Dr. Dobb's Journal May 2007
When was it that speaking up for something clean and healthy became acrimonious? Not that I ever spoke up for anything clean and healthy, of course. Far from it, although I did mention the words "global warming" in a recent post. I should know better.
Within minutes, my mailbox started filling up with vitriol of all kinds. Jeez, you'd think I said something nice about, say, Steve Ballmer. But what's funny is what I didn't say—I didn't say that global warming was an actual fact. The point of the post was that it takes a lot of compute power to model patterns in weather and climate. Supercomputers that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration use to do so process 14-trillion calculations per second at maximum performance, and ingest more than 240-million global observations daily. That was my point.
Throwing caution to the wind (and again leaning into a left hook), I suspect global warming is real. But again, that's not my point. My point this time around is that high-tech needs to get serious about the environment. And the good news is that—to a large degree—it is.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. consumers produced about two-million tons of e-waste, discarded computers, and monitors, in 2005. Gartner guesses that perhaps 133,000 PCs are thrown away in the U.S. each day. In Europe, e-waste is increasing at three to five percent a year, almost three times faster than the total waste stream, while Asia generates an estimated 12-million tons of e-waste a year. Worldwide, discarded electronic products are from 20- to 50-million tons annually. And at the same time, the average lifespan of computers in developed countries has dropped from six years in 1997, to two years in 2005. Moreover, the lifecycle of mobile phones is less than two years in developed countries.
Fortunately, some hardware vendors are trying to turn the e-waste tide. Late last year, Dell (www.dell.com/earth) launched global recycling programs that give consumers free and convenient product recycling. The company has a goal to recover 275-million pounds of product from customers by 2009.
For its part, Hewlett-Packard (www.hp.com/go/environment) recycled more than 164-million pounds of hardware and print cartridges globally in 2006 and collected more than 2.5-million hardware devices (more than 50-million pounds) to be refurbished. To date, the company has recycled more than 920-million pounds of hardware and print cartridges
At times criticized for what appears to be a lackadaisical effort in cutting e-waste, Apple (www.apple.com/environment/recycling) recycling programs access any hardware from any manufacturer. The company's recycling programs have processed more than 21-million pounds of e-waste since 1994.
On a smaller scale, e-waste recycling aimed at reuse is catching on. In Northern California, for instance, companies like e-Cycling (www.ecycle.info) will (for a fee) pick up your e-waste and repurpose it. (Additionally, the company will wipe your hard disks and convert/transfer data from one medium to another.)
At the same time, organizations such as the Computer TakeBack Campaign (www.computertakeback.com) are "encouraging" electronics manufacturers to take responsibility for their products throughout the lifecyle. CTC wants public-policy requirements for the production/consumption of products that have circuit boards. Focusing first on PCs, the organization is working towards establishing solid waste and toxic materials policy, promoting the manufacture of cleaner computers, and curbing the flow of toxic electronic waste.
But recall what kick-started this train of thought was my post on computer modeling of weather patterns. In a recent study, Renyi Zhang, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, used satellite imagery and computer models to compile "indisputable evidence" that man-made pollution from industrial and power plants in China and India is adversely affecting the storm track in the northern hemisphere during winter. The Pacific storm track carries polluted particles to the west coasts of North America, across the U.S., and eventually, most of the world, says Zhang. He sums up by saying that "the Pacific storm track plays a crucial role in our weather, and there is no doubt at all that human activity is changing the world's weather."
So there, naysayers. Something is in the air. And if you can't believe a weatherman, who can you believe?
Jonathan Erickson
Editor-in-Chief
jerickson@ddj.com