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What I am about to reveal may seem like a fairytale to anyone who has purchased a printer in the last 8-10 years, but it is how things were, even as recently as eight years ago.
There was a time in the printer industry when printers, by today’s standards, seemed to be very costly. They were built like tanks, and designed to last for years. They tended to be large and heavy, and people bought them thinking they would be keeping them for a long time. The cost of the consumables, ribbons, toner cartridges, or ink cartridges, cost only a small fraction of the cost of acquisition of the printer.
Back then, most people who had printers used dot matrix models. They were noisy and slow and they could barely print reasonable text, let alone graphics. The printers cost $400 to $1000 or more, and the ribbons, which lasted hundreds of pages cost $5-10 to replace. Even back then, companies sprang up making ribbon reinking systems and 3rd party or repack ribbon cartridges appeared, saving 50% or more on name brand product. The printer manufacturers sometimes made noises about their printer consumables being superior but didn’t much seem to care, however, because they were making their profit on the sale of the printer itself.
When laser printers came onto the scene, the scenario changed a bit. The printers were even more costly, still built like tanks, and the toner cartridges were large and complex, but still the cost was only a fraction of the printer cost and they typically lasted for thousands of pages before requiring replacement. Again, an aftermarket developed for both toner refills and reconditioned toner cartridges for those who wished to save on consumables. And although the printer manufacturers desired the extra profits from consumables, the main profits were still in the printer sales.
Several different approaches were taken to dealing with consumables with laser printers. Laser printing technology requires three distinct consumable elements, those being developer, toner and the image drum, each one having a different potential useful life. The toner powder itself is the only component that is used up in the printing process. Some printer manufacturers, therefore, provided each element as a separate replaceable part. While this lowered the price of maintaining the printer, it was more messy and required a better understanding of the printers inner workings to know which consumable had run its course and required replacement. It also required keeping more spare parts in reserve. Some companies integrated the developer and toner power into one product, both of which were fused onto the paper. That left just the image drum separate. Since the drum lasted many toner/developer replacements, that made some sense. Still another innovation allowed for excess toner which remained on the drum after the print was produced, to be returned to the toner supply and be used again. This lengthened the number of prints that could be produced per toner fill, and lead to smaller cartridges yielding the same number of prints. Ultimately, many companies moved to a self contained toner, which was replaced when the toner powder ran out. This allowed for a nearly clean process of replacement, but it increased costs of the toner cartridge since it contained a good part of the printer engine, including the image drum, which had a lot more life in it that one toner fill. That inspired more demand for toner cartridge refilling by 3rd party companies, such that some original manufacturers began to also offer a refilling or refurbishing program for their own cartridges, but at a premium over other providers.
These early printers were so well made that they rarely broke down. That meant they stayed in use for years, and were often resold for a second life. The problem with that was that the printers were being replaced very slowly, leaving the manufacturers with decreasing sales. In order to get some of these units out of circulation, some manufacturers began offering trade in or trade up programs, which eventually took many of these older, but well built machines out of circulation.
Having learned their lessons, the printer manufacturers released newer generations of printers which were smaller, less durably built, and with smaller toner cartridges, as much to reduce the size and weight of the printers as to give the consumables smaller yields. Still, the printer costs allowed for a great enough profit that the consumables were priced within reason as a small percentage of the cost fo acquisition.
When inkjet printers reached the market, the ratio of acquisition cost to consumables was still kept reasonable in the beginning. The ink cartridges were quite large and provided great quantities of output. However, competitive pressures and inability to broaden markets fast enough, plus the very substantial and rapid technological changes in printer technologies, began to push manufacturers into different sales models. They realized that price point was a key to increased sales, and the cheaper the printer could be sold for, the more market share that company could acquire. As pressures were brought to bear to speed up the replacement cycle, a race was on to the bottom price. Yet, the costs of research and development and manufacturing could not justify those low prices, so something had to make up for lost profits.
Birth of the “Razor Blade” Business Model in Printers
Years ago, when disposable razor blades came on the market, replacing straight razors which were sharpened before each use, in order to get people to switch to the new disposable blades, manufacturers of the blades gave away the blade holder. These holders were often quite elaborate in look. But giving away the handle was costly, so the loss was taken up by selling the disposable razor blades that fit them at a premium price. Thus the razor blade business mode was created and is still used to this day. Polaroid adapted a similar business model with their cameras and film packs, keeping the initial cost of acquisition of the camera low but the cost of film substantial.
With inkjet technologies, three different types of design developed. Early inkjet printers used a thermal head system that literally boiled the ink to propel it out of very small nozzles. This system is still used today for some models, with heads are usually incorporated within the ink cartridge Most of these cartridges are designed to be discarded after the ink runs out, but in reality, they can survive numerous refills until the image quality degrades or the head fails. A more recent variation on this is a separate ink cartridge and head, where the head can last up to 20 ink cartridges or refills.
Yet another design, called piezo (electric), uses numerous electronically activated mechanical pumps within the head. These heads were designed to last for many years without replacement, and all piezo head inkjet printers have ink cartridges which are separate from the heads..
When printer manufacturers were finding they were in the midst of a price war, the razor blade business model began to look like a good alternative. Buyers rarely research the cost of consumables prior to making a purchase, and keeping the cost fo acquisition low enough makes printers very inviting. It is often only after the purchase, that buyers determine how costly consumables could become. The cartridges were at first only made slightly smaller. Over time the printers began to be sold with “starter cartridges” which may only have had 50% of the ink found in a full cartridge. Cartridges became progressively smaller and smaller.
As the cost of printers dropped to gain new markets, the cost of consumables rose to compensate, allowing 3rd party cartridge and refill services to flourish, which offered 50-90% discounts on ink cartridges. With the cost of printers so reduced, and the business model designed for the ink cartridges to cover the profit margins, maintaining printer owners buying the original manufacturer’s cartridges became critical to the survival of the manufacturers.
