Environmentally safe computer?

[SnowCells]

I am doing a school project about making a product that is environmentally friendly. My Idea is to create a cheap windows 95 to xp machine, with the most environmentally friendly parts i could find, and (theoretically, not really) create a power supply that cuts all power from the pc after you shut it off. I'm trying to find out which parts have toxic metals in them, but have had no luck so far. Anyone have any ideas?

[Shreyas1]

Recycled plastic case/gpu shroud? I think that if you want low power like that a laptop will probably be the best choice? 

[Mira Yurizaki]

9 minutes ago, SnowCells said:

I am doing a school project about making a product that is environmentally friendly. My Idea is to create a cheap windows 95 to xp machine, with the most environmentally friendly parts i could find, and (theoretically, not really) create a power supply that cuts all power from the pc after you shut it off. I'm trying to find out which parts have toxic metals in them, but have had no luck so far. Anyone have any ideas?

Parts from the 90s to mid 2000s aren't exactly environmentally friendly, either from manufacturing or in use. I mean, it's great to do the "reuse/recycle" aspect, but the issue is that those parts may not be using lead-free solder and aren't really efficient.

 

The best I've seen using modern(ish) parts is someone had a setup using a NUC and USB peripherals (including the monitor), all connected to a lead-acid battery that was charged via solar. If they needed more compute power, they have an Amazon AWS instance they can run. But you can probably do better using a RasPi and a lithium based battery bank.

[mxk]

You could do a rasberry pi build with a small display. Doesn't take up too much space

[.Apex.]

17 minutes ago, SnowCells said:

I'm trying to find out which parts have toxic metals in them

capacitors... and there's ALOT of capacitors and they are very important for a PC to function properly.

 

i'm not aware of anything else that is toxic but i do know that there's some components that are environmentally unfriendly, for example the PCB, but i'm not sure if they changed how they're made these days

 

20 minutes ago, SnowCells said:

create a power supply that cuts all power from the pc after you shut it off

you could do that based on the current that's being pulled

[Shreyas1]

There's also gold to worry about. Mining of gold leads to release of harmful chemicals into the enviornment

[Mira Yurizaki]

Electronics manufacturing in general is full of toxic, ghastly chemicals.

• Arsenic is used because it's an effective semiconductor dopant.
• Chlorine trifluoride, which is regarded as one of the most dangerous chemicals in the world, is used to clean machines used in semiconductor manufacturing.
  • I found a list of some of the chemical used in general at https://axaxl.com/-/media/gaps/h11___b0.pdf
• Flux used in the soldering process may contain harmful chemicals, and may remain after the soldering process
• Older or hobbyist built boards may use lead base solder

 

[Guest]

Macs from around 2005 or 2006 were pretty much from recycled materials

[straight_stewie]

5 hours ago, SnowCells said:

I'm trying to find out which parts have toxic metals in them, but have had no luck so far. Anyone have any ideas? 

All of them with transistors, resistors, or capacitors. Basically any electronic component besides a trace, wire, or pcb. Even old smoke detectors can contain some pretty gnarly stuff, anyone remember David Hahn?

Electronics are not the most environmentally friendly thing ever, especially the battery powered variety.

[Blasteque]

45 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Electronics manufacturing in general is full of toxic, ghastly chemicals.

• Arsenic is used because it's an effective semiconductor dopant.
• Chlorine trifluoride, which is regarded as one of the most dangerous chemicals in the world, is used to clean machines used in semiconductor manufacturing.
  • I found a list of some of the chemical used in general at https://axaxl.com/-/media/gaps/h11___b0.pdf
• Flux used in the soldering process may contain harmful chemicals, and may remain after the soldering process
• Older or hobbyist built boards may use lead base solder

 

Also in silicon industry:

• Trichlorosilane - flammable, toxic, corrosive, and water reactive.
• HCl and other strong acids (in addition to the impact of the industries that make industrial chemicals; think Dow and DuPont).
• Solvents everywhere.
• Thousands of tons per year of single or nearly single use disposable items associated with maintaining high purity items and clean-room environments.
• And many, many more if you include polysilicon production, plastics, glass fibers, etc.

It is not a clean, environmentally friendly industry.  Not even slightly.

