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Opinion
Recycling and Freecycling Information Technology
3/15/2007
I recall another old science fiction story from the 1960s, which began with a subterranean scene in London, where a troop of Boy Scouts was engaged in an exercise to find deposits of mercury that had pooled in the lowest places available. In that particular hypothesized future, mercury was scarce and valuable.
That may not be true of intact personal computers due to their relative abundance. On the other hand, more consumers and manufacturers are recognizing the dangers of the downstream toxic waste flow from abandoned computers. The work, by companies such as Hewlett Packard, to ensure that their components are recycled, may some day lead to a scarcity of older machines that are neither deep in a landfill leaking poisons nor taken apart and recycled for their internal components.
Colleges and universities are also taking a lead in finding a better way to get rid of used information technology equipment. My alma mater and employer, the University of Michigan, has a leading-edge program. There are quite a few resources on recycling in the Educause resource archives.
So, "love old things" and "hate throwing things away." Hmm. Most of us do, if we bother to think about it. That's probably one of the reasons for the new variant of eBay and Craig's List called Freecycle. As I write this, there are 3,900 local Freecycle groups: "The Freecycle Network was started in May 2003 to promote waste reduction in Tucson's downtown and help save desert landscape from being taken over by landfills. [It] provides individuals and non-profits an electronic forum to 'recycle' unwanted items. One person's trash can truly be another's treasure!"
So, what did Stan Flouride (AKA Kevin Kearney) do with his 14,000 keyboards? He removed the keys and--like many of us do with magnetic alphabet characters with our refrigerators--he used the keys to make words and phrases as he completely covered a car with them.
Did the parts of the keyboards that Stan did not use end up in a landfill somewhere? I hope not. He's quoted as saying: "I'm all about recycling." Let's make sure our computers don't end up in a landfill. We can do better than that. Just like most of us now capture and recycle the used engine oil from our cars, instead of pouring it "away" down the drain into our local watersheds, we need to take responsibility for ensuring that our personal computers don't end up poisoning someone else's water or soil.
The future is here: Many people already do this. But it's unevenly distributed: Most don't. Are you part of the future?
About the author: Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society
for College and University Planning (SCUP). You can contact him through CT's IT Trends forum by clicking here. View more articles by Terry Calhoun.
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