A Word About Recycling with Ollie Maier

Continuing with a little more on Dell’s significant recycling/resource-saving efforts as started last week, with information taken from an article in the E-Scrap newsletter.

Not only is the Dell computer company collecting many, many no longer used computers — theirs and others — restoring and updating some of them to a usable condition, but it is also using many of the materials taken from breaking down those it can’t do anything with to put into materials for new computers.

In this effort, I found that since 2014, Dell has used about 100 million pounds of recovered materials in its products. Their goal of 100 million pounds was met during the first half of 2019. Last year, 2018, they used 22 million pounds of recovered materials. This was 31 percent greater than 2017. This was primarily due to an increase in e-plastics usage.

A breakdown of the 22 million pounds used in 2018, is somewhat interesting. Of it, 13.7 million pounds was from e-plastic. Another 7.7 million pounds came from post-consumer plastics such as water bottles and CD cases. Added to that, 636,000 pounds was carbon fiber from the aerospace industry. Also 660 pounds was recycled rare earth magnets and 5 pounds was gold from scrap motherboards.

I feel Dell is not only being a good steward of the natural resources this country has been blessed with, but is providing an outstanding example of what can be done for other companies to follow.

Switching subjects somewhat, I found not all things are designed to be repaired. Another article from the same newsletter opened with: “In comments to federal regulators, Microsoft recently explained why the company might choose repair-hampering design factors when developing its products.

“Designs or policies that may appear to limit self-repair or repair by an unauthorized agent should not be assumed to be harmful to consumers.” These were comments submitted by Microsoft for a meeting regarding making electronics more repairable.

The July 16 meeting featured representatives from companies involved in trying to make such items more repairable. Some of these were: The Repair Association, iFixit, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) and the Consumer Technology Association (CTA).

However, Microsoft was the only electronics company that submitted comments in opposition to right to repair.

I found that most repair advocates have been in support of state legislation which would force OEMs to provide information, parts and tools to enable independent repair of such electronics.

But Microsoft believes that other factors should also be considered when looking at the repairability in the design of an item. For example, they use a battery which is attached using adhesives rather than screws (thus cannot be easily replaced). By using adhesives, they are able to install a battery which has a measurable longer life, which customers enjoy.

Microsoft is also concerned that if an electronic item is designed so it can be repaired by some companies which have not had the necessary training, many security measures built into the devise might be by-passed. Such companies might also extract personal information on the device for their unlawful use. While I like the idea of things being fully repairable, I feel Microsoft has some good points to also consider.

Till next week, do have a enjoyable and safe one...

--

Ollie is a local citizen concerned with the environment and helping others. A retired Air Force fighter and instructor pilot, he is a graduate of Leadership San Marcos and received his degrees at Texas State University where he worked on staff before totally retiring. For questions or comments, he invites you to call him at 512-353-7432 or email omaier@txstate.edu.