Friday, October 22, 2004
From the "There is No End to Human Ingenuity" Files
I've written about the complexities involved in electronic devices and components in issues such as this one of The Recycling Entrepreneur . When devices have recoverable amounts of precious metals and other alloys, the biggest hurdle to economic recovery is that of labor.
The amount of work involved in dissassembling and sorting the recoverable portions of a product ofter negates the contained metals' values.
Until now, this has been an insurmountable problem, and the results are frequently that boatloads of toxic, low value scrap gets shipped to Third-World countries where peasants and the wretched poor are consigned to literally pick it apart by hand, often poisoning themselves and their local environment in the process.
What to do??? Try this - apply recent advancements in memory alloys and externally-activated self-transforming material for the purpose of getting recyclable electronics to dissassemble themselves !
Imagine what the ability to have certain materials actually perform much of the labor now necessary to reclaim the valuable parts and separate the toxics and worthless scrap would mean to the recycling industry!
The amount of work involved in dissassembling and sorting the recoverable portions of a product ofter negates the contained metals' values.
Until now, this has been an insurmountable problem, and the results are frequently that boatloads of toxic, low value scrap gets shipped to Third-World countries where peasants and the wretched poor are consigned to literally pick it apart by hand, often poisoning themselves and their local environment in the process.
What to do??? Try this - apply recent advancements in memory alloys and externally-activated self-transforming material for the purpose of getting recyclable electronics to dissassemble themselves !
Imagine what the ability to have certain materials actually perform much of the labor now necessary to reclaim the valuable parts and separate the toxics and worthless scrap would mean to the recycling industry!
