Have you ever had an old computer or printer or monitor that you wanted to sell, only to find out there were no buyers? Have you ever had an old computer or peripheral that you hoped to donate to a charity, only to find out there were no takers? Have you ever had an old computer that you just wanted to throw away, only to discover that that’s not the environmentally acceptable way to dispose of it?##M:[more]##
If so you can appreciate the challenge faced by the West Windsor-Plainsboro School District, as it seeks to dispose of the mountain of obsolete equipment generated every year by the constant advances in technology. At the August 28 meeting, the Board of Education authorized the disposal of a long list of equipment, including the following items, with the number of each listed in parentheses:
Apple 580 Computer (2), Apple G3 Computers (315), Apple Power Mac 5400 (7), Compac DeskPro (1), IBM PL300 (88); IBM Think Pad (3); VGA Monitors (107); WYSE Terminal (150), 3Com Super Stacker Network Switch (114), HP Deskjet 684 (1), HP Deskjet 694 (25), HP Deskjet 720 (18), HP Deskjet 810c (19), HP Deskjet 845 (2), HP Deskjet 890 (9), Lexmark Optra S 1625 (4), Lexmark Optra SC 1275 (3), Lexmark SC1275 (1), Oki 5400 (1), HP Scanjet 4p (1), HP Scanjet 5200c (1), and ScanMaker II (4).
Some of the equipment was nearly 10 years old, says Rick Cave, district director of technology. The Apple G3, he notes, is roughly comparable to a PC running a Pentium I or II processor — technology that was introduced in 1997.
Until recently, reports Cave, the district had the same challenges the rest of us had. “We are obligated to first make the equipment available to the public for purchase,” says Cave. “We’ve done that for the past four or five years and never had anyone buy a thing. We have tried to donate it to charitable organizations and never had any luck.”
But the recycling market has changed the dynamics. “In the beginning we had to pay a couple of thousands of dollars to have someone take it away. Then we found one that would do it free — if we loaded it on pallets. Now we found a company in Clifton that would do it for free and pack it themselves. They just wanted us to tell them where it was. They took out three truckloads.”
Apparently, says Cave, the market for the metals contained in computers and peripheral equipment has reached the point where there is — literally and figuratively — gold in them thar computers.
“Our main concern now,” Cave says, “is making sure we don’t leave any information away on the hard drives before we dispose of it.”
For the WW-P district, the recycling challenge has no end in sight. “With 2,”500 computers in the district, we have to recycle a chunk each year,” says Cave.
Meanwhile a new challenge lurks on the horizon. “Our use has grown so much,” says Cave, “that in a few years we are going to have some network issues. With the increased use of the Internet we have doubled the bandwidth we use every six months for the last two years. We now have six T-1 lines. We had intended to put in a partial T-3 line this summer but the construction at South delayed that.”
As the district adds new technology to its equipment list — such as the 52 new “smartboards” that have been purchased to replace now old fashioned “whiteboards” — the demand on the wiring that connects all the equipment at all the schools increases. “Everything we add is on the network,” says Cave. “Nothing is stand-alone anymore.”
Next meeting: The Board of Education meets next on Tuesday, September 25, at 7:30 p.m. at Grover Middle School.
