No help for us to get rid of our computers
April 1, 2008 at 2:10 pm
What do you do with that old computer you are now ashamed to be associated with? It’s huge, it’s dusty and it’s got nothing on the new all singing all dancing model you’ve just got out of the box. Well it seems that none of us, including our local authorities, know what to do with the old machines and so many of them end up being perches for seagulls on landfill sites.
The consumer magazine Which? has raised the alarm on this issue and is making a strong case to be concerned. The magazine spoke to 109 of our local authorities and around 15% of them didn’t have a clue what people could do with them. "They just literally go into the landfill; they get smashed apart," so said one council representative.
Apart from the obvious and topical concerns in relation to the protection of the environment, there is also increasing awareness of data protection and many of the people who were surveyed didn’t seem to have thought about the files still on their PC when it’s dumped. If the government are being targeted, then there’s a good chance we all are, but 1 in 7 people in the survey said they’d just dump their computers on the tip.
So is it up to us or up to our councils? Well it’s a bit of both, but the councils have their minds on more regular items of waste it seems so it looks as though it might be up to us to make sure those old breeze-blocks of a computer go to the right place after use. Ring your local councils to find out more or you could donate your old computer to charities, such as Computer Aid, who find a new home for it.
Leave a Reply