e-waste

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Alright, maybe I'm on a bit of a rant here but an issue I have is how technology is so disposable anymore. Printer malfunctions, buy a new printer, program you need to use doesn't work, buy a new computer. I am so sick of this mindset that certain people have anymore.

Software companies don't help matters either. Let's say you have an HP Printer for instance, your printer is working fine and all of a sudden HP automatically updates your driver. Then following that your printer doesn't function or computer malfunctions altogether. You contact HP and absolutely get no help from them regarding the printer issue. Which means you try to solve the problem yourself. So you go on the Internet and try to find to old driver, install it and uninstall HP Update. Well guess what, you can't find this old driver and HP removed it from the web site. Some people (like me) may use up a good amount of time figuring how to get this printer working. If I can get this printer to work under Windows I'll use Debian, Linux BTW having great support for old and new printers. People who don't have time or tech expertise may just junk the printer and buy a new one.

Same goes with computers themselves. Back in '09 I bought a 2006 Compaq Presario from someone on Craigslist. Couldn't find any drivers on HP website but a useless keyboard driver. The computer was only 3 years old, why no drivers on manufacturers site. Adobe also dropped Flash Support for any Mac system that predates late 2006 Intel Macs. Which meant if you had a G5 system that you paid $2,000 for in early 2006 you couldn't even get Flash to work by early 2011. Only 5 years after making a nice investment in an Apple computer. If more websites supported HTML5 the better, anything to get off of proprietary software and standards/

My father told me back in 2008 that my career choice would get me nowhere. That if a computer doesn't work they'll just dump it and buy the $300 Walmart Special. At the time I scoffed at him and thought "People who want to save money will just fix and maintain what they have." Now if I think back at my failure as someone who refurbishes old computers maybe he's right. Nobody will buy an old Pentium 4 box with 1 GB of Ram for $50 when they can get a AMD Quad-Core with 4GB + Ram and Windows 8 at a big box retailer. Even if this Pentium 4 desktop could do just about everything an average user will use a computer for.

Now with XP support ending next year a lot of computers will probably end up in landfills. If not already thanks to Adobe and dropping PowerPC, Athlon XP and P3 support for Flash products. Happened where I lived when 98 support was being dropped, Pentium II's and K6's where being placed next to trash buckets and landfills where having a field day. Even P3 systems that needed nothing more than a Memory Upgrade to run XP ended up in landfills.

Anyone agree that e-waste is a huge problem that needs to be addressed. Our drinking water and planet is at risk of this planned obsolescence garbage.

A lot of E-waste can be handled. I have taken a ton of old electronics to Best Buy for recycling as well as dumping old CDs and DVDs into their bins up front.

As for dumbasses dumping stuff anyway, I'm not entirely sure how that filters through the Landfill system.

I'm not sure how Landfills operate for profit, but I wonder if they really just dump it all into a pit, or if they sift through it. For example, would a big Magnet on a crane yank out the metal? Scrap metal can add up to a lot of money. I guess to me, Landfills are kind of a big unknown.

The landfill where I live just dumps it into a huge pile, saw it myself during a field trip. I stripped all my computers of plastics and useful parts and take the metal cases and such to a recycling place that pays me cash for the metal. Same goes for all of the wiring that I want to get rid of.

If you live near a major city, you likely have an e-waste recycler. Even smaller cities have them. I use CEAR in a Sacramento suburb. E-waste is dangerous, and in many states like CA it's illegal to simply dump it in a landfill. People still do, but the govt here makes every effort to get e-waste out of landfills and handled properly. You even have to turn in old fluorescent bulbs, since they contain mercury. I have an old smoke detector that no longer works, and those f**kers are radioactive. It falls under CA's law, but I'm not sure how to get rid of it. I don't know if CEAR will take it. Anyway, if you find an e-waste recycler, you could go around collecting people's old computers and stuff and take them in. People might even pay you $5 or something for your trouble and taking it in for them.