TECHNOLOGY FOR PEOPLE GROUP INC.
Reuse, Refurbish, Recycle
Recycling made easy less difficult
Illustration by Elling Lien
I know, I know: You really want to recycle those freakin’ newspapers and these friggin’ cereal boxes and that flippin’ infinite stream of yogurt containers. But this whole “environment comes last” attitude exuded by, well, every level of government in the province makes it so much easier to just toss it all in the garbage. And since almost everyone else throws theirs away, maybe yours won’t be so noticeable in the Robin Hood Bay landfill. How will anyone know it’s your old Commodore 64 in there, right?
Wrong. Every little bit counts. Here’s a rundown of some of the recycling options available to you here in the city.
The Easy Way
Indeed, the simplest way of all is to pay for curbside pick-up. Atlantic Blue Recycling
has been on the go for about 14 years and they’ll gladly zoom over to
your place to pick up your recyclables—cans, bottles, paper, plastic,
everything—for the low, low price of $19.53 a month.
The real catch? Every second week, they ship the ten tonnes of waste they collect 1,300 kilometers via transport truck to be processed in P.E.I. So it’s not exactly what you’d call a carbon-neutral solution.
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The Transport-It-Yourself Way
If you have the means, be it a car or a healthy set of legs and a
sturdy rucksack, there are many places around the city that will
relieve you of your recyclables.
You can cart your used beverage containers to one of the many so-called Green Depots around the city. Each one is its own private business. (The closest one to downtown is Ever Green Recyling at 92 Elizabeth Avenue.) They’ll refund all the deposits on your wine, beer and juice bottles too, so you’ll walk away with cold, hard cash in your hands.
Unfortunately, they all ship their collected goodies to P.E.I. too.
In terms of recycling paper, plastics or cardboard (aka fibrous waste) you can’t go wrong bringing it all to MUN. Massive blue receptacles line their hallways (there’s one in the basement of the Science building that always has tons of room), and they’ve got a contract with Newfound Disposal to haul their contents to the Nova Scotia-based Scotia Recycling plant in Airport Heights, where it is all processed on-site. Score!
Any chance they could take care of bottles, too? “I wish,” says Scotia president Dwight Whynot, “but there’s just not enough volume to make the investment in the equipment worthwhile. In Nova Scotia, there’s a ban on these materials from landfills, but Newfoundland doesn’t have this legislation.With cheap tipping fees at the landfills, it’s a lot easier to toss it than to recycle it.”
If you happen to be traipsing around the downtown or Churchill Square areas of town with a newspaper and/or paper cup, feel free to deposit them in the appropriate slots of an OMG bin, over fifty of which dot the city. OMG Atlantic is another Nova Scotia-based company and, according to their General Manager Jeff Clements, they set up their boxes here, free of charge, in 2002, as a compliment to the curbside recycling program that the city had just started talking about. “Well, six years later, there’s still no recycling program,” he sighs. “But that’s really what they’re for—a compliment to curbside recycling.”
In other words, don’t dump a week’s worth of your recycling into those bin. Used properly though, each OMG box diverts a half of a tonne of waste per year and they send everything they can over to Scotia. (That’s right, the two companies from outside the province are the two companies processing inside the province.)
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The E-Waste Way
“E-waste” refers to electronic devices which are either discarded or
about to be discarded and the bulk of it is made up of old computers.
Until recently, the only real option for getting rid of this stuff was
a landfill, but as of this April, Matthew Della Valle has incorporated
his group Technology For The People (www.freewebs.com/tfpgroup/)
and is ready to take it all off your hands. He and a few associates
build new computers from old ones, and sell them for 50 to 75 bucks a
pop to community organizations and low income individuals. He and his
team will also train people to use them, free of charge. “We’re not
just there to recycle, we’re bringing computer literacy by training
people to use these machines,” he says. “That could help them get jobs
or just be more independent.”
He also makes lamps out of old CDs, stringing LED lights through stacks of them. “It gives off this amazing ambient light,” he marvels.
—
The Best Way
Plant stuff. In anything. Old two litre pop bottles, with the tops
trimmed, will hold herbs, which grow all year round in a kitchen
window. Old buckets and bins, with holes cut in the bottom, will hold
zucchinis, tomatoes, flowers, ferns, whatever. Use bits of newspaper
and colorful glass for mulch and you’ve got yourself some love.
