Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

E-waste mining could be big business and good for the planet

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 84 posts

Re: E-waste mining could be big business and good for the planet

#11

Post by gascan »

bahmboo wrote: post #10
fuball63 wrote: post #7

I would like to see more e-waste initiatives based in reuse instead of recycling. To me it seems like any advances on the recycling front are outpaced by throwaway tech culture and general overconsumption. Seeing as processor speeds have pretty much plateaued [1], I wonder if it is useful to start thinking less in terms of precious metals and instead in potential processing power of e-waste. I remember a discussion o…

Power consumption is going down with each gen and is big cost driver. Also heat dissipation in data centers is costly. Gotta consider TCO in these cases.

Semiconductors are fairly unique in this regard- power consumption has been going down so quickly for so long, it can often be both uneconomical and environmentally unfriendly to continue to operate older hardware.

Re: E-waste mining could be big business and good for the planet

#12

Post by gascan »

rrggrr wrote: post #5

This ship sailed. Its generally accepted that e-scrap processor's margins are 15% or less. Its not just the cost to access/buy the materials that keeps margins low. The CAPEX costs are enormous, there are large operating costs, and regulatory compliance is also very expensive. Further complicating matters is government flip-flopping on mandated electronic scrap collection regulations that make it tough for business t…

Isn't 15% a pretty good margin? Restaurants & retail make low single digit margins.

Re: E-waste mining could be big business and good for the planet

#13

Post by rolleiflex »

fuball63 wrote: post #7

I would like to see more e-waste initiatives based in reuse instead of recycling. To me it seems like any advances on the recycling front are outpaced by throwaway tech culture and general overconsumption. Seeing as processor speeds have pretty much plateaued [1], I wonder if it is useful to start thinking less in terms of precious metals and instead in potential processing power of e-waste. I remember a discussion o…

There is a Vancouver-based non-profit called FreeGeek (https://www.freegeekvancouver.org/) that takes in e-waste, salvages usable parts and sells them back to fund their tech-education efforts. I'm surprised that this does not exist in Silicon Valley, it most certainly should.

Edit: fixed the link

Re: E-waste mining could be big business and good for the planet

#14

Post by Bucephalus355 »

Literally just met someone for the first time yesterday who is moving to Texas to do this.

Apparently, the refresh rate for cloud data centers is now getting down to 2 years or less. Easier to expand by replacing instead of leasing new space. This, combined with how environmentally conscious the big cloud companies are, has led to a big demand in IT Asset Disposal services. Also obviously there are security aspects in play here.

In PW Singer’s novel about war with China, pretty sure this was a big plot point when imports of microchips stopped and regular citizens had to donate their iPads and what not to be stripped of valuable material.

Re: E-waste mining could be big business and good for the planet

#16

Post by rrggrr »

gascan wrote: post #12
rrggrr wrote: post #5

This ship sailed. Its generally accepted that e-scrap processor's margins are 15% or less. Its not just the cost to access/buy the materials that keeps margins low. The CAPEX costs are enormous, there are large operating costs, and regulatory compliance is also very expensive. Further complicating matters is government flip-flopping on mandated electronic scrap collection regulations that make it tough for business t…

Isn't 15% a pretty good margin? Restaurants & retail make low single digit margins.

On a risk adjusted basis, no. You're buying the raw material assuming aluminum heat sinks will be .67/lb, only to discover that by the time you've liberated the Al from the stream the price has dropped to .40/lb. That just happened. Or, you've invested $30m - $100m in an Ontario e-scrap plant assuming the CADGOV won't reverse its e-scrap policy. Then it does essentially that and the market you thought you had has changed dramatically. That happened.

Re: E-waste mining could be big business and good for the planet

#17

Post by jerrysievert »

rolleiflex wrote: post #13
fuball63 wrote: post #7

I would like to see more e-waste initiatives based in reuse instead of recycling. To me it seems like any advances on the recycling front are outpaced by throwaway tech culture and general overconsumption. Seeing as processor speeds have pretty much plateaued [1], I wonder if it is useful to start thinking less in terms of precious metals and instead in potential processing power of e-waste. I remember a discussion o…

There is a Vancouver-based non-profit called FreeGeek ( https://www.freegeekvancouver.org/ ) that takes in e-waste, salvages usable parts and sells them back to fund their tech-education efforts. I'm surprised that this does not exist in Silicon Valley, it most certainly should. Edit: fixed the link

while there is indeed a Vancouver based FreeGeek, the one that you linked to is the Portland based FreeGeek.

here's a link to the one you're talking about: https://www.freegeekvancouver.org/

edit: adding the link to the fantastic portland version, now that op has fixed their link: https://www.freegeek.org/

Re: E-waste mining could be big business and good for the planet

#18

Post by subway »

fuball63 wrote: post #7

I would like to see more e-waste initiatives based in reuse instead of recycling. To me it seems like any advances on the recycling front are outpaced by throwaway tech culture and general overconsumption. Seeing as processor speeds have pretty much plateaued [1], I wonder if it is useful to start thinking less in terms of precious metals and instead in potential processing power of e-waste. I remember a discussion o…

Sadly the quality and build methodologies on most modern hardware that becomes e-waste isn't really suited to long-term re-use.

Solder joints get smaller and closer every year, leaving whiskers more and more likely to eventually short out two adjacent pins. Not to mention the cheap failure prone board level components found everywhere. (Yay for esploding capacitors).

And that's before you even get to all the junk embedded devices that have little in the way of standardization or documentation, etc. That hardware will likely never run software the OEM didn't ship.

Re: E-waste mining could be big business and good for the planet

#19

Post by adrianN »

gascan wrote: post #11
bahmboo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Power consumption is going down with each gen and is big cost driver. Also heat dissipation in data centers is costly. Gotta consider TCO in these cases.

Semiconductors are fairly unique in this regard- power consumption has been going down so quickly for so long, it can often be both uneconomical and environmentally unfriendly to continue to operate older hardware.

I'd like to see a detailed calculation. Teaching sand how to think doesn't sound like an environmentally friendly process.
Post reply on HN