This is the point where the changes really manifested. The battle between 3rd party consumable suppliers and the original manufacturers have moved back and forth in terms of victories. Printer manufacturers began introducing designs to make their cartridges unrefillable using mechanical methods, software and electronic circuits. Considerable R&D as well as manufacturing costs went into these design changes, some of which have made the printers more complex and vulnerable to reliability issues.
Different areas of the world have taken different approaches to this battle. In the European Union, green political forces allowed for legislation to pass which requires printer manufacturers to sell refillable cartridges for both their inkjet and laser printers starting in 2008-09. In North America, printer companies have used the courts to uphold their patents and copyrights, in some cases convincing the courts that 3rd party products should be tariffed or fined, pricing them off the market. To constrain EU printers form being imported into other regions, some manufacturers made their printers and cartridges regional so they will only work together.
Why does where the profit comes from matter for the consumer?
Some may be asking by now why it matters if the profit is in the printer itself or the consumables. The answer is a resounding yes!, and here’s why.
When the profit margin is built into the cost of the printer, that allows for several
considerations:
– the printer can be better designed and made to last longer
– repairing a broken printer becomes economically feasible, relative to replacement cost
– there can be savings in design and complexity otherwise used to confound refilling or in blocking the use of 3rd party consumables
– the marketplace can allow for availability of a greater variety of consumable options (different types of inks or toner sets other than those made by the manufacturer)
– cost of use per page become potentially lower
– more effort is put into designing printers which have best practice and newest technologies, rather than holding off for the next cycle
– new model cycling is slowed
– there is less impetus on the part of the owner to replace the printer
– printers are kept longer, saving energy, materials and less toxics end up in the environment
– printers keep their value longer
On the other hand, when profits are mainly generated from inks and toners:
– printers are designed to defeat refilling or use of 3rd party consumables and are designed with more complexity to accommodate these “features”
– printers are introduced on a short cycle with newly designed cartridges so they keep ahead of the refill and 3rd party designs
– printers which require repairs are more likely to be discarded and replaced
– printers which run out of consumables may just be replaced rather than just buying new peripherals
– printers are considered disposable and get discarded more rapidly, adding to the landfill and creating unnecessary and costly waste
Clearly, from an economic and well as an environmental basis, for the consumer and the planet, the “razorblade” business model is not sustainable, and particularly so with something as large and complex as a printer.
It is also clear that since this business model works for the printer manufacturers and therefore isn’t likely to change (in fact, it has now been widened to include products like color laser printers) unless the manufacturers are pressured into change. Legislation in Europe has forced refillable printer consumables. If those of us in North America wish to see similar results, we need to lobby our political representatives to do the same.
In my next several blogs, I will provide some suggestions on ways to shop for your next printer to give yourself better value, ways to economize on consumables, and get around some manufacturer’s restrictions. I will also offer information on which printers allow for easier refilling, and other tips to keep your printer out of the landfill longer.
The rumours of my disappearance are exaggerated.
Yes, this latest entry to my blog has been long in coming. In part, it has been due to my busy summer schedule, trying to get our house in order, building new shelving and storage, and other matters at hand. In part, it is because Canada is in the midst of a critical federal election which could change the nature of the geopolitics of this country and it’s many world associations, due to a party which could get majority power which has shown no interest in environmental responsibility, and which, in fact, barely acknowledges climate change. That has also distracted me considerably.
Lastly, however, this blog entry has been delayed because I knew it would require a series of articles to complete properly, since the subject matter is about perhaps the most resource wasting computer peripheral in the bunch, that being printers.
Part I: What Choices Are Out There?
Because of the impact printers have on our resources, from the consumables they use, to the business models being adopted by the manufacturers of the hardware, I will be writing about printers in several entries to come. The first segment, today, is a general overview of printer technologies and the nature of the printer market today. In future entries, I will be dealing with several of the printing technologies in use today, there benefits and pitfalls, what we can do to lessen our environmental footprint with those technologies, and where the future may lead us in the next several years.
Printers: a very necessary evil?
Long before computers, there were methods of reproducing paper documents. Early in our industrialization, they were the only method of distributing information other than word of mouth (the town crier), and in spite of all the great advances in communications, such as telegraph, radio, television, satellite and the internet, what has remained constant or grown in importance is paper document communication. Today, we produce more paper documents than ever in history. That’s due to the forever lowering cost of hard copy production, the increasing consumer global marketplace, and the fact that every home has one or more printing devices accessible to us.
In spite of talk of the paperless society, we are still heavily invested in paper printout. Our species is tactile in nature. We like to touch and handle things in the physical world. Paper is cheap and easy mobile, readable, and easy to annotate. But on of the main reasons for the failure of the paperless world to date is that other forms of storage are not yet trustworthy. In some cases, our legal system has not accepted electronic documents as legitimate, and the equipment involved for reading electronic documents is still bulky, costly, not as suited to our vision as reflective paper, and requires electric power, limiting access.
So, for now, we are still heavily invested in paper documents. Since this blog is addressed to mainly non-commercial and home computer users, I won’t go into the many multi-thousand dollar printing devices out there which are used in commercial printing facilities, but instead narrow this discussion to those printers used in the office and home environment.
Until recently, an easy distinction could be made between strictly business and text printers versus artistic and photographic output products. That line has blurred considerably with fast inkjet printers producing clear text, and color laser printers producing near-photographic image quality. Today, most printers are multi-function. In fact, many have now incorporated scanners, fax machines, and other abilities into printers, making the devices more complex and of more concern when it comes to discarding or replacing them.
Multi-function products have two principal advantages. One is their physical footprint is usually reduced from the space that would be required for several separate devices, and secondly, the multi-function units tend to be less costly than a group of individual dedicated units. However, that is where the advantage usually ends. The disadvantages are that should one function fail, it often leaves all the other functions unavailable. Further, if you need to ship the unit in for repair, you lose access to the other features until the unit is returned, and if the unit needs replacement, the cost of replacement may be more than just a dedicated device. From a design standpoint, multi-function products by their nature must be made less durable to keep size, weight and costs down. These considerations make them more likely to fail, and more difficult to repair, and should you wish to upgrade due to one feature set becoming obsolete, the whole unit is usually discarded. Therefore, in general, dedicated products are more durable, have more features within their individual functionality, last longer and are easier to repair.
