Like many others, OU must deal with getting rid of toxic ‘e-waste’
By Corey Ryan
June 12, 2008
Building 9 on the Ohio University campus looks like a technology cemetery. The plots for dozens of computer monitors, printers and slide projectors sit on distinct shelves. Microscopes crowd the shady bottom shelves. A few copy machines stand like mausoleums.
These electronic products have been discarded from various OU departments and buildings. The Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog light on the wall hung in the old Baker Student Center food court. Some of the Gateway computers came from a program where a personal computer adorned every dorm room, a program phased out as laptops become more popular with incoming freshmen.
Even though the room in Building 9 looks like a cemetery, it is more like the island for misfit technology, because this is not the final destination for that Pentium 3 processor from the engineering school or the turquoise Apple desktop replaced in the journalism building. All of it will be gone by June 28, said Gary Dicken, OU director of Property Management and University Moving Services. An auction hosted on that day will eliminate most of the university’s e-waste.
E-waste is the term used to define electronic products requiring special disposal procedures because various components are toxic. Even though the term e-waste has not made its way into Ohio lexicon, some private and public organizations have taken up the cause effectively recycling electronics.
But why should consumers care about e-waste?
In CRT monitors and television screens, common with televisions and computers distributed before 2000, a toxic called Barium is used. Barium can cause brain swelling, muscle weakness, and damage to the heart, liver and spleen. Harmful flame retardants coat some products, which can cause damage to a developing fetus. Then there is mercury and lead.
“Both lead and mercury are neurotoxins,” said Chris Newman, an employee in the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Midwest region’s Land and Chemical Division. “Both affect brain development.”
If e-waste can cause so much health damage, then what is the federal government’s excuse for not having laws against the improper disposal of household electronics, as it does with businesses?
“There is a cost in managing electronics,” Newman said. Technology recycling programs that charge range from $5 to $20, but some programs do not charge. “Unlike an aluminum can, you can’t just cut it up. You need to have a process to get all the toxins out and the parts separated,” he explained.
The cost of managing electronics has spurred a debate over responsibility. Who should be responsible, the consumer or the producer?
Should the responsibility lie with the people of Ghana? A January 2008 National Geographic article recounts the story of the African country and the accompanying wet hardware, but the pictures, which can be found on the magazine’s Web site, make the problem even more graphic. One photo depicts a man walking through piles of flaming electrical cords. Another picture features a child holding a pile of various snake-like cords over his head.
In fact, about 80 percent of electronics collected for recycling are dumped in landfills in developing countries, according to the Electronics Take Back Coalition Web site.
The United States earns a failing grade in international toxic progress, according to a 2007 report done by the Basel Action Network, an organization concerned with environmental and economic injustices of toxic trade. Why the failing grade? Because the U.S. has yet to ratify any of the four proposed agreements.
But this could be because the federal government has left e-waste in the states’ hands.
Currently, 12 states and New York City have passed e-waste legislation that follow one of two basic models. The model used in Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and New York City calls for the producers to take responsibility by paying for collection and recycling of products. Only California differs among the states with legislation. There, consumers are charged a recycling fee at retail, which goes into a statewide recycling fund. That fee ranges from $6 to $10 per item.
Fourteen more states are expected to pass e-waste legislation. All but two of the 14 states expected to pass e-waste legislation in 2008 will require producers to take responsibility. Ohio sits in neither camp, without any impending legislation, according to the Electronics Take Back Coalition.
That does not mean organizations do not exist in Ohio for the proper disposal of e-waste.
Ohio e-Waste Recycling, located on the outskirts of Columbus on East Williams Road, opened this past January to make money recycling electronics. The company pulls apart the products, separates what it can sell and properly disposes of the toxins.
“We’re trying to incorporate some accounts,” said Daniel Anschutz, who runs the Ohio e-Waste IT department. “So far, we’re a slow work in progress, but it’s just a concept.”
People may bring any unwanted electronics to the company warehouse, or they can call to schedule a pick-up from the company. Accounts being set up are with companies or organizations in order to create a working relationship.
In their warehouse, piles of keyboards and monitors dwarf the piles at OU. The products are separated by hand before workers insert the products into a giant shredder. The shredder separates steel, precious metals and plastics. The chopped-up plastic makes an 800- to 1,000-pound bale, which then is sent to Mexico or China, Anschutz said. The copper extract and other precious metals go to a nearby company that buys scrap metal. For more complicated products, Ohio e-Waste uses a giant magnet to separate the steel pieces to be shipped off to make more electronics.
