Canada cracks down on illegal exporters (e-waste)
February 21st, 2011 | 
Author: Two Canadian companies have pleaded guilty to attempting to illegally export e-scrap and discarded batteries, resulting in fines of tens of thousands of dollars.
Jieyang Sigma Metal Plastic Inc., a parent company of J.S. Chen Recycling of Toronto, pleaded guilty late last month to three charges of violating Canadian environmental laws regarding the export of e-scrap. The company paid $30,000 in fines. The penalties against the company, which could not be reached for comment, are the results of an investigation conducted by Environment Canada in concert with Transport Canada that began in the fall of 2007.
The charges stem from an inspection at the Port of Vancouver, where officials examined two containers and found about 1,200 used lead acid batteries and seven CRT monitors inside. One container had been refused entry by China due to a shipping error, and was subsequently sent back. The second was destined to Hong Kong, but never left the port in Vancouver.
N.W. Cole Associate Appraisers Limited also pleaded guilty late last month to a similar charge, and paid a $10,000 penalty. The prosecution came after a nearly two year investigation by Environment Canada into the Halifax-based company, which arose from an inspection that turned up old computer and electronic parts. The charges against N.W. Cole Associate, which could not be reached for comment, related to a lack of a permit for the exportation of e-scrap.
Full Article: http://resource-recycling.com/node/951
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Fujitsu’s Plastic-Free Mouse Designed for Composting
LONDON, United Kingdom — Fujitsu is expanding its use of non-petroleum-based materials with a new mouse featuring a compostable shell.
The company’s M440 ECO computer mouse is made with two wood-based materials that can be disposed of in industrial compost settings, and the remains can be recycled as well, Fujitsu says.
The mouse’s shell is entirely made from Arboform and Biograde. Arboform, produced by TECNARO, is based on lignin, a pulp industry byproduct. The lignin is mixed with natural fibers and natural additives to create a composite that can be processed and molded. Biograde is a wood cellulose-based material made by FKuR, which combines the cellulose with acetates to make synthetic fiber and bio-based plastic. In addition, the mouse’s cable doesn’t contain PVC.
Full Article: http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2011/01/25/fujitsu-plastic-free-mouse-designed-composting?utm_source=Green+Biz&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GreenerComputing+%28GreenBiz.com+|+Computing%29&utm_content=Twitter
Thriving business of illegal e-waste recycling in Seelampur
11 Jan 2011 Last updated at 03:20:06 GMT
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NEW DELHI, INDIA (Scrap Monster): Here you find heaps of computers, motherboards, CRT monitors and hard drives and working on them are not engineers or IT experts but poor people who belong to slums who risk their health to work in contaminated surroundings to earn a living.
The place is Seelampur, in East Delhi located in India’s capital city, considered to be India’s largest illegal electronics dismantling, recycling, and selling market.
People here are mostly engaged in extracting gold and copper from circuit boards of a computer, some extract metals independently, some work with big traders, most earn about Rs. 200 per day Tehelka reports.
People in Seelampur, live their life with scrap electronics, they sleep and dine over the electronic circuits, they burn electronic motherboards for heat.
Informal processing of electronic waste causes serious health and pollution problems. Some electronic scrap components, such as CRTs, contain contaminants such as lead, cadmium, beryllium, mercury, and brominated flame retardants.
Even in developed countries recycling and disposal of e-waste may involve significant risk to workers and communities and great care must be taken to avoid unsafe exposure in recycling operations and leaching of material such as heavy metals from landfills and incinerator ashes. Scrap industry and USA EPA officials agree that materials should be managed with caution, and environmental dangers of unused electronics have not been exaggerated.
Full Article: http://www.scrapmonster.com/news/thriving-business-of-illegal-e-waste-recycling-in-seelampur/9/133
How to Set Up Recycling at Your Workplace
- Form a “green team” – Approaching recycling as a team can help ensure the success of your recycling program. A “green team” is a group of employees interested in recycling and helping to set up a program.
