- Bored by your beige computer? A Swedish company is offering
what they say is an ecofriendly alternative: a range of wooden computer
monitors and keyboards that aim to brighten office life, while cutting
the environmental impact of computer junk.
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- Around 45 million new personal computer systems were
bought in 2002-03 in the United States alone, many of which will end up
in landfills. There is growing concern that the plastic skeletons are stacking
up, and that toxic materials in their casings, chips and displays are leaching
into the environment.
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- Many standard plastic computer casings contain chemicals
called brominated flame retardants, added to improve fire safety. Once
in the environment, the cancer-causing chemicals are thought to accumulate
in animal and human tissues.
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- To prevent this, Sollentuna-based company Swedx are making
computer screens, keyboards and mice encased in timber.
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- Swedx's wooden cases are custom built using wood logged
from managed forests in China, and they decompose faster than plastic.
"It is a fascinating idea," says Maria Leet Socolof who studies
clean technologies at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
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- Pine, not plastic
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- Swedx has sold several thousand computer pieces since
it launched them last year. A 15-inch flat screen monitor, available in
beech, ash or sapele wood, costs about EU400, a keyboard EU50 and a mouse
EU40. That is roughly 30% more than plastic versions, says company vice-president
Jan Salloum.
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- Other companies are showing an interest in manufacturing
wood-encased computers, and Salloum believes the market will grow.
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- Even if sales went through the roof, however, wooden
computers are unlikely to be an environmental panacea. Discarded machines
contain other pollutants including lead in the monitor's cathode ray tubes
and heavy metals such as cadmium in microchips, says Eric Williams who
studies computers' environmental impact at the United Nations University
in Tokyo, Japan.
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- Producing personal computers also chews up resources:
the creation of one computer requires ten times its own weight in chemicals
and fossil fuels, according to Williams's calculations, largely due to
the energy-intensive production of microchips. Producing a car or refrigerator
uses one or two times its weight, he says.
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- There are other moves to clean up computers' environmental
record. European Union legislation set to come into force in the next two
years, for example, requires computer manufacturers to take responsibility
for recycling electronic waste, and outlaws certain flame retardants and
toxic metals from electronic equipment. Some American states have banned
monitors from landfills.
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- Meanwhile, Williams advises computer users to sell or
give away their old machines rather than dumping them, to consider buying
a used computer and to turn off workstations to save electricity.
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- © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd
2004 http://www.nature.com/nsu/040412/040412-10.html
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