4 ms·

This sounds weird: "DPS sends its outdated Chromebooks to an electronics recycling vendor" Why would the recycler be a 'vendor'? Is the district sending them l

This sounds weird: "DPS sends its outdated Chromebooks to an electronics recycling vendor" Why would the recycler be a 'vendor'? Is the district sending them laptops and paying them? I'd have thought competition would mean the winning bid would be offering to pay the district something (even if only $20 per device) rather than requiring payment.

opwieurposiu 3y ago
Colorado's local governments have a surprising amount of corruption just underneath the surface. Kickback schemes are common.
toomuchtodo 3y ago
Commercial quantity electronics recycling has a cost component because it would not be economical otherwise to process the waste stream. This is not uncommon at all, to have a vendor you pay to recycle your e-waste. This is not the same business as recycling scrap steel, aluminum, or other materials. https://info.mayeralloys.com/ewaste-blog/why-is-there-a-recycling-fee-for-electronics https://info.mayeralloys.com/ewaste-blog/why-is-there-a-recy...
- rahimnathwani 3y ago
  I understand the idea in principle: there are potential costs for data protection and environmental safety. But in this particular case: 1. The laptops are being disposed of not because they have physical faults, but because their software is out of date. So there are no toxic materials to be disposed of. 2. These laptops were used by children, for school work. They don't contain state or commercial secrets, so the hard drives don't need to be shredded. 3. Even if there are secrets on the laptops, it's sufficient to do a single-pass erase before install ChromeOS Flex. I'm really curious: if someone were to give you 1000 4-year-old Chromebooks, of which 200 had physical faults and the remainder had only software issues, how much you would spend (on labor for re-imaging and physical cleaning, and on processing waste materials) vs. how much you'd recover by selling the laptops on ebay.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Okay, so lets say you were going to avoid e-waste recycling because of the points you mentioned. You will need to do the following: 1. Get approval by way of an exception in the process to sell any devices still functional while still processing non functional devices through an e-waste vendor. 2. Paying someone per hour to wipe the devices to ensure no school or children's data remains, and confirming this has been done (otherwise, reputational and data loss risk). 3. Paying someone per hour to facilitate selling these devices second hand. Keep in mind labor shortages currently across the country, and why it is cheaper to write a check, ship these devices to a shredder at the e-waste recycler, and get a certificate of destruction back that no one is going to harass you about. Colorado minimum wage is $13.65. It is ~$400 to process one ton of e-waste.
    - rahimnathwani 3y ago
      I understand that it makes sense to outsource this work, rather than doing it in-house. I wasn't suggesting the district do it in-house. What I don't understand is: why is the market-clearing price for this service positive, instead of negative? I wonder how much net profit the recyclers make, per ton.

opwieurposiu 3y ago

Colorado's local governments have a surprising amount of corruption just underneath the surface. Kickback schemes are common.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

Commercial quantity electronics recycling has a cost component because it would not be economical otherwise to process the waste stream. This is not uncommon at all, to have a vendor you pay to recycle your e-waste. This is not the same business as recycling scrap steel, aluminum, or other materials. https://info.mayeralloys.com/ewaste-blog/why-is-there-a-recycling-fee-for-electronics https://info.mayeralloys.com/ewaste-blog/why-is-there-a-recy...

rahimnathwani 3y ago
I understand the idea in principle: there are potential costs for data protection and environmental safety. But in this particular case: 1. The laptops are being disposed of not because they have physical faults, but because their software is out of date. So there are no toxic materials to be disposed of. 2. These laptops were used by children, for school work. They don't contain state or commercial secrets, so the hard drives don't need to be shredded. 3. Even if there are secrets on the laptops, it's sufficient to do a single-pass erase before install ChromeOS Flex. I'm really curious: if someone were to give you 1000 4-year-old Chromebooks, of which 200 had physical faults and the remainder had only software issues, how much you would spend (on labor for re-imaging and physical cleaning, and on processing waste materials) vs. how much you'd recover by selling the laptops on ebay.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Okay, so lets say you were going to avoid e-waste recycling because of the points you mentioned. You will need to do the following: 1. Get approval by way of an exception in the process to sell any devices still functional while still processing non functional devices through an e-waste vendor. 2. Paying someone per hour to wipe the devices to ensure no school or children's data remains, and confirming this has been done (otherwise, reputational and data loss risk). 3. Paying someone per hour to facilitate selling these devices second hand. Keep in mind labor shortages currently across the country, and why it is cheaper to write a check, ship these devices to a shredder at the e-waste recycler, and get a certificate of destruction back that no one is going to harass you about. Colorado minimum wage is $13.65. It is ~$400 to process one ton of e-waste.
  - rahimnathwani 3y ago
    I understand that it makes sense to outsource this work, rather than doing it in-house. I wasn't suggesting the district do it in-house. What I don't understand is: why is the market-clearing price for this service positive, instead of negative? I wonder how much net profit the recyclers make, per ton.