[FreeGeek] A thought about recycling

[Eric Worthy]

When I as down at the LinuxFest in Bellingham.  There was a Seattle based
recycling organization called RE Lectronics.  This organisation has goals
which closely match freegeeks in terms of ŒRecycling²  old electronics incl.
computers.  They had a silent auction of functional machines as part of the
show.  

Machines that could not be restored to life or were too old for practical
re-use were stripped down sometimes completely to the wire and plastic.

Often they had components that were repurposeable, eg stepper motors, gears.
I though that these parts could have a decent second life if designers knew
they existed and that there was a sufficient quantity to make it feasible to
design a use for them.  The rub is that individual recyclers like these guys
and freegeek would not likely produce a critical mass of componentry on
their own and so no centralized marketplace for usable pieces is possible.

However if all of the recyling organizations could combine their recovered
components list through a shared database, sufficient quantities to
establish a market might be generated.  Universities, technical schools,
designers, hobbiests and prototypers could access the database and actually
design reuses for these components based on availability.  This would reduce
their development costs, generate some revenue to fund continued recycling,
and produce significantly less waste overall.

Naturally somebody would need to build the database, recyclers would have to
populate it with information on the parts they had in inventory.  There
would need to be a Œstorefront¹ and a way to aggregate sold inventory so it
could be shipped to the buyer.

All of this is feasible should the will and technical expertise be
available.

Anyway my thoughts for the day FWIW.

Rick Worthy
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