Before dealing with what can be done to lower the environmental "footprint" of our printers, I’d like to offer a review of the field of products out there. Several of the products listed below are available as both dedicated printer models, as well as the so-called "all in one" or multi-function products which often include scanners, fax machines, and copier functions.
Black and White Printers:
The earliest computer-interfaced printers were daisy wheel and dot matrix models. Daisy wheel printer (named for the daisy flower shaped wheel which had a text character moulded into each petal of the "flower" and which spun around and impacted onto a ribbon) were basically electric typewriters which were redesigned to talk to computers.
Dot matrix printers use a series of pins which fire and impact a ribbon and paper in patterns to make letters and symbols. While daisy wheel printers have pretty much become obsolete, dot matrix printers are still in use today. Their main advantage, besides very low consumable costs, are that they do not require specialized paper, and due to their ability to impact the paper, they can be used with multi-part forms with carbon paper or carbonless chemically treated papers. They can handle up to 5 part forms, can work with continuous forms or paper, or unusual paper lengths. Their main disadvantages are they are slow and noisy, do not produce high quality output (neither in terms of resolution nor levels of grey scale), and they are typically used with preprinted forms and may become out of alignment or registration with the form, making things difficult to read. They tend to be quite durable and their main cost is a usually cloth ribbon.
Yet another black and white technology still used today for point of sale and cash registers and some fax machines, is thermal printing. This technology requires a heat sensitive chemically coated paper which is heated and which darkens when activated by a hot pin of a print head. Again, this technology is principally for text printing. It’s main advantage is that it is quiet, relatively fast, and the mechanism is small and doesn’t use much power. The main disadvantage is the paper required is chemically treated, doesn’t recycle particularly well, and the document is vulnerable to fading or darkening with heat.
Finally, there is laser technology, which is also used in photocopiers. Briefly, these devices create defined electrostatic fields on a drum or belt which then attracts a very fine dust made up of pigment, dyes, wax and resins (called toner). That powder is then transferred to a sheet of paper by transferring the static charge and finally the paper is passed through some heated rollers (the fuser) which melt the powder to the paper.
The advantages of this system are that the printing is fast, especially for multiple copies, the printer can print on numerous types of untreated paper, on both sides. The image is relatively permanent, and inexpensive. The resolution can be excellent for text and newer models can produce enough grayscale levels to print black and white photographic quality images. The image is waterproof and fadeproof.
The main disadvantage is the amount of waste involving the consumables. There are at least drums or belts that wear out, toner cartridges that may not be refillable, and sometimes developer units and waste toner jars required. I will get into more detail about the ways to avoid some of those pitfall in another blog entry in the future.
At one time, inkjet printers were also exclusively black and white. Today, all models provide color and black printing, so I will discuss them in the next section on color printer.
Color Printing Tecnologies:
The color printer market is much faster growing than that of the black and white. Fifteen years ago, prior to color inkjet technology, the cost of a color printer was prohibitive to all but commercial printer services. Then came the color inkjet and the world changed.
As mentioned, early inkjet printers were black ink only. They were slow, tended to be unreliable, clogged easily, and were often messy to work with. The output would smear, and fade, and the resolution was mediocre. That all began to change when Epson introduced a different technology for propelling the ink drops to the page. Continued competition in the inkjet market advanced the technology forward, more nozzles per head meant faster output, and eventually head production cost was lowered and made having multiple heads in one printer economical, allowing for color to be introduced. Over time, smaller and more controlled dots, better ink formulations, and specialized papers allowed inkjet technology to become the best photographic output available in computer printers and at a very reasonable cost. Those technologies differ based upon brand and age of the printer. The two basic technologies are referred to as thermal and piezo head design. Thermal inkjet heads heat the ink in a small tube momentarily, just enough to boil the ink and propel a drop out of the end of the tube and to the paper. Piezo heads use a vibrating quartz device which works like a small pump by changing dimensions with electrical charge. The piezo method has allowed for a wide variety of inks types to be run through inkjet printers.
Inkjet printers should have been the great environmental answer to printing. Lower quality output can be printed on basic bond papers, while high quality printing can be accomplished on specialty papers. Cost of ink is low, and the formulations can be changed for different applications, including using pigment colorant ink for fine art and permanent output, and, in theory, the printers can be built long lasting, with nearly permanent heads, and the ink cartridge could be refilled, leaving almost no waste behind.
Unfortunately, theory and profit motive conflicted completely. More on that to come in part two of this series.
The advantages of inkjet printers are that they only use their inks where required in the print. They need little resource, like internal memory, many can work with roll paper, and wider carriage versions don’t require a lot more technology or weight than the smaller desktop models.
The disadvantages are the need for special paper for high quality output, wasted ink due to the cleaning cycles to maintain the heads from clogs, and the fade potential and water solubility for certain ink formulations. And, a profit driver decision to confound cartridge refilling.
Yet another color technology is so-called "dye-sublimation". This technology is poor for text printing, because it produces relatively low resolution dots with soft edged, but the variety of colors it can produce is very wide, up to 16 million colors, allowing it to produce quality photographic output.
This technology involves a panel of mylar film coated with dye, the dimensions of the final print, for each color used. Typically that means 3-5 panels of dye per print, usually on a continuous roll. Each set of panels is used only once, for one print. The printed image is produced on a specialized receiver paper, usually with a glossy surface. The printers uses a heated head that produce a great variety of heat levels to vaporize the dye on the mylar and it transfers to the closely positioned receiver paper which has a special surface. The process is relatively slow and the machines are typically quite noisy. The main problems are waste and cost. The special paper is costly as are the dye panels. The paper is limited in size to that of the color panel sizes. The printer itself is usually rather costly, rather large for larger format output, and they rarely support output larger than about 11" x 16".
I’ve already discussed the basic mechanics and issues with laser printing technology in the black and white area. Color laser printers are just an expanded version of black and white laser, using the same technology but usually having four color toner cartridges; cyan, magenta, yellow and black, with much greater amounts of consumables and waste.
