E-waste stands for electronic waste. This includes anything from discarded and broken cell phones, computers, iPods, and small appliances.

Developed nations are dealing with a crisis of overconsumption, which produces many harmful consequences. One of these consequences is e-waste, which is created when electronic products are thrown away. Unfortunately, the production, consumption and ultimate disposal of e-waste is sped up with planned obsolescence, when products are intentionally designed to have a short lifespan—they either break quickly and cannot be repaired inexpensively, or new versions are continually being designed to replace older ones. With the technology available to us, products can be designed to last for decades, if not longer. However, things seem to be lasting for less and less time. This is all in the name of profit, benefitting corporations that want consumers to keep buying products. According to Greenpeace USA, the average lifespan of computers in developed countries has dropped from six years in 1997 to just two years in 2005, and mobile phones have a lifecycle of less than two years in developed countries.

But the dangers don’t come solely from the waste itself; even more severe problems occur when the waste is broken apart. When e-waste is disposed of, it is often sent overseas where people in struggling developing nations take apart the products to recycle the e-waste and attempt to salvage parts with any value. Some recycling companies that appear to be reputable engage in this careless practice as well. North America and Europe are known to export a large percentage of their e-waste to countries like India, China, and Ghana.

In the process of taking apart the electronics, these overseas workers are exposed to dangerous toxins, putting themselves, their families and their environment at risk. These toxins include heavy metals such as lead, beryllium and mercury, as well as chlorinated solvents, flame retardants and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). These are all deadly chemicals. Why should people in developing countries have to pay for the greed of our wasteful consumer society? 

What can you do about E-waste?

1. Rethink the amount of electronics you buy: don’t buy a new cell phone just because your contract expires and you can get the newest version that everyone else is getting. Also, look into getting your small appliances repaired before buying new ones. Reduce, re-use and recycle, in that order. Remember that no matter what advertising tells us, things don’t make us happy.
2. When you do have to get rid of electronics, recycle them with reputable companies. You can also contact the company where your product came from in the first place, and ask them if they have a take-back program. Always ask the recycling depot or company if they send the electronics overseas. If they don’t give a clear answer, choose somewhere else. Or, do some research and check with environmental organizations that would be able to direct you to a recycling depot in your area.
3. Support groups that are against e-waste. Recently, students from Simon Fraser University have formed a group to ban e-waste on campus. With plans to make an educational documentary to raise awareness of e-waste, teach people where they can safely recycle their electronics, challenge the amount of electronic waste people produce, and create an “E-waste Day” at SFU, the group is determined to tackle the issue of e-waste. To support them, join the Facebook group “Stop E-waste at SFU”, and follow the blog http://e-waste2011.blogspot.com/, which they update with their weekly progress, and you can find links to educational resources on e-waste and recycling depots around Vancouver.

Photo credit: Greenpeace India

Apple recently released their new line of MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops, which are mainly made from aluminium. They say that they are their greenest latops ever and claims that they are “highly recyclable and even more energy efficient”, and that they are “designed with the environment in mind”.

But really, how green are the new laptops?

Greenpeace, who is running a hard and successful campaign for greener electronics, says that the new laptops are “not quite the breakthrough” they “were hoping for”:

“A check of the full specs revealed the MacBook Pro, MacBook and MacBook Air – as well as the LED Cinema Display will now have internal cables free of PVC and will have internal components containing no BFRs. Not quite the breakthrough we were hoping for. These new MacBooks are currently on a similar level of toxics reduction to the Sony Viao laptop series on PVC, and the Lenovo Think Vision in monitors. The BFR free internal components represent an improvement from the bar set by the Vaio line.”

Hank Green, over at EcoGeek, is a bit more negative saying the new laptops are “wasteful”:

“I’m glad to see Apple focusing on the efficiency of their computers, not to mention decreasing the amount of toxic materials they contain. But this new carved-brick process isn’t green, it’s wasteful, and I’m happy to be sticking with my good-ol’ plastic clunker.”

Jaymi Heimbuch, from TreeHugger, on the other hand is a bit more positive:

“It seems that this process allows the MacBook Pro to use 50% fewer parts. In the manufacturing stage, they start with a 2.5 pound piece of aluminum. The end structure is only 0.5 pounds (for the MacBook Air). That means that 2 pounds of aluminum is cut away.

Nevertheless, it looks like this process, despite flaws, has some real improvements for the notebook in the big picture of its lifetime and total footprint.”

Apple explains how green their MacBook and MacBook Pro are on their website.

