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[news] Manufacturing 1 PC Takes 1.8 Tons Of Raw Material [slashdot]

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Mr.Guvernment

Member
Joined
Feb 26, 2003
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/08/0253253

Posted by timothy on Monday March 08, @04:32AM

from the inert-matter-transformed dept.

remy writes "Although most of it (1.5 metric tons) is water, a study from the United Nations University details the raw materials used in the manufacture of a PC and 17" CRT. That's an incredible environmental cost per PC, and a very strong argument for trying to leverage older equipment, not to mention upgrading rather than replacing."




http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/03/07/hnunstudy_1.html

UN study: Think upgrade before buying a new PC
New report finds 1.8 tons of material are used to manufacture desktop PC and monitor



By Martyn Williams, IDG News Service March 07, 2004



A United Nations University study into the environmental impact of personal computers, due to be published later Monday, has found that around 1.8 tons of raw material are required to manufacture the average desktop PC and monitor and that extending a machine's operational life through re-use holds a much greater potential for energy saving than recycling.

According to the study, the manufacturing of one desktop computer and 17-inch CRT (cathode ray tube) monitor requires at least 240 kilograms of fossil fuels, 22 kilograms of chemicals and 1,500 kilograms of water. In terms of weight, the total amount of materials used is about equal to that of a mid-size car.

By far the best way to minimize impact on the environment from a personal computer is to extend its useful life, said Eric Williams, a researcher at the United Nations University (UNU) in Tokyo and one of the report's co-authors.

Users should think carefully about whether they really need a new computer, if upgrading their existing computer could serve the same purpose, he said. Actions such as delaying replacement and upgrading the memory or storage space or, if the machine is replaced, donating the old computer so that it may continue to be used offer potential energy savings of between five and 20 times those gained by recycling.

This is because so much of the energy required to manufacture a personal computer is used to make high-tech components like semiconductors and those components are destroyed in the recycling process to collect a small amount of raw materials. In an earlier study published in late 2002, Williams concluded that 1.7 kilograms of fossil fuels and chemicals and 32 kilograms of water are used to produce a single 2-gram 32M-byte DRAM (dynamic RAM) memory chip.

Seemingly endless advances in technology are encouraging people to replace their machines and falling prices are making replacement a more attractive option that upgrading and have users accustomed to a two-year to three-year upgrade cycle.

"It's a big problem," said Williams.

However, there are some encouraging signs. In the corporate market machines supplied under service contracts often have a good chance of being re-used thanks to programs offered by the equipment suppliers, such as Dell Inc.

The vendor has seen a tremendous increase in the number of machines it receives from customers for processing before either recycling or donation to agencies such as the National Cristina Foundation, said Tod Arbogast, senior manager of asset recovery services at Dell.

He said Dell has handled millions of machines since 1992 when it started offering its asset recovery service, which costs around $25 per machine and includes collection, transportation and reporting and, for personal computers, destruction of data on the hard-disk drive. The service is available in the U.S., Europe and select countries in Asia and Latin America. Around two fifths of Dell's commercial customers participate.

"We believe no computer should go to waste," he said. "The ultimate solution is to reuse the computer either as a donation, for parts or on the second-hand market."

The market in used computers for private users is growing as technologies like Internet auctions allow users to quickly advertise their old machine to several potential customers. The market for used computer equipment on eBay was around two billion dollars in 2001, said Williams.

When it comes to replacing equipment there is one piece of advice that Williams offers both private and corporate users: do something with your old machine quickly.

"The longer it sits in your closet (or desk), the less value it will be to you and whoever will be getting it."

The report also looks at energy use and says always-on networks are making the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Energy Star program less relevant.

"I think it needs to be renewed," said Williams. Too many computers at companies are prevented from entering their standby mode by LAN traffic, which keeps them awake and consuming power even while they are not in use, he said. While acknowledging that some machines are kept online to allow network maintenance to take place, Williams suggests redesigning network cards to allow the PC to go to sleep and then wake it should there be any important network traffic.

