Green Tech Girl

Just a quick note to express my frustration that computers seem to have a clock that kills them just a little bit after the one-year warranty is up. Maybe that means more money for the computer makers, but it’s just soooo much electronic waste. I have an old Pentium II that was custom built 10 years ago and the darn thing still works. It’s been there as a backup of my backup computer, in case nothing works and I need email. I guess they don’t make them like they used to.

I have an old Sony Vaio laptop, a Pentium III. I had installed the Ubuntu distribution of Linux on it back in December. It was working OK but the computer was starting to freeze at odd moments. The breakdown would inevitably occur after a very ominous KACHUNG KACHUNG sound from the hard drive.

I wasn’t sure if it was the Linux distribution causing the problems. I had heard from a friend that PCLinuxOS was a very good Linux distribution that happened to run very fast, particularly on older computers. So I downloaded it (Linux is, after all, free) and installed it. No go. The computer was now worse off. (more…)

Another good quiz from the Sierra Club:

How Green is My PC?

The amazing “picture within a picture” photographs on Chris Jordan’s website show us in stark visuals how much waste we create on the planet on a daily, hourly and minute-by-minute basis. All the pictures are chilling, but the one that got me the most was the one depicting “426,000 cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day.”

A half a million cellphones retired each and every day in the United States? Geez oh pete! What are people doing with these cellphones? Dropping them out of 10-story windows? I’ve had mine for a few years now. Let’s get over our constant upgrade addiction, shall we?

The Sierra Club has a quiz on the energy efficiency of various television technologies. You can take the quiz here. (I got a high score even though I guessed on many of the answers.)

I was interested to find out that my guess that it’s better to keep my old CRT than trade it in for a large widescreen was right - keeping the CRT is probably the more eco-thing to do. Why? (more…)

I just bought my first printer in nine years. Yes, that’s right, nine years. When I say I am anti-consumerism, I really mean that. If something works, I don’t just throw it out to get something new. I have a perfectly good 1994 HP LaserJet that still does the bulk of my printing. In 1999, I bought an Epson color inkjet. That was the last printer I purchased. I wasn’t using it that much, but it, along with an old printer/scanner combo a friend gave me, finally bit the dust.

So I went to Costco and got a new Canon all-in-one printer for around $100 with tax. This thing is amazing. It prints, it scans, it copies, and it faxes. And excuse me for sounding like an old fart here, but back in the day I used to own a printer, a copier, a fax machine and a scanner. Trying to find homes for these items in my then one-bedroom apartment was a challenge. My home copier was actually situated on the top of my fridge. (more…)

OK, I realize it is a bit ridiculous that I live by myself and own three television sets. To be fair, however, they are older sets, the big heavy behemoths of yesteryear: two 27″ screens and an old 13″ TV with a VCR built in.

The 13″ was being thrown out by a roommate years ago, which seemed like a waste, so I snagged it. It’s now in my office near my computer. The second 27″ a friend gave me (her landlord had it sitting around gathering dust). It’s now in my bedroom. The third 27″ is in the living room. I like it, actually. It’s big enough to see but it doesn’t take up too much space.

So I guess I don’t quite see the point in this constant TV-upgradamania that we seem to be going through. HDTV - why should I care? I have enjoyed TV for decades without HD so I miss HD about as much as I miss 3D TV. Which is…never. (more…)

I was at a friend’s over the weekend and we were playing some games on his Xbox 360. It seems that every time we’re in the middle of a game, one of the wireless controllers dies due to weak batteries. I have to wonder: Is it really that much better to go wireless when you constantly need to change batteries? The wired controllers never needed a battery switch.

I do have a wireless mouse on my desktop. I use the computer to watch TV sometimes and a wireless mouse serves as a remote control of sorts. I use rechargeable batteries to avoid creating unnecessary waste. Still, there is something to be said for having wires that power up a peripheral instead of batteries.

One of my best friends in the office is a label maker. It is a small machine that has a keyboard with a tiny screen and all it does is output sticky labels. I finally got one to get some serious organizing done and I find it truly makes my filing 10 times easier.

I also re-use my folders this way, by applying new labels over the old ones.

Yet, I have to wonder. Which is worse for the environment: Throwing out used folders and killing more trees to make new ones, or re-using folders by sticking on a label that requires new tape, a piece of electronics, and waste in the form of a used tape cartridge?

Another option is to create new labels with a computer, but that also takes up paper, involves adhesive, and uses up printer ink.

I suppose I could just handwrite on the sheet of computer labels, but for some reason that seems to drop my productivity and organization by a huge amount.

I think my biggest concern with the portable label maker is the cartridge. There seems to be no way to recycle it.

Perhaps I should just get one of those old fashioned label creators, that punches it out on a simple roll of tape.

But then I wouldn’t have my fancy label-making toy. See…I’m now justifying my e-waste. Shameful, really. Oh well.

I have an old HP LaserJet from something like 1994. The darn thing cost me a whopping $600 when I bought it (tech prices were higher back then, and still this was half of what it cost when first released in 1993). But HP printers were built like tanks back in the day. (Sadly, their quality has declined precipitously in recent years.)

After 14 years of use, and having lugged the thing through something like seven moves and from Los Angeles to Seattle and back, that darn LaserJet 4P still works…with 600 dpi clarity. I’ve gotten my $600 worth and then some.

The LaserJet was an extremely frugal machine, toner-wise. I have bought one cartridge of toner to have it last me for years. Not so for printers these days. If you buy most printers on the market (ink-based machines), you could be purchasing ink once a month if not more, depending on usage.

To get around purchasing these ridiculously expensive cartridges, some owners have taken to refilling them instead of buying new ones. This is not only economical, but environmental. This is good, right?

Well, not to HP. While HP has been crowing about its cartridge recycling program, it has quietly been adding expiration dates to its cartridges, so that customers will not be able to refill them after a certain period of time.

Meanwhile, Staples is no longer allowed to carry remanufactured toner cartridges for HP products, and HP itself refuses to make them, citing quality issues that are frankly bunko. (I actually just got two remanufactured cartridges for my 4P from DataProducts through Costco’s website - a $50 savings per cartridge, as well as the more environmental option.)

In angry response to the ridiculous expiration on ink cartridges, one resourceful user found out that if you pull out the printer battery for a few minutes, it will reset the CMOS memory and you can use your expired cartridges. (Full instructions with photos are here.)

Planned obsolescence might seem to be good business on the surface, but it’s bad business in the long run. While I love my old LaserJet 4P, the high prices of its replacement cartridges, coupled with the shoddy manufacturing of its newer products, is enough to make me look for printers from another brand. Now, upon finding out about their draconian cartridge policies, I’m even less inclined to purchase something from HP ever again.

No amount of recycling can make up for creating too much useless e-waste in the first place. Maybe it’s time you started putting your money where your mouth is, HP.