Edison doesn’t shut down your computer completely; it just puts it in a “suspend mode” which uses much less energy than if the computer would be running normally. You can decide if you want to schedule Edison to shut down the computer screen and hard drive before going into the suspend mode. The software also displays how much electricity, CO2 emissions, and money you have saved.

It depends from computer to computer how much energy and money you will save with a tool like this. Verdiem says the average savings is 410 kilowatt hours a year which is equal to $36.50 in savings.

“Recent studies predict PC ownership will quadruple to 4 billion and double emissions by 2020 , so implementing PC energy management solutions at home and in the workplace is a vital component of climate protection,” said Lorie Wigle, President of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. “Tools like Edison can help consumers control and monitor their PC’s energy intake and make a real difference in the way they manage the power consumption of the technology they use.”

Edison requires Windows XP or Windows Vista and can be downloaded for free here.

Another similar program to check out is LocalCooling which has been around for much longer and has the similar features (it can also shut down your computer).

Changing Microsoft XP power scheme settings determines whether or not power-saving CPU features are activated in a machine when idle.

All modern desktop CPU’s past the AMD Athlon XP and the Intel Pentium 4 (ie. AMD A64 & Intel Core and upwards) have some kind of speed-stepping feature built into them, which is utilised via Windows XP’s power management settings as per Orthogonal Thought’s blog.

What does this mean? Well, basically, if we all switch our desktop computer’s power scheme to ‘Laptop/Portable’, our computers will drop the cpu voltage and frequency when idle (provided the motherboard supports it, and most do), saving 30w (on average) – it’s like switching to an energy-saver lightbulb, essentially – and has absolutely no performance impact when not running idle.

Learn more: Intel SpeedStep, Windows XP, and confusing Power Profiles

But it doesn’t really matter if you use a laptop or a desktop computer if you don’t activate the computers power saving settings. And don’t think for a second that your computers screen saver saves energy. Unless the screen or backlight on a laptop or desktop screen actually turns off, a screen saver uses as much power as word processing.

So the best way to save energy is to activate your computers power saving features. Activate your computers sleep mode so that your computer goes to “sleep” while you are (afk) away from keyboard. But don’t worry! Activating the sleep mode doesn’t mean that the computer shuts itself off while you’re not around. All the work and things you were doing before will still be there when you return.

You can also choose to switch off your monitor or spin down the hard drives after a certain amount of time away from your computer. Your power settings also allow you to completely shutdown your computer if you haven’t used it for a while.

But doing all this can be tricky if you aren’t an experienced computer user. So the easiest way is to use a program called LocalCooling. It’s a neat program where it’s only downsides are that it only works on Windows computers.

LocalCooling let’s you easily decide what kind of power saving mode you want to use on your computer and it shows you how much energy your computer uses. The best part is that it shows how many trees, gallons of oil or electricity you have saved when having these power saving settings on. It’s really neat!

If you want you are welcome to join Green-Blogs very own LocalCooling group. This is how you do:

1. Download Local Cooling for free from http://www.localcooling.com

2. Install and set everything up as you like it.

3. Create an free user account over at http://www.localcooling.com

4. Login to your account in the program you’ve just downloaded. If you don’t you will not be able to track how much power you have saved.

5. Login to your account over at http://www.localcooling.com

6. Once logged in go to “My Account” and customize your account. Over at “Edit Your Account Details” look for a form called “Join a Group”. In this form you need to type in: “green-blog.org”

Now you have joined the Green Blog group!

Zonbu is a small, small like the mac mini, personal computer. But what’s special about the Zonbu is not that it’s so small, it’s that it’s the first zero-emission personal computer.

Zonbu runs on a linux platform with a 1.2 gigahertz processor, 512 meg of RAM and a 4 gigabyte flash card. That’s plenty to satisfy the majority of ordinary computer users.

This small environmental friendly computer consumes six times less power than a standard (energy wasting) light bulb. Did I mention the price tag for this beauty? Zonbu only costs $250 dollars.

But nothing is perfect in the real world. In order to get more storage space you need to subscribe to the Zonbox service. Zonbox will provide you with software and firmware updates and up to 100 gigs of storage space. It will even offset your Zonbu usage. Zonbox costs $12.95. Keep in mind that if you are currently using an older computer you can actually save those money off your utility bill when you have purchased Zonbu (older computers uses more energy).

Related articles about the Zonbu:
- Some Zonbu PCs Shipping with Double Flash Capacity
- My first two weeks with the Zonbu
- 22 Things to Know About the $99 Zonbu Linux PC