The last color printing technology I’d like to discuss is a lessen known one. Solid ink printers are a unique design, originally produced by Tektronix Corporation. This technology was later sold to Xerox, which now manufactures and distributes these printers. The printers use a colored waxlike ink which is heated into a liquid and then sprayed onto the paper surface. These printers use 4 colors of ink, cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Solid Ink printers have some interesting characteristics that make them a useful niche technology. Years ago, this technology was rather crude, and the dots were fairly large, making them of little value for photo-like imagery, which left this technology to business graphics and text. In more recent times, the dot size has been decreased to the point that something approaching photo quality can be reproduced. These printers are fast, can print on many surfaces since the ink and wax cling well to the surface of materials, including some plastic sheets. The cost per print is rather low due to the inexpensive nature of the color consumables. The other advantage of these printers is since the ink doesn’t require a lot of packaging for transport (they are usually just in a simple plastic package) and the delivery system to the printer mechanism only involves the melting of the solid ink with heat, so no cartridges or complex devices are required. Also, the distribution process of this waxy ink is relatively simple, somewhat like inkjet printers. Unlike laser printers, no optically or electrostatic sensitive drums are needed. All this means minimal consumables, which has some environmental and economic advantages.
However these printers are not without some disadvantages, as well. There design requires them to be relatively large, and they are noisy due to the highly mechanical nature of the printing process. Since the inks need to be made liquid by heating, these printers work best if left on all the time, although they can be left in a relative sleep mode to reduce energy requirements. If the printer is shut down, it requires a process of reheating and a purging of the heads to clear out the cooled inks, which causes a loss of consumables.
The inks themselves are waterproof since they are waxed based, but they are usually colored with dyes, which can fade in bright lighting and may crack off the surface of some materials if the printed surface is manipulated. The surface of the printed area, being waxy, cannot easily be written to, and the ink can transfer to other surfaces if the paper gets heated or abraded against something. Lastly, these pages cannot be laminated or coated, again due to their waxy nature.
Obviously, this print output is not for production of fine art images or for documents which will be handed regularly, However, for low number mass reproduction, such as short term advertising, this printing methods may provide a good economic alternative to other color printing methods.
What’s Next?
This ends my general overview of the currently available home and small office printer technologies, their basic operation, and under what purposes they are best suited. In the next segment, I will discuss the major problem with the business models being used by printer manufacturers and what you can do to get around them. In that segment, I will explain why today’s computer printers have so much in common with razor blades of old and why it is not a good thing for economics or the environment.
As always, should you have any comments or questions, please don’t hesitate to reply.
Art
By far, the largest quantity of e-waste comes from discarded computers, servers and their peripherals, including monitors, printers, scanners and the like.
These are the products that tend to be made obsolete most rapidly, either due to changes in the hardware, or more often, updates of operating system software, leaving many peripherals to become orphaned with no further drivers written to maintain an upgrade path.
Depending on who is doing the estimating, between 20 and 80 million metric tons of e-waste is generated world-wide each year. In spite of the known toxicity of many components, from lead to mercury, chrome, cadmium, and many more, the vast majority (about 80%) of these items still end up in the landfill. And of the 20% which is recycled, about 80% of that is currently shipped offshore to developing countries to dismantle and recycle. Besides the cost both environmentally and economically of shipping these items halfway around the world, there are supposed to be laws and agreements which make it illegal to ship many of these goods outside of first world countries. Still, the materials often end up in countries where facilities, tools and education regarding the risks of working with high tech waste are lacking, placing the people involved in the process, including young children, at great health risk, and contaminating the surrounding air, water and land. This is yet another case of wealthy societies downloading our trash to subsidize the real costs of our wastefulness.
Although only about 2% of the solid waste found in a landfill comes from e-waste, nearly 80% of all toxic materials come from that source. What that tells us is that e-waste, in general, and computers specifically, should never end up in the landfill areas. It is a source for toxic soup and a tremendous waste of raw materials.
The average desktop computer requires over 20 raw materials coming from the global resources of over 10 different countries, and the manufacturing processes require ten times it’s weight in chemicals and fossil fuels to become a computer. To provide perspective, cars use between 1 and 3 times their weight in the production and manufacturing process.
What all this goes to show is that buying and discarding a computer system shouldn’t be taken lightly. It also means that what we pay for a computer doesn’t reflect anywhere near its real lifecycle costs either in terms of labor and materials or moreso in terms of the environmental consequences. Yet, most people consider their computer of little value after only a few years. The newer machine are faster, run current software, and we are convinced by both hardware and software manufacturers that if what we have on our desks is more than a year old it isn’t good enough, while it was the most current, and desirable product just 12 months ago.
Most of us use a computer that is already more powerful than we require for the work we do. We use only a small percentage of it’s features or its capability. As an example, in my household we have three computers in use. The ones that are used the most are still running Windows 98SE, an operating system Microsoft officially stopped supporting over a year ago. One system, I built from new parts back in 2000 at the substantial cost of over $2000. Over the last 8 years, I have made upgrades of memory, optical drives and I have replaced failed and increased the size of the hard drives. I replaced one floppy drive, which failed, and the CMOS battery backup required replacement just last week. I am about to install a USB 2.0 card into that system as well. I did lose a graphics card, but that was the result of a deer mouse getting into the case through a rear vent and, how can I put this least offensively, the mouse urinated on the graphics board and shorted it out. This computer is used for 4-8 hours a day, very nearly every day. I surf the web with it, read and respond to email, and still do much of my graphic design on it. It will not run some of the newest software, and it is working with a processor that is about 3-4 generations old, running at .5 gigahertz. I will probably upgrade that processor soon to double its speed. However, most people would have replaced their complete system at least twice in that time period and still had failed components to deal with.
My wife also has a similar vintage computer, a sort of hybrid desktop/laptop model, also running Win98SE. It is getting long in the tooth, mainly because its design doesn’t allow for upgrading. My third computer is my newest, and it is a hand me down from a friend’s mother. It is 3 or 4 years old, and is running WinXP. Eventually, it will become my principal computer once I move everything onto it. I will admit that over the last 10 years or so, I have gone through a couple of laptops, all purchased several years old or given to me. Those experiences have convinced me that if one doesn’t require a portable computer, they are a poor environmental choice. Not only are they less durable, and more fragile, not only do they cost more for the same features, but they simply rarely offer upgrade paths, even if you can find parts or service, making them easy prey for the landfill.
