How environmentally friendly is your PC? Compared to a noisy old diesel engine that belches smoke and sounds like a long-lost member of the Luftwaffe, it is easy to think your computer is saintly. But is it?
We have taken a look at the impact our computers have on the environment. This subject is often sensationalised, which makes it hard to get to the actual facts. The simple truth is that we will not give up our computers, TVs, stereos, DVD players and camcorders. PCs in particular are an indispensable part of our lives, and while we know they are full of toxic metals and other nasties, we also know that they will not harm us while we are using them. But what happens to the environment when our old computers are trashed? Do we even know what is really inside them? We will answer those questions here, as well as looking at whether manufacturers are becoming more environmentally aware, and what exactly we can do to protect the world around us for the future.
So read on, but please make sure you use a low-energy light bulb to illuminate the page.
BUILDING A PC
It is not just the materials used to make PCs that are bad for us: the manufacturing process itself does a lot of damage. According to an online report published recently by the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, the manufacture of a typical two-gram chip takes 1.6kg of fossil fuel, 72g of chemicals and 32kg of water. The team found that the materials needed to make just one 32MB memory chip weigh 630 times more than the final product. How much memory does your PC have? Perhaps as much as a gigabyte, and certainly no less than 128MB. When you add it all up the results are frightening - and that's just looking at the water needed to make your PC's memory chips.
Chips are just one part of the computer. The manufacture of PCs is very material intensive, according to Eric Williams and Ruediger Keuhr in their book Computers and the Environment: Understanding and Managing their Impact. They explain that the total weight of fossil fuels used in the manufacture of a PC is over 240kg. This is around 10 times the weight of the final computer. To put this in perspective, during the manufacture of cars and fridges the weight of fuel used is roughly equal to the weight of the final product.
Well over 1,000 different materials are used to make a PC. A lot of these, such as brominated and chlorinated substances, acids, plastics, biologically active materials, metals and gases, are highly toxic. The welcome news is that major companies in the PC industry are taking note of these reports and many are striving to improve their manufacturing process to protect the environment.
We contacted Micron, the firm behind Crucial memory and other PC components. The company wouldn't say exactly how much water it used in its manufacturing for fear of betraying industrial secrets, but a spokesman explained that Micron recycles 70 to 80 per cent of the water it uses in the production of semiconductors. In 1995 it reused just 30 per cent. "Water reclaimed is either sent back to production for reuse, or is used in the site's supply for fire suppression system backup, landscape irrigation, cooling tower and boiler water makeup and tool cooling," said the spokesman.
Micron claims that despite being the largest employer in the state of Idaho, it emits less than one per cent of the pollution in the area. Vehicles are responsible for most of the air pollution.
DOING YOUR BIT
There are many ways in which you can be more environmentally friendly. When buying a PC, think about what you actually need rather than what you want. We all want a fire-breathing leviathan of a PC with every conceivable bell and whistle, but do you really need such a beast? If you are interested only in browsing the web and doing basic office work, you will not need a powerful PC. We did a quick search on eBay and found that if you were lucky you could buy a complete system capable of running Windows XP for between £50 and £200.
Buying second-hand does not just save you money, though: it is better for the environment too. It removes the risk that toxins inside your PC are released during the recycling process - and reduces the demand for these toxins in the first place.
Even if you were to pack your old PC off to be recycled, the process would require energy, which has to be generated in some way and so will have an inevitable impact on the environment. Eric Williams (from www.it-environment.org) claims that selling or even upgrading an old PC saves "five to 20 times" more energy than recycling.
Another environment-saving measure is to switch your computer off when you are not using it. According to Energy Star (www.energystar.gov), using a PC's power management facilities can not only save you money but, in terms of CO2 emissions, is the environmental equivalent of planting between 1,000 to 6,000 square feet of trees. If you must leave your PC running, remember to configure its power management features correctly. See the box below to find out how to do this.
If your PC is starting to show its age, think about upgrading. The environmental implications of adding more RAM or a new processor, both of which could be second-hand, are smaller than the burden that building a new PC puts on the planet.
USE YOUR PDA
To help the environment further, why not use your wireless PDA to read news updates rather than buying a daily newspaper? This suggestion comes from a recent report published by Berkeley University in California. Receiving the news wirelessly on a PDA results in the release of 32 to 140 times less CO2, several times less nitrogen and sulphur dioxide and uses 26 to 67 times less water than the production of a newspaper. The report also discusses how using teleconferencing is far better for the environment than business travel. According to Berkeley researchers, staying in the office and using wireless teleconferencing "results in one to three orders of magnitude lower CO2, nitrogen and sulphur dioxide emissions than business travel". You can read an extract from the report at www.it-environment.org/publications.html - but do not print it out and waste paper.
DISPOSING OF YOUR OLD PC
As we have said, the best favour you can do the environment is to prolong the life of your computer as much as you can. You can do this through self-discipline and fighting the urge to have the newest technology as soon as it comes out. Keeping Windows clean and free of spyware, removing old programs and defragmenting the hard disk all contribute to keeping it running more smoothly and for longer.
Inevitably, though, the time will come when you simply have to buy a new computer in order to run the latest software. There is no way a PC designed to run Windows 95 will run the next version of Windows when it launches.
According to many environmental groups, the best way to get rid of your old PC is to sell it or give it away. You may be wondering why it cannot be pulled apart, melted down and made into something else. It is generally acknowledged that recycling hazardous products that have not been designed to be recycled has little real environmental benefit. The poisons inside the computer are merely moved into a secondary product, which will eventually need to be disposed of or recycled. The removal and harvest of toxins from old PCs also requires energy, and there is always a risk that poisons will be released into the environment during the reclamation process.
CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME
Instead it is far better to keep the PC together and pass it on as quickly as possible. Don't leave it while you wait for a good price. Be realistic about what your old computer is worth and sell it as soon as possible. For a good guide to prices, check auction sites or the classified ads in your local paper. Speed is of the essence as nothing dates faster than old technology. If your computer hangs around in your garage for a few years it will certainly be worth nothing.
Alternatively, you can give the machine away. If you do not know anybody who needs one, try contacting Computer Aid International (www.computer-aid.org). This is a charity that takes computers we would class as old and moribund, refurbishes them and ships them to schools and charity groups overseas.
The charity asks that your donated PC meets a few basic technical specifications. Roughly it should have a 233-400MHz Pentium II or better processor with a minimum of 64MB of RAM and a 2-6GB hard disk. So far, the charity has shipped more than 30,000 refurbished PCs and reckons one of its recycled machines can provide around 6,000 hours of use to someone somewhere. It states proudly that: "Recipients [have] amassed over 111,000,000 hours of computer access, education and vocational training that would otherwise have been impossible."
In total, 2,200 schools and 1,500 community groups in the developing world have benefited from Computer Aid International PCs - all from kit that we consider past it and worthy of ditching.
If your PC really is a relic, though, how do you get rid of it? Leaving it for the dustmen is an obvious option but it is also morally reprehensible. The most responsible approach is to ask your local authority for the details of your nearest civic amenity site (local tip). We contacted our local District Council of Wokingham and found the site's opening times through the authority's waste service. Your council will have a similar department and the number will be on its website or in the phone book.
Author: Martin Cooper
Green PCs