PC Recycling comes to Blaine County

To implement the PC recycling program, SISW (Southern Idaho Solid Waste) contracts with PC Recyclers of Idaho to service 10 drop-off locations in SISW’s seven county jurisdiction. The 10 drop-off sites are the product of two years of work by SISW.

So why should anyone bother to recycle their computer? The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality states it’s a matter of self interest. In Idaho, 90% of drinking water comes from groundwater sources. When computers and electronics are disposed of in landfills, the lead and other toxic metals they contain can leach into our groundwater over time. This poses such a health problem that some states, such as California, ban computers from landfills and collect a $6-10 tax on computer equipment to help fund a statewide electronics recycling program.

Motivations extend beyond good community health however, especially for businesses that opt to landfill their old computers. Businesses that landfill PC equipment must determine if they contain hazardous materials and if so, must document and report their disposal to government agencies. Those businesses that generate hazardous waste are governed by extra federal and state regulations – an expensive and time consuming choice when compared to free local recycling.

If you have a computer that you want to dispose of, first determine if an easy upgrade can extend its useful life. If not, and the computer still works, try calling the local school district or an area non-profit. They can often use a donation and your obsolete computer can turn into a tax deductible donation. If the computer is broken beyond repair or a donor cannot be found, bring the computer down to Ohio Gulch for recycling. If you have 10 or more computers, contact SISW at 208-432-9082 for a special pickup. Clear Creek also offers a special pickup for $35 per piece of equipment if you are too busy to avail yourself of the free drop-off site. For any questions about PC recycling, or recycling at large, call the Environmental Resource Center at 208-726-4333 or visit www.ercsv.org.
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The greening of the computer

While the specially designed XO laptop, intended for children without access to electricity, is the most environmentally friendly, other computer makers are going green in response to consumer demand

Hot off the production line, the low-power laptops designed for children in developing countries are the most environmentally friendly computer available today.

The XO laptops were created by the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which aims to make low-cost computers available to children who often don't have access to electricity. Earlier this month, the first mass produced XOs started rolling off the assembly line of a Chinese factory.

"Our customers, our kids, don't have electricity," says Mary Lou Jepsen, the OLPC initiative's chief technology officer. "We designed a laptop that can be powered by a hand crank, but to do that we had to reduce the power consumption."

In fact, the XO can be powered by a hand crank, a foot pedal, a solar panel or a string-pull device, something like the handle you pull to start a lawn mower. Five minutes of hand cranking will let a child read a book from the XO's screen for about an hour, Dr. Jepsen says. Some tasks use power faster.

The XO is especially energy-efficient for uses that don't require much processing power because its central processing unit (CPU) shuts down when not needed and wakes up again in a hundredth of a second. The screen stays on, Dr. Jepsen explains, so the computer user doesn't notice a change, but with the CPU off, the laptop uses only about a watt of power - compared with about 20 watts for a conventional laptop.

The XO's screen - which Dr. Jepsen herself designed - is another energy-saver. Like most laptop screens it uses liquid-crystal technology, but it is backlit with light-emitting diodes rather than tiny fluorescent tubes. This is both more energy-efficient and more environmentally friendly because fluorescent tubes contain mercury, Dr. Jepsen says.

With the backlight on, she says, the XO's screen uses about a watt of power, and without backlight it uses only a tenth of a watt.

Altogether, she says, an XO will use seven or eight watts of power at most, and for less demanding tasks only three or four. Most laptops use 20 watts even when idle.

Using less energy is probably its most important contribution to the environment, but the machine also uses fewer hazardous materials than most computers. The OLPC initiative chose a battery design sometimes used in electric cars, called lithium ferro phosphate. These batteries can be recharged more often than the lithium ion technology used in most laptops, Dr. Jepsen says, and used batteries decompose into "something like fertilizer."

If you want to own the world's most environmentally friendly computer, you can. The OLPC group has just launched its "Give 1 Get 1" program, under which North American consumers can buy the machines for $399 U.S. - double the production cost, to subsidize a machine for one child in the developing world.

If you would prefer to buy a traditional computer, though, there are still ways to pay attention to its environmental impact.

A good place to start is EPEAT, a program initiated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to assess electronic products against environmental criteria.

