iPod? When you pry it from my cold, dead hands!”)

Via Slashdot I see that the company BatMax (i.e., battery maximization and not something to do with Batman as I originally thought) has announced the development of a nanoceramic to extend the life of rechargable batteries in e-devices. The nanoceramic sheet simply attaches to the back of rechargable batteries used in cellphones, pdas, mp3 players, etc.

Batmax does have an environment statement. Whether this ends up being more environmentally friendly or not is difficult to determine. If the technology is true to its advertising, it will reduce the charging time and the need for charging, therefore reducing electricity consumption. It will delay the purchase of new batteries, thus reducing the number of batteries disposed of and the toxic leachates in landfills. However, the extent of chemicals used in the production of these nanoceramics remains an unanswered question.

(For further information on nanotechnology, the technology used to create the nanoceramic, check out the US National Nanotechnology Initiative .)