Dealing with e-waste
Over the past 5 years PCs for Africa have been providing used computers to schools in Kenya. This program has been a great success and they now have over 500 machines in 25 institutions.
As with every project, responsibility must been taken with the environment and our surroundings. The machines that were donated over these past years were second hand in the first place, and this means that by now some of them are out dated and possibly irreparable.
Thus PCs for Africa have started a program of collecting these machines which are then recycled in Nairobi.
The parts will either be reused or broken down into individual components and the monitors are to be converted into televisions if possible.
During our August 2007 visit we collected 60 CPUs, 60 monitors, keyboards, mouse and cables from schools and Lindsay's Africa Project ICT Resource Centre. These were then transported to Nairobi where Jose of "Best Grab" our technology supplier received them and with his technical team. They have revived some parts and sold them on and are busy converting the monitors into TVs. Any parts and casings left will be broken down into separate components and passed onto plastics, metal and chemical companies for reuse.
Although Jose also gave a donation to our project, he covered most of the transport costs and is ensuring all materials will be recycled where possible. Not only is he reusing our waste once more, he is also creating employment in the Nairobi community and making technology more accessible through lower costs.
Link to video report by Ruud Elmendorp a video journalist based in Kenya (Lindsay is not involved with the featured projects) http://www.videoreporter.nl/computersforschools_uk_branded.wmv
posted by Lindsay @ 19:44
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