(photo by Kyle Wesson)

To the Land of Trucks

The most common way for Cornell’s old computers to be recycled begins with Walt Smithers and ends miles away at a recycling facility. Smithers, who has worked in Cornell’s Facilities Management department since 1991, says that in the past seven years, he has seen between two and four million dollars’ worth of obsolete equipment move through his department.

But discarding computers is easier said than done. As per regulations, Cornell has an obligation to dispose of computers properly since they are considered hazardous waste. (Computers contain lead, mercury, and other dangerous substances, as is true with most electronic equipment.) While it is possible to dispose of computers in landfills, this method does not absolve the school of further liability. If required, Cornell would have to pay expensive clean-up costs because the school is still responsible for the hazardous waste; landfills, then, do not pose a viable option for Cornell’s electronic waste.

Recycling, however, is a viable option. Since the computers are safely dismembered in the recycling process, this grants Cornell a C-7 certificate that absolves Cornell from further liability. Over the years, Cornell has used Rochester Computer Company to recycle the electronic waste by the truckload.

In Cornell’s Facilities Service division, employees must discard computers every three years. (The same is true in CIT labs.) This means that a computer’s lifespan is essentially predetermined at the moment it is ordered. As such, Cornell’s computer stock rotates, in effect, every three years.

As soon as a computer’s life ends, most faculty members pick up the phone and call Smithers and his team in to remove the waste. The discarded computer is carted back to the Facilities Management headquarters—a land of trucks and diesel engines—then stacked on crates, wrapped in plastic, and stored in a semi-trailer until the recycling company picks up the load.

One such load included 142 computers, 131 monitors, and a host of other electronics totaling 14,840 pounds. Of course, Cornell recycles much more than just computers. Smithers’ team also handles old TVs, servers, circuit boards, scientific equipment, and even supercomputers.

Smithers says that when CIT labs upgrade their systems or monitors, he and his team have gone into the labs and picked up 40 or more monitors that were all functioning just a day before. Because Facilities Management lacks the facilities and expertise to test and inventory equipment, more often than not computers simply get loaded into the trailer. Though the tonnage of recyclables has been going up over the years, Smithers predicts that the number will slowly decline. In the year 2004, Smithers recycled 104 tons. In 2005, the current estimate is 90 tons, but the totals have yet to be finalized. One reason for the decline is that technology is getting smaller—Smithers no longer has to “pick up servers the size of washing machines.” Additionally, the sweeping trend towards flat-panel monitors will mean less waste in years to come, since flat panels are much lighter than their forty-pound predecessors.

Despite the efficient and liability-free operation that Smithers and his crew run, others in Cornell’s CIT department have a different suggestion: rather than recycle all old computers, whether they work or not, one CIT technician has started to send the working computers to communities without access to technology.

From the Labs to the Schools

During his time as a CIT lab coordinator, Alan Heiman has seen the tremendous volume of fully functioning computers that Cornell sends away to be recycled.  Knowing that these computers could still have a life beyond the walls of Cornell, Heiman decided to begin sending Cornell’s own computers to schools in Africa where he used to live.

For many, recycling is an easy, feel-good word. But Heiman points out that recycling has a dark underbelly: recycling companies often take their stripped down computers and market them to Third World countries. He would rather see schools like Cornell donate “a continuous line of computers” to countries with little technology rather than have the recycling companies charge those  countries for the same parts. “It’s astounding,” he says, “just how little digital technology has reached the less affluent parts of the world.”

Heiman points out that Cornell recycles its computers every three years because of warranty limitations. Cornell cannot afford to have computers go down by the dozens after the warranty is gone. Since the warranties on Cornell’s lab computers are three years, CIT computers also have a pre-determined lifespan at Cornell, just as in Smithers’ department. Once the warranty is gone, so are the computers.

A high turnover rate of computers is not unique to Cornell. According to Heiman, “it’s estimated that all the computers replaced [in a year in the U.S.] would stretch from Boston to San Francisco and back again twice.” But in many cases, this high turnover is a byproduct of marketing rather than need. For the average user, a computer is just a tool for browsing the Internet or doing word processing—hardly tasks that need a gigabyte of RAM or 3.2 GHz processors. Essentially, the functioning computers that Americans quickly deem “obsolete” could be the latest technology in places like Africa.

South African schoolchildren receive donated computers from Cornell, thanks to the efforts of Al Heiman, who wants to reuse, not recycle. (photo courtesy Peter Talbot)