Desktop computers tend to use more standardized parts, which are easier to come by and less costly. Exchanging or updating is much easier. The cases are more spacious and the mainboard tends to have many expansion slots, and one can add extra ventilation if required. In many circumstances, even the CPU/processor is replaceable with newer faster versions.
Upgrading a system that is a few years old can also save money. Not only is incremental upgrading less costly than replacing the whole computer, but often parts can be purchased either as surplus or used, if you do not require a leading edge product. You also can save the time and effort of moving all your software and personal data to a new system, and in some cases, you can avoid the learning curve of a new operating system or other new software packages.
When you do need to replace your system, consider buying or locating (sometime for free) a system that is a few years old, if it can provide you with the features you require. Computer salesmen will tell you how you must have the newest OS, which requires the newest hardware, or vice-versa. But that may not be what you actually require. Email and much of the internet will work on Win 98SE, (with some minor exceptions) and certainly on Win 2000 and XP. Many programs, sometimes older versions, work with older OSs as well, and they may be all you need.
Don’t let salespeople, your ego or your own discomfort with having an older system than your friends, lead you down the garden path to a computer which is more recent if you don’t foresee needing the extra features. Of one thing you can be quite sure, in the computer industry, six months down the road, or less, standards, software and hardware will have changed again, with more speed, more capabilities and will again probably be more than you require for the purpose you are sitting in front of a computer. Also, newer computers and peripherals, while less costly, are often not made as well today, and may not operate as long between failures. Obsolescence is being built into the design of these systems today, since the expectation is that the computer will be discarded in only a year or two anyway.
One other thing you will hear from both manufacturers and salespeople is that new computers use less electricity and therefore are "greener", and so you should replace your older model. This is not the whole picture. It is only within the last few months that computer manufacturers have begun to take a real interest in designing computers and servers with more efficient power supplies, components, and electrical usage, and with new firmware and hardware which can reduce total electrical usage. New OSs also have added some more energy saving methods that make for quicker booting, and quicker suspension modes. More of these types of design changes are just being introduced. However, some features found in new computers also are more energy demanding. Faster and larger hard drives, faster and larger memory and CPUs use more power as do some of the fast video cards which contain one or more processors on board. You may have noticed some graphics cards require several fans to keep them cool enough to work. Any time heat is created, electricity is wasted.
Within the next few years, more intelligent hard drives, or even solid state storage memory may reduce electrical consumption while actually making the computer more reliable, but that hasn’t quite happened yet. So, for now, the electrical savings are of questionable validity. Further, consideration to the loss from discarding a working computer, the recycling of that computer’s components, and any peripherals which will no longer operate with newer computers, nor the cost of manufacturing and shipping the new computer to replace it are not considered in these claims of "greener computers".
Although I have yet to find any accurate figures on the real "carbon and toxin footprint" of replacing a computer system, I can assure you that upgrading your current one, rather than replacing and discarding your older one will be more energy effective for now.
Another area where it is of questionable economic and environmental value is upgrading your monitor. Personally, I still use CRT monitors. Those are the large bulky glass tube screens we all had until a few years ago. I bought mine at the same time that I built my computer, that being about 8 years ago. It still looks fine. In fact, it looked so fine that I bought an identical model for under $10 at a thrift shop for my more recent "hand me down" system. Now, I will admit that we would have been better environmentally if CRT monitors and televisions had never existed, but they do and they were the only option until a few years ago. I will also admit that some better quality flat screen LCD screens are easier on the eyes, but from speaking to many individuals, I get reports that older high end CRT screens provided a better and more color accurate image than their newer flat LCD monitors do now.
Worse still, is that there is a huge glut of now discarded, perfectly good CRT monitors to be found in recycling facilities, thrift stores and the landfill, and they are a nasty combination of toxic materials, including a large quantity of lead in the glass used to make the CRT or "picture" tube. At minimum, these CRT monitors (and the same holds for TV sets) should be used until the picture degrades or they fail before being discarded. The current crop of flat screen monitors do use less electricity, but not hugely so. Also, the newer flat screen technology (LCD) will be replaced within the next 2 years by a new far superior and much less electrically demanding technology called OLED, which will cause many to once again wish to replace their monitors. For many considerations, it makes more sense to simply hold onto and use your CRT monitor, if you still have one, and use it at least until OLED is introduced on a large scale, skipping the LCD phase completely, since not only are the CRTs pretty reliable, but because when considering the huge environmental impact they have in their production, shipping and recycling, they should be used until they are at end of life.
Following are some recommendations on how to lower your environmental impact in regard to computers, monitors and other peripherals:
1) Use you current computer as long as possible. Don’t allow the hype of new features and faster results convince you that you need to replace your computer. Often newer versions of programs, besides costing extra, may actually run more slowly due to the bloated nature of the code, or features you’ll just never use. Also, replacing your system means extra time and effort moving programs and cleaning off your old system, learning new programs and perhaps operating system, and possibly losing the ability to use one or more of your peripherals if drivers of hardware technologies change, such as plug types or interfaces. As an example, it is nearly impossible to interface a parallel port printer or scanner, or a SCSI interfaced product, because most computers do not come with these ports today.
Often you can upgrade just certain components to speed up and improve response from your current computer, such as adding more memory, hard drive space, a faster video card, or an interface card that is faster. For instance, if you require USB 2.0, a card can usually be added to your computer for under $25. Parts are often available in liquidation or used on line from places like eBay, or local computer stores.
2) If you need to upgrade the full computer, consider buying something used or in liquidation if it will supply you with the features you require. Leading edge products often have flaws that may not be corrected until a newer model comes out, and these days any computer will be quickly replaced by newer technologies within months, anyway.
