[FreeGeek] A thought about recycling

[David Repa]

Hello Eric,

>  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

Yes I agree that there are many components that can be re-used in
different settings.  We are going to be taking motherboard batteries
and selling them as batteries for bike lights.  I think we must be
vigilant in making sure items that contain toxins are not used in this
manner.  Brominated flame retardants are a good example.  Many older
plastics used highly toxic BFRs and I would hate to see us putting
toxic items back into the public.  Also many older items did not have
energy conservation in mind. These are just some random thoughts..and
I am plyaing devils advocate a bit.  So many tough issues.  Can you
tell I just got back from the recycling conference?

>  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

However it may allow people who abuse stock piles of this type of
equipment to track it down faster.  For example people shipping mixed
copper items to China.

>  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 'storefront' and a way to aggregate sold inventory so it
> could be shipped to the buyer.
>

While working in the automotive recycling world we used a very similar
database.  I could parts all over North America.  It took significant
people hours to fill these databases.  I do however think that certain
types of hard to find computer hardware should be databased in this
fashion.  Especially legacy hardware.

Eric, these are interesting ideas, would you mind if we took this
conversation tothe recycling mailing list?

--
David
604-690-7372