To get on the EPEAT list, products must meet a basic list of criteria that gives them "bronze" status, while additional optional features can elevate a product to the "silver" or "gold" category. The list of computers and computer-related products is available online at http://www.epeat.net.

The Green Electronics Council, which runs EPEAT, says EPEAT-registered products bought in 2006 will, over their lifetimes, save enough energy to power 1.2 million U.S. homes for a year and avoid the disposal of more than 40,000 metric tons of hazardous waste.

Environment Canada has a similar program called EcoLogo that covers more categories of products. Unlike EPEAT, EcoLogo requires third-party testing to certify products. No computers have earned that certification yet, Mr. Case says, but some peripheral devices have. Details on EcoLogo are available at http://www.ecologo.org.

As the proliferation of EPEAT-registered products shows, most of the PC industry is jumping on the green bandwagon.

For instance, the ThinkCenter A61E desktop PC that Lenovo Group Ltd. launched in September uses half as much power as previous models and 90 per cent of its components can be recycled, says Jordan Buck, national sales specialist at Lenovo Canada.

Toshiba Corp. is working with chip makers and introducing energy-efficient screen technologies such as organic light-emitting diodes to lower its laptops' power consumption. At five laptops with EPEAT's gold status, the company has more than any other vendor.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and rival Intel Corp. are looking for ways to make idle chips use less power. Doug Cooper, country manager at Intel of Canada Ltd. in Toronto, says a processor at rest uses less than five watts today, but Intel wants get that down to one watt. AMD is pursuing similar goals with its PowerNow technology.

This greening trend is mostly market driven. Todd Smith, director of marketing at Toshiba Canada, says his company is emphasizing EPEAT registration because it has become a factor in government purchasing. And consumer demand is a factor, too.

Electronic waste

25% Proportion of Canadian households that disposed of old computers by taking them to special waste depots or returned them to the supplier in 2006.

20% Portion that put the machines in the garbage.

33% Proportion that didn't know what to do with the machines.

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071115.wsrgreencomputer15/BNStory/PersonalTech/home

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Western Digital's Green Hard Drive

Western Digital announced its latest enterprise hard drive today which reduces energy usage and lowers costs for data centers. The new GreenPower family of HDDs range from 500GB to 1TB storage capacity.

The drives are reliability rated at 1.2 million hours mean time between failure in high duty cycle environments. WD says these drives can reduce power usage by 40%. "Delivering up to 40 percent savings in hard drive power consumption, Western Digital's new RE2-GP hard drives are an excellent choice for customers deploying Rackable Systems' newest generation of Eco-Logical storage systems -- enabling even greater efficiency and performance," said Tony Gaughan, chief products officer of Rackable Systems.

WD says the GreenPower drives can save data centers more than $10 per drive each year in energy costs. Large data centers running 10,000 drives could see money savings of $100,000 per year thanks to the low 4-5 watts of power required for drive operation. The drives are priced from $149.99 to $349.99.
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Eco-computing can spell energy profits

Beleaguered IT managers already have to deal with fast-changing technologies, rising user expectations and gnarly recruiting situations.

Now, they face a new challenge. They're being asked, "How Green is Your Silicon Valley?" Under slogans like "Eco-computing" and "Green IT," environmental awareness has caught the attention of computer giants such as Intel, IBM and Sun Microsystems. And they don't need Al Gore to preach for them. It's a matter of dollars and cents.

"The average data centre consumes 10 to 30 times the amount of power as the average office space, when compared on a square-foot basis," says Chris Pratt, strategic initiatives executive with IBM Canada.

In fact, he says the costs of running computers will soon overtake the cost of buying them. This is supported by a January 2007 study from research firm IDC that found today, for every dollar spent on new hardware, an additional 50 cents is spent on power and cooling, more than double the amount of five years ago. The power and cooling cost is expected to rise to reach $1 per $1 of hardware costs by 2012.

Pratt points to IBM's own efforts in this area, from "computers that will dynamically turn parts of themselves off" to "server virtualization," which involves using fewer computers more intensively. He jokes that floor space that was converted from data centres to offices is now being turned into central server rooms. He also thinks that tape is coming back as a "greener" data-storage medium than disk.