3) Avoid a laptop unless you require those features. Laptops are more costly, are not as reliably made, have a poor, if any, upgrade path, and use batteries which do not last the life of the computer, and are costly environmentally. Desktop models allow for considerably more upgrading, and because they have extra space for new cards and cooling, will last longer.
4) Replace only the peripherals you have to. If you must have a new computer and your monitor is still working well, the savings in electricity for using a flat screen LCD type will not compensate for the environmental damage involved in having to break down and recycle a CRT monitor. Use it until it fails.
5) If you are replacing your system, don’t store the older one away for future use. It will only get older. Either sell it, or give it away to a friend, family member with less demanding needs, or a charitable organization. Only consider recycling for truly "end of life" goods.
A good place to sell your computer is through a free service on line like:
From there you can usually find a Craig’s List near your home where you can offer your used goods.
If you wish to give away your computer (or anything else, really), see if there is a freecycle in your area. Freecycle is now active in about 90 countries and in many locales. Freecycle is a system where people advertise to give away things they no longer need or make requests for things they wish to have at no cost. No money changes hands on Freecycle and all transactions occur between the individuals, similarly to eBay.
To find if you have a local Freecycle list go to:
and click through to your local area.
6) If your computer or peripheral has finally reached its end of life, and no one wants it on any of the previously names services, rather than placing it into the garbage so it ends up in the landfill, check your locality to see if there are any services which take back and recycle or refurbish older goods. The options in this area are growing all the time. Some charities hold recycling days, some local businesses sometimes sponsor such things, and some manufacturers will take their own products or even other brands back, either for free or a nominal fee, or when you purchase a new product.
Beware of metal recyclers which can’t tell you where your donations will go. They may be "mining" the gold found in older computers which is quite valuable these days, and then, since it is still cheaper to ship these items to the developing world, they leave the less profitable parts for other countries to deal with. Some unethical businesses are still shipping these items offshore in spite of treaties and agreements and laws which often make it illegal to do so.
Some locales have volunteer technical training programs which offer job training so people learn how to repair computers and use donated equipment to teach on, allowing the students to keep a computer in lieu of time they spend and the organizations then may sell some of the equipment to fund the services. There are a number calling themselves "FreeGeeks" or similar names (warning: there also seem to be groups of nudists who use a similar moniker). One such ethical high tech recycling program in Vancouver BC Canada and if you wish to see how they operate, their website is:
You may wish to look st their website to get some ideas of what can be done on a local basis.
Where I live, in British Columbia Canada, and also in the neighbouring province of Alberta, an e-waste fee has been added to the cost of certain new products. This money is then used to fund province wide privately subcontracted recycling of the same types, but "end of life" goods, which are charged a fee. This allows sales of the leading edge products to help fund the cost of discarding older equipment. These materials are, by government requirements, fully recycled within Canada, in compliance with international agreements Canada is signatory to, which no longer allow for electronic toxic waste to be shipped out of the country.
As pretty and slick as a new desktop or laptop computer may appear, the consequences environmentally are considerably greater than what shows up on your credit card bill, and such decisions should be taken with careful consideration and forethought. There are global geopolitical consequences which each of us should weigh when we make such purchases. Consider reducing and reusing wherever possible if you are seriously interested in lessening your environmental footprint. It will also save you some money and some time.
As always, I am interested in your feedback, comments, and any solutions you have come across. My next blog posting will be dealing with peripherals such as printers, and some of the anti-environmental business models that have come out of that sector, and what can be done to lessen them.
Best Wishes,
Art
Being relatively new to this, I am probably about to violate one of the cardinal laws of blogging. That being, sending you away to look at another website because I would like you to have a visual to go with the blog which follows. I’m going to trust that once you take a look at the links you will return here. You may also wish to bookmark the links and take some time (after you read my blog, of course) to look at other pages there.
So, take a look at the images at these three links, sequentially, and then please return here…
http://www.winsorgallery.com/artists.php?artwork=jordan_13
http://www.winsorgallery.com/artists.php?artwork=jordan_14
http://www.winsorgallery.com/artists.php?artwork=jordan_15
The images you just looked at represent the over 426,000 cell phones that are decommissioned every day in the United States alone. That’s over 150 million cell phones per year, just in that country. Those phones are lost, thrown away, stored in boxes and dresser drawers, etc. A small percentage currently get recycled or reused, and as e-waste goes, we do better with cell phones than most other items because they are accepted for recycling at most stores that sell them, and they are easy to transport there.
Cell phone are full of resources and toxic materials. They are made of plastics, some with flame retardant added, which can be a carcinogen when heated, batteries which use heavy metals, and many precious metals such as gold and silver and basic metals like steel, tin and copper. Older models may have cadmium in the batteries and lead on the circuit boards.
Those 150 million cell phones that are decommissioned each year in the United States are not without value. If each of them were to have been recycled and just the most valuable metals were extracted and refined, over 5 metric tons (that’s 5,000 kg or 176,368 ounces) of gold, 2400 metric tons of copper, 35 metric tons of silver and 1.5 metric tons of palladium would have been reclaimed. Those resources alone come to several hundred millions of dollars in raw materials, not to mention the environmental savings it leads to by extracting relatively easy to refine materials from them rather than from the environmentally harmful methods used in mining, refining and shipping.
However, there is potentially something much more rare involved, and it places endangered species at risk, as well as fuels human war. Cell phones simply cannot be made without the use of a mineral called columbite-tantalite or for short coltan. It is a mixture of the elements niobium and tantalum. And although only small amounts are require per cell phone to make a specialized type of capacitor, in the year 1998, 525 tons of coltan were used in the US, of which 60% went into making tantalum capacitors.
One of the sources for coltan is the Democratic Republic of Congo. Unfortunately, the main reserves are found in places like Kahuzi Biega National Park and its surroundings, which are mountain gorilla sanctuaries. Coltan is surface mined by panning mud, and mining teams can accumulate up to 1 kilo a day, worth about $600. That money has helped finance a civil war as well as undermine the local culture and way of life. To more easily mine the ore, the land is stripped of its vegetation; the same vegetation that gorillas feed upon. As a result, the number of mountain gorilla just in that park alone have dropped from about 260 to 130, and there has been a 90% reduction of all species of gorilla in the D.R.C. over the last 5 years, leaving only 3000. Besides the loss of gorilla habitat, the decline is in part due to demand for gorilla meat to feed the miners. After the collapse of local economies created by the miners and war efforts, the sale of poached gorilla meat has become a desperate act of survival by local villagers.