Living Newfoundland & Labrador Feature
Technology
for People Group Inc's Founder and Executive Director
making an appearance on CBC's,
Living NL with Erin Sulley on
Friday November 14th, 2008 Check it out at the following link in the Living Newfoundland & Labrador search bar type Recycling Computers and click on the video and enjoy!
http://www.thetelegram.com/index.cfm?sid=102847&sc=79
The Telegram (St. John's)
Front, Tuesday, January 29, 2008, p. A1
Electronic wasteland
Province lacks recycling program for hi-tech trash
Moira Baird
The Telegram
Where does your old computer monitor or TV go when you're done with it?
Probably the nearest landfill - unless you make quite an effort to find a
new home for electronic waste. And your options are few.
The province doesn't have legislation requiring the recycling of electronic
products, such as computers.
Matthew Della Valle has a basement full of desktop computers and big plans
to refurbish them for those who can't afford the latest model.
A self-described computer hobbyist, Della Valle founded a not-for-profit
organization called Technology For People Group (TFPG).
"There's no infrastructure for e-waste in Newfoundland," said Della Valle.
"This problem is so vast that unless we start focusing and trying to deal
with it now we won't be able to. We'll be in over our heads."
Della Valle is in the process of incorporating TFPG, he has a board of
directors consisting of people working in the technology industry and he's
looking for a building to house the organization.
He's also spreading the word to businesses and other organizations about
donating their computers to TFPG.
"We're letting them know that we're out there," said Della Valle. "We just
secured about 70 computers from the College of the North Atlantic."
In 2005, it's estimated Newfoundland and Labrador generated 2,606 tonnes of
electronic trash, including computers, cellphones and TVs.
Those numbers come from a 2006 study carried out for the Nova Scotia board
overseeing that province's new, e-waste recycling system.
Nova Scotia produced 4,484 tonnes of e-waste in 2005; Atlantic Canada, a
total of 11,281 tonnes.
Next month, Nova Scotia starts diverting computers, printers and televisions
from its landfills. Next year, the program will expand to include
cellphones, scanners, faxes and VCRs.
Computers for Schools also finds new homes for computers - collecting and
refurbishing computers donated by the provincial and federal governments and
large corporations. Only Pentium 4 models are accepted.
"We've identified the needs that are out there, and we're doing the best we
can," said Vanessa George, executive director of Computers for Schools
Newfoundland and Labrador.
The program has provided more than 27,000 computers to Newfoundland schools
since it was founded in 1993. Of those, 3,764 computers were delivered last
year.
Older computers are recycled with funding from the provincial Department of
Education.
"Overall, it is one for one, pretty much," said George.
These end-of-life computers are shipped to a Quebec-based company that
dismantles them, shreds the hard drives and removes the recyclable metals
such as copper and trace gold.
"In the recycling project with the schools, we've recycled close to 500,000
pounds since April 2005," said George.
Josh Lepawsky, a cultural geographer at Memorial University, is in the early
stages of tracking and mapping Canadian e-waste globally.
He also wants to find out how much of Canada's e-waste is illegally shipped
to Third World countries where it is melted down for its base and precious
metals. The byproduct is carcinogens and toxic fumes.
Most e-waste programs are funded by consumers who pay a disposal fee
whenever they buy electronics.
"Newfoundland doesn't have legislation on the books yet," said Lepawsky.
"Anything that an individual consumer would do is completely voluntary."
If the industry paid the cost itself, Lepawsky says companies might be more
inclined to design their products for "easier disassembly and reduce the
kinds of toxins embedded in them."
CRT monitors, for instance, may contain up to eight pounds of lead.
Lepawsky says the "carbon footprint" of the average computer may not be
shrinking.
"You're actually expending a fair bit of energy to pull stuff out of the
landfill, break it down into parts, but you're not getting away from burning
energy to do that. It's a real conundrum."
mbaird@thetelegram.com
Illustration(s):
Category: Front Page
Uniform subject(s): Computer and electronics industries
Length: Medium, 524 words
© 2008 The Telegram (St. John's). All rights reserved.
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E-waste: the underlying effects and the efforts that organizations are trying to make
by Tonia Pilgrim
One
of the major environmental problems facing the world is the increase in
waste. Electronic waste –so-called- e-waste – from cast off computers,
entertainment devices, electronics, and mobile phones is one of the
most common causes of waste today.