- Determine materials you will recycle – Performing a waste audit can help. A waste audit is an inventory of the amount and type of solid waste (trash) produced at a location.
Commonly recycled business items:
- Office paper
- Magazines and catalogs
- Newspaper
- Cardboard
- Aluminum cans
- Plastic bottles
- Toner and ink jet cartridges
- Contact your property manager – Find out if there are any recycling programs in place. Ask them to provide office paper, cardboard, aluminum can and plastic bottle recycling as a service to building tenants. Remind them that recycling can reduce waste disposal costs.
On your own – If your property manager cannot provide recycling, or you are a small business, meet with your green team and decide what materials you want to recycle.
- Contact a recycling company – Interview multiple companies and get price estimates for providing a dumpster and pickup services. Most recycling companies provide rebates on materials collected.
These companies provide recycling pick up services in the Kansas City region. They will provide a dumpster and establish a regular pick up schedule to meet your needs.
- Drop-off Recycling – If pickup services are not an option, another option is to take your recyclables to a drop-off recycling center.
- Coordinate collection – with the recycling service provider, janitorial crew and/or staff. Think about:
- Small bins – You can provide durable recycling containers to each staff person or ask them to use copy paper boxes or something similar at their work stations. Decide what type and size of bin to locate next to printers, fax machines and other machines that generate paper.
- Central bins – Locate large recycling bins in copy rooms or break rooms.
- Collection – Create a regular schedule and determine who will pick up recycling from the small and central bins. It may be staff, janitorial crew or a combination.
- Drop-off recycling – If your staff is using a drop-off collection center, set up a team and schedule for taking recyclables to the center. You may also need to determine a place to store recyclables.
- Communicate all this information to your entire staff and janitorial crew.
- Educate staff
- Distribute fact sheets describing the new recycling program for employees and janitorial staff and post updates on your company’s intranet site.
- Provide bins and collection containers as mentioned above.
- Mark containers with signs labeled by item. It is helpful to use the “chasing arrows” recycling symbol.
Full Article: http://ewastedisposal.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-to-set-up-recycling-at-your.html
NASA sold Space Shuttle PCs without wiping secret data
December 8, 2010 – 3:03 P.M.
For sale, used computer packed full of secret NASA Space Shuttle data. As part of a plan to securely end the Space Shuttle program, NASA is getting rid of old computers. However, NASA officials failed to delete sensitive data on PCs and hard drives before selling the equipment. The Office of Inspector General found “serious” security breaches at NASA centers in Florida, Virginia, Texas and California.
NASA is full of very bright minds, so how did it manage to make such a noob mistake of selling PCs without wiping the hard drives? An audit [PDF] found 10 of 14 computers that failed tests to ascertain they’d been wiped properly. One computer that was to be sold still contained sensitive Space Shuttle data, which was subject to export control by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations.
All electronic storage media is supposed to be wiped of data “to the degree that there is reasonable assurance that the data cannot be retrieved or reconstructed,” the audit stated. NASA approved software for sanitizing hard drives include DBAN (Darik’s Boot and Nuke), Secure Erase, and WipeDrive/WipeDrive Pro. Contractors in charge of deleting sensitive information used DBAN and Active@KillDisk – which is not NASA approved at Johnson’s disposition center. Ames used BCwipe, which is DOD compliant, but not NASA approved. USA used Symantec DateGone which is not approved by NASA, DOD or NSA.
Hard drives were missing from Langley Research Center in Virginia and from Kennedy. Some of those hard drives from Kennedy were later found inside a dumpster that was accessible to the public, the audit says.
Article Link: http://blogs.computerworld.com/17500/fail_nasa_sold_space_shuttle_pcs_without_wiping_secret_data
Related: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11947721
Related: http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/security/3252509/nasa-sold-pcs-without-wiping-sensitive-data/