The good news is that the D.R.C. only represents about 1% of the known global reserves of coltan, meaning their supply is not essential to cell phone production, and one major supplier of the capacitors is now refusing to buy materials from D.R.C. However, the illegal trade is still fuelling a civil war and deaths to gorillas, so we need to remain conscious of how raw materials we are basically throwing away can have vast consequences
What each of us can do to reduce our impact with cell phones:
1) In the US, cell phones have a very short life span, not because they break down, but because new features, and models or phone plans come along and people replace them.
You can lessen your environmental impact by keeping your cell phone longer, rather than replacing it with each technological change.
2) Buy the phone that does what you need. If you only need a phone to take calls, and you don’t need internet and photographic abilities, you may be able to purchase a refurbished slightly older model, reducing the need for another to be manufactured. Or if you have an older phone and need other features, sell or give your older model to someone who doesn’t require as many features, and they can purchase a pay as you go service plan.
Some businesses on the internet offer refurbished phones which are reprogrammed to allow you to call a special operator who can put calls through for you on a per call basis. These phones have a small one time or yearly cost.
3) Although this is a major secret that cell phone service providers would rather you not know, in North America (the US and Canada) and perhaps elsewhere, if you only need a cell phone to keep in the car for emergency use to call 911, know that all cell phones, even those without a service plan, will contact 911 if a cell tower is within range. This means pretty much any working cell phone, as long as the battery is kept charged, can be used in an emergency. In the same manner, your old cell phones can be donated to charities which distribute cell phones to people at risk so they can have mobile access to 911 emergency.
4) Many charities have cell phone collection drives where they will sell the phones they collect to a refurbishing or recycling company for cash.
5) Most cell phone stores have a collection box for old cell phones, working or not, which can be refurbished and given out to people at risk, or recycled so that the precious metals and elements can be reclaimed and reused.
6) Before you buy your next cell phone, ask if it is "gorilla friendly"? If the clerk gives you a strange look and asks if you’re buying a cell for a gorilla, educate him/her as to the problem with loss of gorilla habitat in the D.R.C. and that you want a phone that is guaranteed to use coltan from other locales.
Over the next several weeks, I hope to write about other high tech devices and peripherals, provide some stats, a bit about their global repercussions, and some solutions and choices we can make to lessen our impact. From there, I will look at some of the options of dealing with the e-waste we currently have stashed away, and different methods of giving it a second or third life.
As always, your comments, suggestions, questions and input are appreciated.
Art
While it may appear I have been absent from adding to the content of this blog over the last few week, that isn’t completely true. Obviously, there haven’t been any new entries for several weeks (my bad!), but I have been hard at work on putting together some new content, which I will begin adding over the next two weeks.
I want to provide a number of elements to this forum. For one thing, I want to provide an overview of the magnitude of the problem e-waste represents. I will also provide some interesting links to other web sources for articles and information, as well as some other recommended media. I hope to provide some links and discussion on some initiatives which are taking place around the world, offer some tips for what you can do in your locale both in terms of lessening your footprint, as well as in leveraging some political will and activism, and lastly, I will write about some of my recent exploits in trying to get government and big business to make changes toward better practices and discuss some of the interesting attitudes I’ve run into.
Before I go any further, I realized I never properly introduced myself, or explained my interest in e-waste.
I first became involved in my concern about the environment in early high school. A small ragtag group of students developed a club to discuss and mobilize environmental awareness. Even back then, in spite of the fact that all high school age kids are already full of angst and foreboding, we did realize the issue was grave. We called our group the "Environmental Crisis Coalition". We discussed and implemented some of the first municipal recycling programs in our state, responded and marched in the very first Earthday event in 1970, and developed an award to give to the worse offenders in local business and government. Even back then, we had some savvy about using the media to publicize activism.
Without going into a great deal of detail, during the next 20 or so years, I engaged with others in many events, activist groups, roundtables, and doing general grunt work to facilitate recycling programs, which were at the time still rather unheard of in much of the US. I recall speaking to people back in early to mid 1980’s about a new concept called "global warming", and watched people make the oddest facial expressions, like they were being confronted by a madman. Come to think of it, nearly 40 years later, some of those same looks appear on some people’s faces, but the tide has turned in terms of the percentages.
In 1990, I worked with Earthday Canada on some of the coordination of Earthday 1990. That event may have been a turning point in global awareness, at least in the western world, although it has taken well over another decade for people to begin to fully recognize the impact Global Climate Change and extreme weather conditions (I no longer use the term Global Warming because it is too easily misunderstood and debated) is having upon all inhabitants of this planet.
E-waste is just one element in the situation we find ourselves. Waste in general pretty much explains how we’ve gotten ourselves here today. We’ve allowed ourselves to think our affluence gave us permission to use and abuse resources. I became much more aware of this in my travels to the developing world. There, resources are respected and made use of over and over again. In many countries, human labor is one of the least costly part of lifestyle, and certainly the part that any individual can donate to themselves or their families to further their personal wealth. It’s the materials that are costly, so things that break or become otherwise obsolete, are repaired, reused or recycled. That’s an attitude we could all learn from.
As one example, I recall living in Cairo. I had a nice pair of wire rimmed variable density changing lens sunglasses. The wire that held the nose pad in place broke off the frame. I went to the front desk at the Cairo Youth Hostel and asked where I might find a store that sold sunglasses nearby. The clerk suggested I go to the bazar market and ask for someone to fix the glasses. In a developed country, that would have been considered poor economy, after all, just to look at such a repair might cost $10-20. But in Egypt, where goods were scarce, and an otherwise perfectly good pair of sunglasses was involved, the mentality was different. I went to the market and asked a gentleman who waved for me to follow him. He brought me through some small alleyways and through a small maze which lead to a small open air "back room" of a small jewelry fabrication business. There were a few older men working with torches making rings and bracelets, in silver, nickel and brass. One of the men looked at the damage to my sunglasses, motioned for me to wait, and before I knew what was happening, he had repaired the weld almost looking as good as originally. I asked "how much" and he waved his hand, "no charge" in is heavily accented English. I tried to pay but he would have none of it, saying "two minutes, no charge". That repair stood up for years of hard travel, and it taught me a important lesson about how we gauge value.
