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A significant challenge to a green ICT industry is e-waste.
"Electronic waste" consists of no longer wanted computers and
peripherals, electronic entertainment devices, networking
equipment, mobile phones, and other electronic items. The EPA
refers to obsolete computers as "hazardous household waste."
Unfortunately, electronic waste all too often ends up in
landfills, where toxic components, like mercury, sulfur, lead,
cadmium and PCBs, transition into our environment. In the
process, other valuable resources like copper, aluminum, iron,
silicon, nickel, lithium, zinc and gold are not recycled, so
our society spends valuable greenhouse gas emitting energy to
extract these resources from nature and process them to meet
future needs.
 In
the U.S., some 70% of heavy metals in landfills come from
discarded electronics, about 2% of total trash in landfills.
The EPA estimated total unwanted electronics at 2 million tons
in 2005, with discarded electronics representing 5 to 6 times
as much weight as recycled electronics. The U.S. National
Safety Council estimates 75% of all personal computers ever
sold are now gathering dust as surplus electronics. E-waste is
one of the fastest growing areas of our society’s enormous
waste stream.
Increased regulation and concern about environmental harm from
toxic electronic waste has raised disposal costs. Because the
U.S. has not ratified the Basel Convention or its Ban
Amendment, and has no domestic laws forbidding the export of
toxic waste, some 80% of e-waste directed to recycling in the
U.S. does not get recycled here. Rather, it is exported to
developing countries, many with lower or less
rigorously-enforced safety protocols than the U.S., creating
environmental and health hazards for others.
Sadly, all of this takes place in a society with an enormous
“digital divide.” Many of our citizens cannot afford expensive
electronics and associated services and therefore do not
participate in the digital economy or realize its many
benefits in their lives.
 One
community college based initiative to address this enormous
problem on behalf of green ICT is Silicon Valley StRUT
(Students Recycling Used Technology). Based at Mission College
in Santa Clara, CA, co-founded by Intel, StRUT’s mission is to
provide technology and academic standards-based education for
K-16 students through the process of refurbishing donated
equipment (from industry) for schools and to reduce e-waste to
landfills.
StRUT provides: a computer technology education program,
technology resources for schools, and a materials e-waste
program.
SVStRUT accepts all technology, office, test and manufacturing
equipment that can be refurbished for resale. School programs
teach students relevant skills; students evaluate, repair and
refurbish the equipment; and those computers are provided free
to local schools. StRUT students gain valuable computer
knowledge and hands on computer skills, and students benefit
from increased access to computers.
In its certificated Computer Technology Course students learn
computer internal systems, repair and maintenance, input and
output devices, Internet research, diagnostics and software.
They expand their knowledge of computers as they build fully
operational computer systems used in their schools, and they
learn bookkeeping, reporting, inventory control, technical
reading and writing, ethics, teamwork, leadership and
presentation skills. The program also teaches the processes of
materials recycling and remanufacturing in an awareness of the
e-waste issues of a technological society and economy.
StRUT currently serves 20 elementary, middle and high school
sites, It has placed over 4,500 free computers in schools,
worth over $3m.
Program goals are to:
• Develop programs where students gain valuable technical and
business management skills by refurbishing and upgrading
computers.
• Place these computers in schools throughout the state in
order to supplement those purchased by the districts and to
keep these used items out of the landfills.
• Help give students the skills and confidence they will need
to compete in the "High Tech" industry.
• Reduce landfill content by responsible recycling and
reclamation
MPICT Regional Partner Ohlone College has a Silicon Valley
chapter of StRUT. In April, 20 teams from 10 secondary school
partners of Ohlone will participate in a StRUT competition in
which winning team members receive high quality laptop
computers donated by Symantec.
MPICT applauds Green ICT StRUT!
www.svstrut.org
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