Pratt says IBMers can have either a laptop or a desktop computer, but not both. They must walk to a central printer pool to pick up their printouts and their files are stored centrally, not on energy-guzzling PC hard disks. Pratt says some people are even turning off their computers at night, or, if they must be left running, donating the processing cycles to public service projects such as World Community Grid.

The IBM folks are almost evangelistic about their green initiative. Pratt says that IBM is looking to save five billion kilowatt hours, "which equals the power consumption of the city of Paris, France.?

He points to their Bromont, Que., plant, which has consistently exceeded their energy saving targets.

Their latest innovation, which IBM says is a first in North America, is "stored cooling.?

Pratt says this is a process that allows them to maximize the efficiency of their chillers and cooling, "and take full advantage of the free cooling that comes from Canada's climate."

Think giant cylinders of a goop that stores thermal energy like batteries store electricity, and releases it on demand under computer control. The system is made by Quebec-based Groupe Énerstat Inc.

IBM notes that the energy savings associated with this project are in the vicinity of six per cent a year and will reduce electrical power demand by more than one megawatt, saving the company $350,000 per year at that plant alone.

Pushing Green IT is good business for IBM. Pratt has just completed presentations in Toronto and Calgary as part of CIO Canada magazine's "Frankly Speaking" breakfast series. He encourages IT managers to do a data centre energy audit, just like you would do at home, and points to a free tool on the IBM website (www.ibm.com/ systems/energyassess) to get them started.

Pratt also notes that "you don't have to have a thousand machines to benefit from this. Someone who is a small or medium-sized business, with 20 or 30 systems, can consolidate down to four or five systems ... and there's nothing but benefits from that."

IT power consumption can become an urgent business issue. IBM and other companies say they have customers, mainly in California, who cannot take delivery of much-needed computers because they simply cannot get power for them at any price.

Almost all computer makers are joining the push to Green IT. Dell has announced free recycling for any Dell-branded product, and pledged to "eliminate in our new products all remaining uses of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) by 2009."

Lenovo, which was spun off from IBM and now does US$13 billion in annual revenues from PC sales, is touting its new ThinkCentre A61e desktop as saving on average more than $20 a year in energy costs and the equivalent of the carbon dioxide emissions created by two round-trip flights from Boston to New York.

At the bleeding edge of technology, Jai Menon, an IBM Fellow based in Almaden, Calif., recently showed off a possible future IBM product nicknamed the IceCube. IBM marketers apparently didn't want to share a name with a notorious rapper, so it's properly called "Intelligent Bricks."

Imagine a stack of generic, but very high-powered computing cubes that aren't even connected to each other by wires.

Data is transferred by capacitive coupling. Menon says this makes it easy to slip out components that fail, creating an energy-efficient, highly reliable system out of less-reliable components.

The thing looks like a bunch of giant Lego until you realize that the working prototype cube can hold 27 terabytes (27 million megabytes) of information and provide more processing power than most of us will ever need.

Ah, but there are people who will always want more. Folks like Chuck Boeheim, the assistant director of computer services at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California. They work on really big problems and needed to pop in another 200 computers.

Problem was, according to Boeheim, they simply had no space and couldn't build it in time. So they became the first customer to get a "Project Blackbox" unit from Sun Microsystems. It fits on a flatbed truck and basically gives you a data centre in a box. A very big box.

Elizabeth From, director of strategy for California-based Sun, brought the Blackbox to Calgary recently and ushered a stream of energy industry executives through it. She says it takes server virtualization one step further.

"We decided to get 'out of the box' and asked, what if the unit to be virtualized was the data centre, instead of the server? So we decouple the brick-and-mortar aspect of the data centre from what it does."

At about US$500,000, it's not for everyone. But it does, in her words, work well for companies that need reliable plug-and-play computing capacity, even in remote or disaster areas.

Like most computer vendors hopping onto the Green IT train, From sees the push to more environmental awareness as a golden business opportunity for her company.