E-waste is a global concern. It has many environmental and geo-political angles to it. As a resident of this planet, that concerns me. I currently live in the Pacific Northwest within Canada, on an island that is about the size of the country of Israel. I’ve spent a lot of time living on islands, many much smaller than this one, some small enough to walk the circumference in a long day. If nothing else, islands make you aware of how reliant you may have to be with what you have. Sometimes, communications and goods shipments get cut off for days or weeks or longer. That makes me very aware of how much material has to move back and forth, including goods coming and leaving. The population of most small islands quickly become aware of how limited the supply of land is. Between housing, farming, any business or industrial application, there usually isn’t a lot around to be wasted, and because of the expense to truck garbage off islands, it often stays put. The conversation regarding waste and landfills seems pervasive most places I have lived, simply because it is all there in a big ugly mound, along with the assorted health and safety issues that come with it. From experience, I can tell you there just aren’t that many ways to make the content of landfills disappear. By far, the best I’ve seen is a small island near where I live which has a free store right on the landfill site. Because the island supports a fair amount of tourism, more comes there than leaves, so the locals created a simple way of reusing the "waste" discarded. Anything that can possibly be of value to another person is housed in a makeshift store, and people are encouraged to look through when they bring their own "stuff" to the landfill and take away anything they wish. The variety of things there is wide, but the main areas I noticed were, clothes, books, building materials, and small and large appliances, including e-waste.
To further divert the amount of tonnage to be dealt with, a rigorous composting and recycling program is also in effect, and it works well in reducing the size and impact of the landfill.
In my next blog, I will speak a bit about some of the global as well as more local statistics regarding e-waste production and provide some idea about how much recoverable material can be extracted from some types of e-waste, as well as what some of the global consequences of e-waste are, both from the aspect of how it gets recycled to civil wars over rare materials which we take for granted.
Please stay tuned for more. Your comments and questions are always appreciated.
Sincerely,
Art
First off, I want to apologize to anyone who has visited here looking for an update since my first entry.
This may sound like a variation of an excuse a young student might give his or her teacher, but my father died last week.
I didn’t write that to elicit sympathy. He lived a long life, had a relatively comfortable death after a short illness, and he went on his own terms, having clearly indicated that no extraordinary measures were to be taken to prolong his life. And in accordance with his wishes and religious practices, he was buried quickly, without embalming, in a simple pine box, and his body will return to its natural components, just the way nature intended.
My father was not "into technology". He never owned a computer or a cell phone nor used one, and the only blackberries he knew of grew on plants. He didn’t even know how to type. The only real electronics he owned were a telephone, a radio, a television, technologies which have stood the history of time, and later on, a VCR, which I’m not sure he ever fully understood how to use. Yet, somehow, in spite of this, he managed to raise a family, manage a business, maintain communications, and pretty much do all the things people need to or want to do with their lives.
In thinking about the belongings he left behind, most of them are made of basic materials, paper, wood, metal, glass, fabric, a few plastic items. The majority are either family keepsakes, or will go to a charity secondhand store where someone else will end up using them – furniture, clothes, household goods, etc. Not a lot has changed in kitchen goods over the last 30 years or so.
Being a child of the "great depression" my father had a strong sense of the value of things, and waste was just not acceptable. I remember him straightening out metal nails so they could be reused. For him it was about limited resources, both financial and material, but even as the family wealth increased over time, the philosophy of avoiding waste remained.
Both my parents’ environmental footprints were small compared to my own. Our home is filled with various generations of electronic gizmos, and piles of different storage media, waiting for a proper manner of recycling.
Perhaps we can all benefit from looking backwards to go forward. Perhaps repair and upgrade should be considered over replacement, recognizing the value of objects beyond what they cost to purchase. Some practices commonplace with previous generations toward limited resources might benefit us as we seek solutions toward developing and maintaining sustainable lifestyles.
Art
We all have some, so don’t be embarrassed. The question is, what do we do with it?
As someone wittier and wiser than I once stated, "you can never throw anything away, you can just throw it someplace else." Depending on where you live, different facilities and laws will exist in handing e-trash. Whether e-trash is allowed to be shipped out of your area, or to developing countries is also a matter of legislation and ethical considerations.
One thing is for sure, there are millions of tons of this stuff sitting in homes and warehouses, and it isn’t good for the landfill, or our air, soil, water supply or our health. It contains many toxic materials, heavy metals, and other contaminants. It also contains valuable materials once they are recycled and refined.
However, recycling is not without potential pitfalls if it is done on the cheap or without expertise. As such it is probably best considered a last "ditch" effort and is not always the greenest approach. Prolonging the lifespan of electronics makes good environmental and economic sense, because the raw materials, energy, shipping costs, and many other demands upon the planet made by the manufacture of electronics is never fully recoverable. So, the longer a piece of equipment can have a useful life, the less need to replace it with another one.
In this blog and discussion area, I hope to be able to provide a forum for exchange of ideas and knowledge about this all too important subject area. I will offer the resources I am aware of and that I become aware of, suggestions for good reading or watching or listening to, and I hope others will do the same, to make this an active locations for fresh ideas and innovation, activism, and community.
I look forward to a healthy and friendly exchange. Thank you for dropping by, and please add your comments and suggestions.
Sincerely,
Art Entlich
 | Stanley on Learning from the Past |
 | http://www.taksod.eu… on Learning from the Past |
 | have a collection pr… on Text Messaging Gorillas to… |
 | Donna K on Welcome to e-trashtalk |
 | David on Welcome to e-trashtalk |
E-trashtalk 