Fully recyclable laptop

Do you know that your laptop will have to be discarded in the next 4 or 5 years? At the end of its useful life your laptop will start having issues. It may be with the battery, with the fan, with the screen or with the power supply unit. It is not easy to repair an old laptop. You may even attempt to repair it by visiting your nearest store to check if anything can be done to salvage your laptop. However, when you enter the store, the newer models entice you. Invariably a feeling of owning a lovely faster newer laptop takes control of your mind. The feeling is so overwhelming that you may resist it for a while till it is so over powering that the new laptop soon makes it to your home.

What did you do with your old laptop? You may have traded in your older laptop in place of the new one. However do you know that your old laptop is almost not recyclable. Laptops contain PCB boards which contain precious metals like gold that are of value to the recyclers. However given the closed system laptops that we have it is not easily to pry out the recyclable components from the laptop. Majority of laptops of the world end up in third world E-waste dismantling hubs. These hubs rip apart the components by resorting to burning,emersing in acid baths, physical hammering to get to the components. This causes release of very toxic materials into our environment. These toxins are heavy metals which enter the human body through the air we breath and the water we drink or even the food which is grown on contaminated land. The menace of unorganised E-waste dismantling contaminates and permeates our environment. There are direct linkages of improper recycling with harmful impacts on the human health and toxicity persisting in our environment to generations to come.

So this brings me to design of laptop which is completely recyclable. This design weaves the concept of extented producer responsibilty so well into the design. http://inhabitat.com/stanford-students-design-a-fully-recyclable-laptop/. Designed by students of Stanford this fully recyclable laptop is the future of laptop design. This design I believe will promote a deeper and extended relationship between your product and you. Way to go I must say towards better design!

Homegrown E-waste

One of the prime goals of Afterelife is to spread awareness of electronic waste amongst sections of society who are consumers of electronic goods. Apart from big organisations, corporates, IT firms who are bulk consumers of electronic goods, a huge amount of electronic goods are consumed by upwardly mobile group of the society. With increasing buying power this section of the society comprises of people who work for the above stated firms. Exposure of technology and travel leave them hankering for white goods and electronic goods as soon as they are launched. What remains to be seen is what happens at the end of life of gadgets/goods that we surround ourselves with. This is, what is, increasingly being referred to as 'homegrown' E-waste.

A small calculation will help us understand this problem better. Take an example of a upper middle class family of 4 today living in any urban area in this world.

Take a walk through a typical urban home will reveal the following list:

Year 2006 -

1. Laptop - 1

2. Desktop - 1

3. TVs -1

5. DVD player

6. Mobile Phone (2 numbers - 1 each and if the children are old enough add 2 more)

7. Digital camera -1 or 2 (depending on passion for photography)

Year 2011

1. Laptops 2 new 

2. Desktop 2 new(Assuming children have grown up and need to access the PC for school work)

3. TVs - LED or LCD - 2

4. Ipod - 2

5.DVD players 2(1 for home 1 for car)

6.Mobile  4(1 each for each family member)

7. Tab or Ipad

So you see the list goes on. All the goods in 2006 would be either traded in, resold(especially old TVs can be sold off) or given off to people who need it or disposed of via kabadiwala channel or the unorganised sector or retained at home as historic E-waste.

With increasing space shortage in our homes we will run out of space to hold such items at home and they will either find its way to the landfill through the municipal solid waste route or to kabadiwalas who will selll it to units that extract metals from E-waste.

This is a good time to reflect how much E-waste have you generated over a period of say 5 years. With this note we leave you now to ruminate on this. Will come back soon with a post on why you should be bothered about this waste stream.

The E-waste-Age

We are standing at the helm of a new age - the e-waste-'age’. While some would say that this period began a long time ago even before the invention of floppy disks and the microprocessor, but it is only now that the proportion of the dark side of moore's law can be widely seen, felt and for now only pondered upon.

For the uninitiated, Mr. Moore in the 1960's predicted the pace of innovation (in terms of processing speed, memory capacity etc.) in the computing industry to double every 2 years. No-no sir/ madame, he was not an astrologer but a co-founder at Intel. To his credit the law still holds steam and some still swear by it as the biggest driving force behind all technological changes.

Fifty years since and one can't help but notice the ensuing social changes due to Moore’s law/ accelerated technological innovations in the tech industry. There has been a sea of change in the social reliance tech firms (for their financial muscle), the social expectations from consumer electronics (for the convenience and comfort), the social addiction to online networking and the social intertwining through the flat world economics.

But, as is with any socio-economic overdependence, i.e. whether on subprime loans or technology or nicotine or weaponry etc., the counteracting factor loops back on the society in form of unperceived ill-effects. Hence, no different is the result of our over dependence on technology, or as I call it e-ddiction, that is adding 1000s of tonnes of electronic waste daily to the already existing heap on the face of the earth (and the orbit).

Well, yes there was a pun intended in my first statement.

Think about it.

Probably you don’t know the exact repercussions of e-waste but that’s what we are here for. Keep logging back but in the meantime bounce your thoughts of us on the ‘After-e-Life’ facebook page or just leave us a comment below.

The Redemption

The redemption

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk, quoted Thomas A Edison. All he needed was a piece of equipment and he could innovate and make something out of it. The cult of recyclers today seem to have a similar demand. Ironically, we aren’t responsible enough to give them one. Are we putting a spanner in a wheel?

We are in a growth phase in the economic cycle, obviously coupled by a spur in demand. This is a phase where companies want to innovate and intoduce latest technologies. The hind sight of this is a higher rate of obsolescence. And what do I do with the “outdated” stuff that I have lying at my house? A research says that a mobile phone company outdats it’s own piece of latest handset in a matter of 2-3 months. When steve jobs introduces a newer iTouch, there is a wave of anticipation in the masses. But there are happier faces of businessman, namely, recyclers, who see a gush of inward flow of thrown away gadgets. The innovation has no limits. The prudence is in managing the waste. The culture of recycling is a need of the hour. Especially in developing countries like India. The group of developing countries are fast outpacing the others in e-waste generation. Are we ready to be a stakeholders in this?

Swank is one such tech savvy businessman I know in electronics design, who loves to keep himself updated with the gadgets. In the business capital of India and with the huge runing business he deserves to be so. He is a responsible user. Being a part of our bikers’ group, thoughts are shared. Recently, he had a bunch of 15 computers being replaced and the dead inventory lying in his garage. He had option to sell it off in second’s market, junk market or donate. First thought is to go for lucrative option. He had a regular dealer to whom he sold his business waste. He had his own doubts but he had nobody to advise him on this. He did his part of research but with very less of outcome. How was he supposed to now the right channel or to reduce the waste itself in the process? Are we missing a link here?

It is as much a producer’s responsibility as it is of the users, to manage the waste generated.  But do the businesses have a motivation to do so?  Government is the stakeholder who can help in this. Countries have tax benefits, aids for the recycling. The e-waste guidelines are designed by the authority. The directives are elaborate, but beauty is in enforcement. Companies like Nokia, sony erricson run a campaign to take back the products. Companies like Dell offer take back and recycling at no cost. They save a lot of natural resources. What is the business motivation to do this?  Swank would like to know if we have any such initiatives in India, for hoard of white goods and e-goods he wants to dispose.  

If you have similar questions about your E-waste this is the right channel for asking questions and coming to us for your recycling queries. We would like to hear from you about what you do with your white goods and E-waste.