As computer junk pile grows, little is recycled, study confirms More than 20 million personal computers (PCs) became obsolete in the United States during 1998, but only 11% were recycled, a new study by the National Safety Council concludes. The rest remained either cached away in warehouses, basements, and closets or were disposed of in municipal landfills or incinerators. As computer life spans shrink, however, pressure is growing for more electronic equipment to be reused or recycled. Electronic Product Recovery and Recycling Baseline Report: Recycling of Selected Electronic Products in the United States is a project of the Electronic Product Recovery and Recycling Roundtable, which was convened by EPA in 1997 as a result of the agency's Common Sense Initiative. This report, which covers the period from 1997 to 1998, is the first large-scale attempt to tabulate just where electronic junk ends up once it has reached the end of its useful life.
The many types of plastic used in computers are currently not marked according to type, making recycling difficult.
Honing in on different types of computers (PCs, mainframes, workstations, and laptops), cathode ray tubes (computer monitors and TV sets), computer peripherals (printers, plotters, and scanners), and telecommunications equip-
ment (routers and switches), the report estimated that the total mass and number of electronic equipment recycled in 1998 exceeded 275 million pounds or 9.7 million units, a 2.6% increase from 1997. Of that, computer peripherals made up the greatest portion of equipment recycled, at approximately 73 million pounds. The report predicts that the electronics recycling industry will grow by 18% annually from 1998 to 2007, as new firms enter the business and large-capacity recyclers increase their volume. And laptops will make up the most rapid area of electronics recycling growth, the study found. But consumer participation in electronics recycling will have to increase as PCs' market saturation now exceeds 50% of U.S. households and televisions' market saturation is close to 100%. Households and small businesses currently contribute a mere fraction of the electronic equipment recycled, the study found. —KRIS CHRISTEN
Researchers will tap potential of deep-ocean sediment life The European Science Foundation (ESF) has launched a threeyear program to consider exploration of the subseafloor biosphere in reaction to recent discoveries of an abundance of microbial life in drilling core samples representing hundreds of vertical meters of deep-ocean sediments. The sediment microbes found beneath the ocean may play a key role in formation of subseafloor methane hydrates—the world's most abundant source of fossil fuels— and may play a significant role in climate warming. Though deep marine sediments were previously thought to be too hostile for life, it is now believed that the microbial populations contained in them possibly comprise up to 10% of the Earth's biomass. The presence of a deep-ocean sediment repository that is far from sterile also has implications for subseafloor burial of toxic or nuclear waste. To coordinate European research efforts, the foundation has
Microbes could be key to undersea waste disposal.
established a network of key scientists who will identify the most promising drilling locations and determine the best available techniques for obtaining further sediment samples. Workshops are being planned to discuss these questions; the next meeting will be held this month in Leeds, England.
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ESF is an association of 65 national research councils, academies, and funding agencies devoted to basic scientific research in 22 European countries. Biogeochemist John Parkes at the University of Bristol, England, is chairman of the network coordination committee. Microbiologist Bo Barker Jorgensen at the Max-Planck-Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, and Terje Torsvik, a microbiologist at the University of Bergen, Norway, are also members of the network team, as are geologists and representatives of the oil and biotechnology industry. Five years ago, Parkes and his group published a widely recognized paper in Nature, showing evidence for the existence of a whole new biosphere. They carefully examined sediment drilling cores, using strict contamination control methods and a wide range of modern sample analysis techniques. The core samples were recovered at various sites