In Canada, more than 140,000 tonnes of e-waste is sent to landfills every year, according to Environment Canada. Newfoundland and Labrador produced 2,606 tonnes of e-waste, in 2005, and in Atlantic Canada 11,281 tonnes.
Matthew Della Valle, from St. John’s, has started a company to help solve the problem of e-waste, through recycling. Technology for People Group (TFPG) is a not-for-profit organization whose aim is to help reduce e-waste in landfills and to refurbish old electronic equipment for schools and low income families.
Della Valle has been in business for two-and-a-half years and has refurbished 40-45 computers, which were either sold or given away. He started fixing computers for friends, and the idea has blossomed into TFPG:
“I
want to get this issue out to people who can’t afford computers, such
as students who have student loan payments. It helps reduce their debt
and makes computers accessible to people who can’t get a hold of these
things,” said Della Valle.
The College of the North Atlantic has
donated 70 computers to the organizations. Some are in working order,
others aren’t. These computers will be fixed to be distributed.
E-waste causes many problems, besides filling up Canadian landfills - it’s being shipped overseas to third-world countries for processing.
“The biggest problem with manufactures,” said Della Valle, “they are convincing people to upgrade their computers, and this is fine for people who can do this every year, but the computers that are being tossed out are usually in working order. Why can’t they bring their computers to organizations like TFPG so that they aren’t tossed away?”
Countries with lower environmental standards and working conditions such as India, Africa and Pakistan are often unaware of the toxic nature of e-waste, which is disassembled, burned and disposed of - causing major health problems for those people. It can cause neurobehavioral effects, chronic kidney damage and sensory or neurological impairment. It has become such a problem that China, formerly a major destination of e-waste, has banned its importation from outside the country.
Della
Valle said there are businesses who take e-waste, saying they want to
help with the problem, but they are really just scrap dealers.
“They are taking computers and electronics and selling it overseas for
very cheap and it is an illegal operation. There is a whole city in
China that is built on e-waste, there is garbage everywhere; even the
rivers are black from this” said Della Valle.
E-waste is a valuable source for secondary raw materials, such as lead, mercury, cadmium, PCBs and up to 38 different chemicals. If it isn’t treated properly, it is a major source of toxins and carcinogens. There are approximately 4,750 tonnes of lead in personal computers and televisions that are disposed in Canada, each year.
Della Valle said that people are burning metals and plastics that contain very dangerous chemicals and even radioactive elements, which cause cancer.
In the 1990s some European countries banned the disposal of electronic waste in landfills. The ban helped create e-waste processing plants. In Canada, many companies have started to create a “safe haven” for e-waste.
Countries such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the nations of the European Union now require that sellers and manufactures of electronic products be responsible for recycling 75 per cent of unwanted electronics.
World Computer Exchange (WEC) is an organization in North America that is trying to help find a solution to the increase of dead electronic equipment. With a team of 20 global experts, it is trying to make people aware of e-waste and how to become e-waste recyclers.
Another company, Computer Recyclers Inc, located in Ottawa has been recycling materials from government, industry and consumers for a low fee, since 1993.
The goal of both organizations is to educate people on the harm of e-waste and to create facilities that are safe for e-waste recycling, so the computer don’t have to be sent to landfills or shipped over seas.
Steve Walsh, a web administrator with Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in Corner Brook, said the college uses most of their old computers for student works program. The rest of the computers are sent to a local organization, Computers for Schools, which are distributed to schools in the Western District.
Computers for Schools have three locations in the province: Corner Brook, Gander and St. John’s. It was co-founded in 1993 by Industry Canada and the TelecomPioneers and refurbishes computers for schools in the Eastern, Labrador and Francophone Districts. The computers used are usually donated by governments and businesses.
TFPG currently sends out computers for recycling to Simms Recycling Solutions, Brampton, Ontario. Della Valle is hoping that eventually the company will be able to process the computers in St. Johns and create jobs in Newfoundland.
“I am a Newfoundlander, I want to help fellow Newfoundlanders. This is something from the heart, something I believe in. We (Newfoundland) are the heart of the world, between Europe and North America. If we can make a difference here then maybe we can make a difference in many other places,” said Della Valle.
The Scope Thu, Dec 4, 2008
By Sarah SmellieCity