by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Environment Minister Phil Hogan officially opened the Rehab Recycle Reuse center of excellence yesterday (November 21) in Tallagt. He said: "Schools, charities, community groups and start-up enterprises using a PC professionally refurbished by Rehab Recycle will enjoy at least three or four years of productive use.
"This effectively doubles the life of a PC, in effect halving its environmental footprint while making a significant difference in someone's world."
Ireland is currently leading the way in Europe recycling an average of 9kg of WEEE per head of population - 3.5kg above the European average. If just 5% of Ireland's WEEE was reused, 320,000 items of electrical equipment would re-enter the second life market.
It is a shame that Britain is always limping behind when it comes to the likes of such centers and efforts. It would seems that Britain has always the consumer society in mind before the environment and such like.
Once again other countries lead and Britain hasn't even looked at anything like that, it would appear. Instead we send our computer and other electronics abroad to be “recycled”, which more often than not means to places such as India and West Africa when the dismantling happens in very unhealthy conditions.
Obviously, we couldn't possibly make refurbished computers available for free or little money to those that could do with such older machines, ideally reloaded with Open Source software.
Oh well... maybe one day...
© 2011
