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Recycle Your Electronics ... Into Furniture!
Eco awareness and geek-chic style merge in home furnishings made from the gadgets of days gone by
Houzz Contributor. I'm a Silicon Valley-based writer, columnist and blogger, covering technology and culture. http://elgan.com
Houzz Contributor. I'm a Silicon Valley-based writer, columnist and blogger,... More »
Consumer electronics are fun and useful — at least, while they’re still working. When a gadget’s functional life is over, most people just tuck it into a drawer, put it on the pile in the garage or recycle it. But where do electronics go when they’re recycled?
The answer to that question is Silicon Valley’s dirty little secret. To oversimplify things, there are only two kinds of recycling: ethical and unethical. Unlike other common recyclables, such as newspapers, cans and plastic, consumer electronics are complex. They’re made up of hundreds or thousands of tiny parts, materials and chemicals. They can’t just be tossed into a vat and melted down like plastic bottles, aluminum cans and other materials can.
Electronics have to be painstakingly disassembled by hand. And to do it safely requires lots of really good industrial practices and skilled labor. And that’s expensive. So most of the electronic junk we “recycle” gets shipped overseas, usually to some of the poorest parts of India, Nigeria and China, where entire families toil away in unsafe conditions to strip the reusable chemicals and metals from the electronics.
The problem is that people think recycling electronics is about only the environment. But the most urgent problem of electronic waste is the health of the people who work in the shoddy facilities and who live in the towns where electronics are disassembled for recycling. (To learn more about this issue, you can watch this video and visit the Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition website.)
The good news is that things are getting better
The processes for recycling are getting better. And a rising percentage of electronics are being processed domestically, rather than shipped overseas. In the meantime, there’s something cool you can do (besides recycling responsibly) to support the cause of responsible electronics recycling: Embrace recycled-electronics furniture.
The answer to that question is Silicon Valley’s dirty little secret. To oversimplify things, there are only two kinds of recycling: ethical and unethical. Unlike other common recyclables, such as newspapers, cans and plastic, consumer electronics are complex. They’re made up of hundreds or thousands of tiny parts, materials and chemicals. They can’t just be tossed into a vat and melted down like plastic bottles, aluminum cans and other materials can.
Electronics have to be painstakingly disassembled by hand. And to do it safely requires lots of really good industrial practices and skilled labor. And that’s expensive. So most of the electronic junk we “recycle” gets shipped overseas, usually to some of the poorest parts of India, Nigeria and China, where entire families toil away in unsafe conditions to strip the reusable chemicals and metals from the electronics.
The problem is that people think recycling electronics is about only the environment. But the most urgent problem of electronic waste is the health of the people who work in the shoddy facilities and who live in the towns where electronics are disassembled for recycling. (To learn more about this issue, you can watch this video and visit the Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition website.)
The good news is that things are getting better
The processes for recycling are getting better. And a rising percentage of electronics are being processed domestically, rather than shipped overseas. In the meantime, there’s something cool you can do (besides recycling responsibly) to support the cause of responsible electronics recycling: Embrace recycled-electronics furniture.
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| There are three benefits to making or buying furniture made with recycled electronics. First, it guarantees that the electronics used never end up in some horrible Third World sweatshop. Second, it makes a bold statement about the need to recycle responsibly — not out of sight means not out of mind. And third, recycled-electronics furniture adds a geek-chic feel to any room. What are you trying to emphasize in your design schemes? What inspires you? One cool approach emphasizes the industrial design of bygone electronics. The idea is that an electronics product by itself is a thing of beauty. So integrating it into a furniture piece elicits admiration. Such products can be objects of fascination because you no longer see them anywhere. One example is this Crunching Numbers G4, which is a coffee table made with Macintosh G4s. The machine itself is obsolete. But the product is too beautiful to destroy or discard. Repurposing it into furniture lets us remember it. Another example is this homemade reel-to-reel coffee table. Some people are geeky enough to find beauty in the electronic guts of an old computer system. A circuit board or some other component can show symmetry and beauty. |
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| Benjamin Rollins Caldwell’s Binary Collection represents an extreme example of this genre. His Binary Low Table screams hard-core tech. It’s all nitty-gritty components and parts, and not disassembled. |
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| Electronic junk can also be displayed not as electronics or industrial design, but as the junk that it is. For example, a friend of mine decorates his entire Christmas tree each year with shiny, sparkly electronic parts that he would have otherwise discarded. This stool is made by Rodrigo Alonso with electronic waste, epoxic resin and melted aluminum. It's sold in limited editions and also in custom configurations. |
Ideabook updated on Sept. 11, 2012.
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Picture 2: I guess you'll need another $15,000.00 for paying the dust lady over the years. ☺