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

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

#31

Post by rolleiflex »

jerrysievert wrote: post #17
rolleiflex wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Apologies, you’re correct.

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

#32

Post by ocdtrekkie »

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…

I suspect that this is an industry that will become more profitable though, not less, over time. Some materials will become harder to naturally mine over time, as we use it faster than it's created, and hence, the value of those materials will rise.

I would guess that some day, mining materials in a garbage dump would be more profitable than mining them from the ground.

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

#33

Post by kragen »

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.

This is almost completely wrong, because Dennard scaling ended around 2002.

Power consumption in mainstream CPUs has been a few picojoules per instruction since the Pentium. Even the MSP430 is almost a pJ/insn. Modern ultra-low-power CPUs like the STM32L reach down below 0.3 pJ/insn, as did the LPC1110 a decade ago. Its more mainstream STM32F siblings are still stuck at 1.5 pJ/insn. Research CPUs using exotic logic families have been below 0.05 pJ/insn since 2000, but are too slow for mass adoption.

Power reduction this millennium is almost entirely about changing architecture to GPUs and other more specialized hardware, using wider registers (with SIMD instructions at times) and being smarter about turning things off and ramping their clocks.

Concurrently we've seen a huge move from languages like C and Java to languages like JS (10x the computational load of C even with JIT) and Python (200x, or 5x if your program is dominated by Numpy.)

So power usage is not a big reason for not using CPUs from 5 years ago.

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

#34

Post by pbhjpbhj »

agumonkey wrote: post #29
guywithaphone wrote: post #22

I've tried both metals, refurbish and parts recycling... Refurbishing or selling for parts is MUCH more valuable than metals recycling. It's also MUCH MUCH more work. Three first problem is getting valuable E-waste at a good price. (Free or cheap in large quantities) then comes separating out older parts (higher gold content), then identifying and testing newer parts for refurbishing or parts sales. Then advertising…

It's quite tempting considering the tons of stuff thrown out. I think with a small team of quite knowledgeable people you can have different revenue streams - stupid repairs (failing buttons, so common) - parts (where the team would be here to create test tooling) - materials (here you'd need chemistry knowledge) I'd love that but I admit it's not easy and can be risky (never injured myself more than since I started…

I've thought about this as a commercial operation in the UK; but TBH I can't see that you could make enough money from it. However, it does seem to serve a very useful function in society, and would be something I'd want to fund through government - but it goes against commercial interests (people with repairs don't buy as much stuff).

We're getting some charities working to help people make repairs, some maker-spaces and such that facilitate people doing it themselves, etc..

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

#35

Post by pbhjpbhj »

nerdponx wrote: post #24
guywithaphone wrote: post #22

I've tried both metals, refurbish and parts recycling... Refurbishing or selling for parts is MUCH more valuable than metals recycling. It's also MUCH MUCH more work. Three first problem is getting valuable E-waste at a good price. (Free or cheap in large quantities) then comes separating out older parts (higher gold content), then identifying and testing newer parts for refurbishing or parts sales. Then advertising…

Then factor in that newer computers and phones are getting much faster and/or using less power. This part is hard for me, as a big proponent of "reduce, reuse, recycle." Reduce isn't that hard until your technology becomes obsolete. Reuse is typically impossible because people don't throw out technology until it's obsolete. So recycling is the only option left.

>people don't throw out technology until it's obsolete

People throw out computers (including screens and everything) because the mouse stopped working, or the power supply needs replacing or the computer got a virus. A washing machine needs a new door-seal, a cooker needs a new light, people actually throw out that sort of stuff. Ebay has helped to make a market for junk, but oftentimes it seems people over-estimate the financial value of their used stuff and that hinders reuse in favour of replacement.

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

#37

Post by tajen »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #35
nerdponx wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then factor in that newer computers and phones are getting much faster and/or using less power. This part is hard for me, as a big proponent of "reduce, reuse, recycle." Reduce isn't that hard until your technology becomes obsolete. Reuse is typically impossible because people don't throw out technology until it's obsolete. So recycling is the only option left.

>people don't throw out technology until it's obsolete People throw out computers (including screens and everything) because the mouse stopped working, or the power supply needs replacing or the computer got a virus. A washing machine needs a new door-seal, a cooker needs a new light, people actually throw out that sort of stuff. Ebay has helped to make a market for junk, but oftentimes it seems people over-estimate…

« A door seal’s gonna cost as much as a new machine sir. » Every repairman.

It’s a difficult economic issue. Suitably skilled repairmen only exist medium economies, where we produce enough income to teach youngsters soldering, but when the economy is not developed as much as to have marketers take the power over the makers (think Juicero). In the Western economy today, repairmen are more salesmen on the field than actual people capable of repairing anything. I’ve never seen one actually repairing an appliance.

I have my doubt whether it’s really the machines getting built in such a way that repairs are impossible, oftentimes it does seem like a little more search could have found the defective wire, but let’s be honest, if they want to survive in a big city, soldering won’t pay enough. And that’s where the economy is surprising. Somehow those repairman jobs have higher hourly rates than replacing the machine, meaning shipping a new 50-kg appliance across the world is less costly than shipping a repairman across New York.

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

#38

Post by ChristianGeek »

nerdponx wrote: post #24
guywithaphone wrote: post #22

I've tried both metals, refurbish and parts recycling... Refurbishing or selling for parts is MUCH more valuable than metals recycling. It's also MUCH MUCH more work. Three first problem is getting valuable E-waste at a good price. (Free or cheap in large quantities) then comes separating out older parts (higher gold content), then identifying and testing newer parts for refurbishing or parts sales. Then advertising…

Then factor in that newer computers and phones are getting much faster and/or using less power. This part is hard for me, as a big proponent of "reduce, reuse, recycle." Reduce isn't that hard until your technology becomes obsolete. Reuse is typically impossible because people don't throw out technology until it's obsolete. So recycling is the only option left.

People don’t throw out technology until it’s obsolete for THEM. There are tiers of consumers across the world for whom obsolete is defined at different stages of functionality/performance/affordability/etc.

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

#39

Post by azernik »

kragen wrote: post #33
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.

This is almost completely wrong, because Dennard scaling ended around 2002. Power consumption in mainstream CPUs has been a few picojoules per instruction since the Pentium. Even the MSP430 is almost a pJ/insn. Modern ultra-low-power CPUs like the STM32L reach down below 0.3 pJ/insn, as did the LPC1110 a decade ago. Its more mainstream STM32F siblings are still stuck at 1.5 pJ/insn. Research CPUs using exotic logic f…

The most effective of those strategies (specialized hardware, SIMD/wide-register instructions, shallow suspend, etc.) are only possible with hardware support. So yes, even though transistor and ALU power efficiency isn't going down that fast, the power usage of a given complete processor or SoC is going down.
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