[Tristerin]

The amount of CO2 released in the atmosphere...to mine just the metals alone...will never be considered environmentally friendly. 

 

That carbon footprint cant be offset very easily.

 

 

[JoostinOnline]

51 minutes ago, RorzNZ said:

Macs from around 2005 or 2006 were pretty much from recycled materials

Only two things in macs are recycled:

1. The case
2. The "innovation"

Macs are just as bad for the environment as most technology. They've marketed them as "green" for increased profit margins.

 

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

Only two things in macs are recycled:

1. The case
2. The "innovation"

Macs are just as bad for the environment as most technology. They've marketed them as "green" for increased profit margins.

 

The materials, such as copper/aluminum/silicon etc are recycled. This isn’t a Mac thread so don’t turn it into one.

[SnowCells]

Thank you all for the responses! It seems this will be more difficult than I first imagined, so I might be forced to do something else.

 

[mariushm]

6 hours ago, SnowCells said:

I am doing a school project about making a product that is environmentally friendly. My Idea is to create a cheap windows 95 to xp machine, with the most environmentally friendly parts i could find, and (theoretically, not really) create a power supply that cuts all power from the pc after you shut it off. I'm trying to find out which parts have toxic metals in them, but have had no luck so far. Anyone have any ideas?

You're starting with an assumption that's wrong.

 

Modern power supplies are basically two power supplies in one : a 5v stand-by power supply (similar to your usb phone charger but possibly more efficient) and the actual big power supply that powers everything.

When your computer is shut down, everything that consumes power in your computer is turned off, except the chipset and the bios. The main part of the power supply is turned of completely and only the 5v stand-by power supply continues to run, giving the chipset and bios a tiny amount of power.

 

They need this to perform various functions user may enable in BIOS, like Power on LAN, where the bios "listens" for a message from the network and turns on the system if such a message is received. Such feature is used by network administrators - imagine for example an office building with 100 computers and at 10pm after all employees went home, the network administrator wants to install a Windows update on all PCs. The network administrator can write a simple script which sends this "wake up" command to 10 computers at a time, waits a few minutes for the operating system to load, copies the windows update to each computer, launches it and then shuts down the computers - all from his desk, without having to go to each PC.

 

The amount of power that is used while the chipset and bios idle waiting for the computer to turn on is extremely small, we're talking about 2-3 watts. However, you can disable a lot of such features in BIOS and get the overall power consumption to less than 1 watt. 

In terms that you would understand, your phone consumes up to 10-20 watts as it charges.

 

At 1 watts of power consumed, it would take 1000 hours or around 40 days for your computer to consume 1kWh , which costs about $0.2 in most US states ( see https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a )

 

Basically, modern power supplies are already very efficient, and so are computers (when turned off). Whatever box or circuit you would make to cut off even the 5v stand-by section of your power supply from the mains, it would basically cost way more (in electricity and polution to fabricate it) than what an existing power supply would consume in decades of idling.

 

If you want the absolute lowest power when off, look for an embedded style motherboard (the kind with processor soldered to motherboard and passive heatsink) which can be powered from a DC In jack (12v to 19v). Such adapter bricks can be super efficient, more efficient than what a 5v stand-by circuit would be.

 

[JoostinOnline]

14 minutes ago, SnowCells said:

Thank you all for the responses! It seems this will be more difficult than I first imagined, so I might be forced to do something else.

 

You probably should. Lots has been done to improve energy efficiency over the years, but most of the raw materials used are toxic and not environmentally friendly. Since I don't know the details of your assignment, I can't say if this will help or not, but awhile back Linus did a very interesting tour of a recycling plant, and it might give you some ideas:

 

[mlitttler89]

1 hour ago, straight_stewie said:

All of them with transistors, resistors, or capacitors. Basically any electronic component besides a trace, wire, or pcb. Even old smoke detectors can contain some pretty gnarly stuff, anyone remember David Hahn?

Electronics are not the most environmentally friendly thing ever, especially the battery powered variety.

Smoke detectors contain trace amounts of radioactive material. 

[straight_stewie]

41 minutes ago, mlitttler89 said:

Smoke detectors contain trace amounts of radioactive material. 

Americium to be exact.