"Eco means economic and energy and ecology," she says. "So for us, it's green money and green environment."
Src: http://www.businessedge.ca/article.cfm/newsID/16662.cfm
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Recycling computer chip scrap for solar panels

You can make solar panels out of it and help reduce our demand on fossil fuels. Or you can make computer chips out of it. And computers are a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to the environment. On the one hand, they can help pave the way toward a paperless society. On the other hand, it takes a hefty amount of energy to run the average computer.

So is it more responsible to use silicon for computer chips or solar panels? It turns out you might be able to have the best of both worlds. IBM has announced a new method for using scrap material from microchip creation to make solar panels.

As things stand, a tiny bit of silicon is discarded for every computer chip that's manufactured. While that might not seem like much, there's a huge demand for computer chips, and IBM estimates that 3 million silicon wafers are thrown out every year. If you built solar panels out of that material, you could power 6,000 houses. But right now, that material is demolished and landfilled.

That's because each chip includes proprietary data that companies don't want released to the public. They're perfectly recyclable today, but chip makers don't want competing companies to see the information on each chip, so they're destroyed. IBM's innovation is a technique for polishing wafers and removing any proprietary information, making the wafers suitable for building solar panels.

If the technique catches on, it could lead chip makers to partner with solar panel manufacturers. Chip makers could make a few bucks by selling the scrap material, while solar panel makers would benefit from lower-priced recycled silicon.

src: http://www.greendaily.com/2007/11/01/greentech-recycling-computer-chip-scrap-for-solar-panels/
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Computer repair company finds unique way to go green

Since computers have become mainstream, most of us have become familiar with hard drives crashing or internet signals dying. News 3's Robert Santos shows us one company that provides relief for computers and the environment.

When there's a computer emergency at Phil Sameroff's home he calls Chad Stone to the rescue. "I've had no problems with viruses or anything but now I can't get on the internet," Phil explains.

A computer tech by trade, Chad started his own business two years ago and called it PC 911. It's a company that not only revives computers, but is helping to save the environment as well.

So what is it about PC 911 that's eco friendly? Well, for one, Chad uses old ambulances to drive around town and run his business. Secondly, every single one of these ambulances is run on 100 percent used vegetable oil.

"It was really difficult to work out of a pick up truck," Chad explains. "I was trolling through eBay looking for some kind of work truck affordable for our business. And I saw an old, old used ambulance."

It was perfect for the computer store on wheels he wanted. An ambulance comes with everything he needs including cabinets and compartments for every tool and supply and even a stretcher.

"We'll carry 10 or 12 boxes of wiring. With a hand truck, that's three or four trips. With a stretcher, it's literally one person can handle it," Chad said.

In addition to reusing old ambulances, Chad feeds what's normally a diesel engine with recycled vegetable oil donated by restaurants. First, Chad must strain all the food and fatty particles out, so he strains the veggie oil by using a $1,600 sifting machine. Once the black oil turns a golden brown, it's ready to be pumped into his fleet of ambulances.

On a typical day, PC 911 responds to up to a dozen residential calls and up to 10 business calls. And one way clients know the crew has arrived it the occasional smell of french fries, hot dogs and other food in the air.

Chad paid anywhere from $2,500 to $10,000 for each one ambulance.
Src: http://www.kvbc.com/Global/story.asp?S=7368090&nav=15MV

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Turning IT waste into green power

IBM recycles wafers for use as solar panels. Computer giant IBM has developed a process of reclaiming imprinted computer circuitry from obsolete machines to allow them to be used by the solar panel industry. The silicon material, of which they are made, is in short supply by this fledgling, though potentially huge, industry.

Charles Bai, chief financial officer at ReneSola, one of China's fastest growing solar energy companies, commented: "One of the challenges facing the solar industry is a severe shortage of silicon which threatens to stall its rapid growth. This is why we have turned to reclaimed silicon materials sourced primarily from the semiconductor industry to supply the raw material our company needs to manufacture solar panels."

Silicon wafers
Silicon wafers are the base materials for the manufacture of microelectronic products, from computers to mobile phones. Currently, around 250,000 silicon wafers are started every day across the globe.

The new technique, which has been pioneered at IBM’s plant in Burlington, Vermont, uses ‘pattern’ - a removal technique to remove all IP from the unit before it’s made available for use.

src: http://www.scenta.co.uk/Engineering/1708492/turning-it-waste-into-green-power.htm
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