Nonresidential office and telecommunications equipment consumed around 3 percent of all electricity supplied in the U.S. in 2000, according to a January 2002 DOE study. Of that, around 40 percent was consumed by personal computers and associated monitors.

The report, "Computers and the Environment: Understanding and Managing their Impacts," is published by Kluwer Academic Publishers and the UNU and is available in paperback (ISBN: 1-4020-1680-8) or hard cover (ISBN: 1-4020-1679-4) editions and costs $35 and $83, respectively. The UNU's dedicated Web site related to IT and the environment is http://www.it-environment.org .
 
So what is their point- the environment? Oh no, 1.8 tons! Most of it is water that no doubt has already been returned to the water cycle. I think this report is either BOGUS or extremely misleading :D.

Anyway it makes me want to ruin the environment even more by doing a few upgrades, or maybe build a few new computers :D.
 
I think there are FAR greater concerns to worry about :)

how much does it take to manufacture a car - which will output how much CO2 in the time it runs? and BURN how many fossil fules while it is at it...

at least computer dont spit out harmful emissions that can kill us all!
 
Just another tree hugger funded report sent out to mislead the general public.
 
Remove said:
Just another tree hugger funded report sent out to mislead the general public.

Really? Do you have any evidence to back up that claim? Or are you perhaps just dismissing a report merely because it's conclusion implicates you?

I certainly agree that there are more important issues facing us. I suspect the study's authors would too. But just because an issue is not the most important one, doesn't mean that it is insignificant.

If you don't like the conclusion of the study, then provide some clear evidence or argument against it. If you don't have any, then at least admit that your disagreement is based more on emotion than reason. Many of our opinions are. But casting baseless slurs on the authors doesn't reflect well on you.
 
it does misslead, that 1500kgs of water isn't just for one computer, but gets used on that one and more than likely 150 others..and the same with the fossil fuels and chemicals. I will say that without that mass being used with the current mass production of computers and parts a single computer would not be built, but it miss leads us by making it sound like all that mass is bing used on one computer and just thrown out into the air/ocean. I bet the water is cooled and re-used, the chemicals are used to build more than one computer, and the fossil fuels are also. This thread is some pretty cool info, but nothing for them "tree huggers" to start gripping over. Find another hole in the Ozone and let them complain about that, then they would leave the computers that made finding the hole possible alone.
 
then they would leave the computers that made finding the hole possible alone.


Excellent points - and the same @ that i wonder how many tree huggers drive everday cars? or smoke? or use Aerosal cans?

but i guess it is every little bit that counts in the end - and if we all try - we can all make make a difference!

:D
 
AFIsoldier said:
it does misslead, that 1500kgs of water isn't just for one computer, but gets used on that one and more than likely 150 others..and the same with the fossil fuels and chemicals. I will say that without that mass being used with the current mass production of computers and parts a single computer would not be built, but it miss leads us by making it sound like all that mass is bing used on one computer and just thrown out into the air/ocean. I bet the water is cooled and re-used, the chemicals are used to build more than one computer, and the fossil fuels are also. This thread is some pretty cool info, but nothing for them "tree huggers" to start gripping over. Find another hole in the Ozone and let them complain about that, then they would leave the computers that made finding the hole possible alone.

Can you document this? Or are you just guessing? On this account the researchers would have made some fairly fundamental errors, the sort that we teach undergraduates to avoid. Do you have any reason for thinking that these researchers made this sort of blatant error? Or are you simply attributing the error to them because you find the results implausible?

As it turns out, many implausible things are true. Researchers are trained to avoid these sorts of errors very early on. That doesn't make them infallible, and yes sometimes they make the errors anyway. But they've spent far more time studying the matter than we have, and have far more training at how to do it. So unless someone actually has some concrete evidence, I'm afraid the benefit of the doubt has to go to the researchers.

Remember, when calculating raw materials, you have to start with digging the ore out of the ground.
 
My comment was 50% emotion and 63.829% based on the fact that the tree hugging community as a whole tends to warp and mislead their facts to try and drum up more support.