Ohio e-Waste only charges people for bringing in televisions and CRT monitors that include toxic components, because after being stripped, those need to be sent off to an EPA storage facility until proper disposal. The fee is $10.
Although a company like Ohio e-Waste gives consumers an opportunity to dispose properly of electronics, some manufacturers have cut out that middleman and developed their own recycling programs.
Dell and Toshiba are the two major computer manufacturers with free recycling, as long as the product is theirs. Dell extends its program to a consumer getting rid of any brand computer, as long as that person buys a new Dell. Apple also has a program where the company takes back any brand computer or monitor as long as the consumer is buying a new Apple computer or monitor directly from Apple, as opposed to another retailer. Apple also offers discounts for anyone who brings in an old iPod. Gateway, HP, Lenovo and Sony all take products back for a fee. OU has programs set up with Lenovo and Apple providing students with discounts on laptops.
KNOWING EXACTLY HOW many computers OU has and the make and model is impossible, Chief Information Officer Brice Bible said, because the university’s policy is to tag only moveable items that cost more than $2,500, according to the university’s Policies and Procedures Manual. Also, faculty can purchase their own office computers using what is called a p-card, a university purchasing card that delegates small-dollar purchasing power to individual university employees.
Gateway impacts OU because it is the producer of many of the dorm-oom computers, which are being removed gradually. Bible said the university does pay a fee when purchasing computers, with the manufacturer to take back the product.
Anything that cannot be sold at auction also requires a per-pound waste fee of about 38 cents, Dicken said.
In the middle of the phase to remove residence hall computers, many of those Gateways and accompanying printers have made their way to Building 9. There they are prepared for the auction block.
First, the department determines whether or not a product can be put back into circulation with another department. If not, the items go to a room to be sorted, tagged and recorded into a computer database.
“Our main charge is getting reusable computers somewhere to be used somewhere else,” Dicken said.
Sometimes, the department tries to fix broken computers, but only if the fixing is worthwhile. Regardless, all products with a memory are wiped clean.
“We just make sure no data escapes into the world and send it on out,” said Bob Dotson, who wipes hard drives clean at OU.
Then the products sit, ready for the quarterly auction when between 250 to 300 computers are sold. Two auctioneers come, and people travel from as far as Texas and Massachusetts, Dicken said. Other items, such as heavy outdoor machinery and furniture, also go on sale.
“Some people buy in bulk and try to fix and sell what they get,” Dicken said. “One guy comes and buys a bunch of the Pentium 3 processors, paints them hot pink or teal, and sells them. He told me people love them. They just buy them for e-mail, which they can do.”
Dicken said his department is top notch. He visited various campuses, looking for the best ways to handle surplus in 1996 before the term e-waste originated.
Although finding ways to reuse may not be the only way to dispose of e-waste, it is one of the best ways.
When reusing is out of the question, properly disposing of electronics is great. But the problem can be solved earlier than at the end of the product’s life cycle. A move for reducing the number of computers in offices and organizations helps to reduce the amount of e-waste at the problem’s root. For larger companies, this means getting the most ability out of servers. A server is a computer system that performs network services such as disk storage, file transfer, or any specific task it is programmed to do.
“It’s all about effectiveness,” Bible said. “That means with cost and the environment. It just depends on what story you read.”
Although Ohio does not have direct legislation on e-waste, talks of a combined data network between Ohio’s public universities would hope to maximize technology, said Bible, who has been working with CIOs at other universities to mandate the most effective approach.
The norm with servers has been to operate at a lower capacity in order to avoid crashes. But new technology can get servers working as much as 80 percent computing power, contrasted with the approximately 10 percent of older servers.
Older serves sit horizontally like pizza boxes taking up multiple rooms at large institutions and companies. But a newer server, known as a blade server, reduces space because it sits vertically like a book. Blade servers are more expensive, making it a difficult purchase for a university, like OU, facing a budget deficit.
No matter how in control a government or company may be managing its e-waste, the problem continues to develop and create new challenges. The average lifecycle for a desktop personal computer is three to four years, according to the IDC, a subsidiary of the International Data Group, a global research group.
So the vicious cycle continues. Soon the many computers in OU’s Alden library will need replacing. Everything seems to have a life cycle, even technology problems. But with e-waste, it is all about adjusting and compensating for those problems.
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