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
Mysteries of life in the sediment depths Environmental conditions beneath the seafloor are by no means inviting to microbial life. For example, beneath 4000 meters of water and at 500-meter sediment depths below the seafloor—the global average—organisms must withstand a pressure of about 450 atmospheres. Even less hospitable is the lack of nutrients for these subseafloor organisms. As it sinks, most organic matter produced by photosynthetic organisms at the sea surface is used by microorganisms in the water column. What is left is very difficult to further degrade. Consequently, microbiologists have for a long time thought that deep-ocean sediments were sterile at depths of more than a couple of meters below the seafloor. Previous discoveries of bacteria in oil reservoir fluids were dismissed as being contaminants. The exploration of the deep biosphere may also yield new insights into the origin of life and into the possibility of life on other planets. Some scientists postulate that life may have originated inside the Earth's crust rather than on the surface. In the depths, early life forms may have been protected from meteorite bombardment, deadly UV radiation, and extreme temperature and pressure changes. Therefore, some scientists argue, life might also have been or may still be possible inside the crust of other planets. There is an additional applied significance of this new field of research. Organisms found at these depths are very likely to possess unique enzymes, which are interesting for biotechnological applications. Moreover, the oil and gas industries are eager to learn more about how fossil fuels were formed and how to better exploit them. —C.H.
beneath the Pacific Ocean as part of the International Ocean Drilling Project. Parkes and his colleagues counted large numbers of viable microbes and determined that at a 500-meter depth into the subseafloor sediment, the material contains about 10 million bacteria per cubic centimeter. Concurrently, microbes have been discovered deep in sediments beneath the Atlantic Ocean
and the Mediterranean Sea. These microbes show similar population distributions along the sediment depth profile, suggesting a globally consistent phenomenon. So-called heterotrophs—microbes that live off organic matter—have been identified. Some of them ferment the organic material, others are sulfate-reducing bacteria, and still others are methane- or acetate-producing bacteria.
Until now, researchers have only rarely succeeded in actually culturing these microbes. The deep biosphere's inhabitants seem to be active at very low levels, hardly metabolizing at all. "The best estimates are [population] doubling times of once every couple of thousands of years," said Parkes. "We don't understand yet how single living cells are able to maintain life functions with such a slow input of energy and substrate," Jorgensen noted. Similarly enigmatic are reports about microbes capable of altering volcanic glass. Torsvik discovered evidence for such microorganisms living in basement rock underneath the sediments. What these bacteria might live off of is still a matter of active debate. Torsvik emphasized the fundamental importance of the subseafloor discoveries. "This has to be seen as an extension of the biosphere. The biosphere is not restricted to the surface of the Earth. It extends hundreds of meters, perhaps kilometers into the crust. We find that exciting." Judith McKenzie, a geologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, who is also engaged in the European initiative, is convinced that "the coming years will show that there is a strong link between the geosphere and the biosphere." —CAROLA HANISCH
Canadian pollution prevention bill may threaten current protections This month, a contentious toxic chemical control bill, which critics say could weaken the 1988 Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA), will be debated in Canada's Senate. The bill was originally introduced by Christine Stewart, the Liberal environment minister who heads Canada's equivalent of the U.S. EPA. She said the proposed new act focuses on "preventing pollution and environmental damage in the first place." The bill currently before the Senate was passed by Canada's House of Commons in June, and is supported by industry. The bill is much narrower in scope and not as stringent as the pollution
prevention plan requirement in the United States, said Mark Winfield, research director for the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy. In the United States, companies must prepare pollution prevention plans for any of the 600 chemicals listed on the Toxics Release Inventory if they report releases of those chemicals. The Canadian legislation would empower the environment minister to require industry to prepare pollution prevention plans for only 44 listed toxic substances or face fines and/or imprisonment. It also calls for virtual elimination of 12 toxic, bioaccumulative chemicals in-
cluding polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxins, and hexachlorobenzene, and it requires the federal government to review 23,000 chemicals for potential addition to the toxic substances list within seven years, said Harvey Lerer, a policy analyst with Environment Canada. Because of the way it is structured, however, the bill "makes it almost impossible for pollution prevention planning to actually happen," Winfield said. For example, one bill amendment weakens the current CEPA by requiring the prime minister's cabinet—which is staffed by political appointees who perform an advisory role akin to U.S. department secretar-
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