Every time I hear one of their far fledged statemants I go out to the garage and fire up my 500 cubic inch Cadillac, tweek the carbs just a tad bit richer and throw my cigarette buts into the storm drain at the end of my driveway wjile I'm doing this. Then I go for several 20 mile trips as that is as far as my 30 gallon gas tank will let me go. :D

I really do not feel like getting into this argument about the enviroment with anyone. I will never budge from my opinions and most others will not either. I just feel like calling BS when these types of reports are made because it is my job as a good American to do so.
 
^^ i think it may come more so from the fact that the majority of reports made by the media are far from accurate and are often "blown up" to make the story seem more impressive.

You yourself can not deny this.


Now when they say the materials used - i assume the "researchers" went to each and every company involved in deisgning a part for a PC. (which would be hundreds, possibly thousands essentially when you get down to who made the solder to connect chips and the PCB for the boards and the wire ends for the PSU and the metal in the IDE cables....)

They went to Intel /AMD to see what it takes to make one CPU - they took the total materials used to make one waffer and did the proper math to come out with the exact number of materials needed to make 1 CPU? from that entire waffer or CPU's.... The amount of power consumed by the tolls that made the pieces need to construct a CPU....

They did this same thing for the motherboard maker / Video card / RAM / Chipset / hard drive / Case / PSU - and all the seprate companies that make the parts that come to together to form the above parts as a whole.

When you look at it on a scale of that size - then the number 1.8 is more acceptable, but still seems somewhat hard to beleive.


What one must do is think from the ground up as you said - from pulling the ore out of the ground / the water used to generate the electricity to run the tools to create the items.


But, i think this article in that case certainly should of gone more in depth about the process and not been so vague in their information.

The article to me simple says it takes X amount of materials to make a

CPU / PSU / RAM/VID /Case ? monitor.

it says nothing about getting those material from the ground up...

once again an inaccurate report by the media to misslead people.
 
I just feel like calling BS when these types of reports are made because it is my job as a good American to do so.


It is NOT your Job as an american to call an article BS - it is your *right* to "question" the article - and to go one step further - to prove that the article was miss informing as opposed to saying it is your job as an american which just helps to lable "americans" as arrogant individuals.


I do not belive when you came out of your mother you were offered a Job applications to "apply" as an american.
 
Nope, It's my job. Look on my business card ...... and I hate looking up facts. That's why I have a secretary ... excuse me ... administrative assistant.

We as Americans can be arrogant, who's going to do anything about it?







p.s. Always take my posts that sound this far out there as what they are...mainly humorous. :D
 
^^^^ lol - i got it, no worries - i tend to have a similar sarcastic sense of humour which very few people get unless they know me for a while.


:)

i fired my administrative assistant, no - she was a secretary :) - coffee tasted awful :)
 
^^^^

So then what reports should not be ignored? How big of a problem does something have to be before it is good enough to be reported on...?


This is the problem with the world - instead of trying to stop something before it is a huge issue - OH just ignore it - but then when it is a world problem that will help to whip out the human population because BEFORE we siply ignored it - then what?

OH why didnt they say something before! (well they tried, but everyone just ignored it!)
 
you know what they are also counting as used materials? All of the food and water the people producing it consumed. They still would not consume any less if they were producing something else. (Or not producing anything at all)

So are these emviromentalists suggesting that we stop living (as an extension of not eating)? Well, why dont they start the movement by killing off themselves.....
 
Notice that they aren't saying not to have fast computers. The recommendation is to upgrade an existing computer rather than buying an entirely new one whenever feasible. It's also to use slower computers as long as possible by shifting them to jobs that they can do, or donating them to people who can use them.

Most overclockers already do these things.
 
I still will not be happy until my home lan has 30 gaming rigs. Whales be damned! :D
 
nihili said:
Notice that they aren't saying not to have fast computers. The recommendation is to upgrade an existing computer rather than buying an entirely new one whenever feasible. It's also to use slower computers as long as possible by shifting them to jobs that they can do, or donating them to people who can use them.

Most overclockers already do these things.


i think that is a good start and more people need to start thinking in that sense.
 
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