Alex Lin: 16-Year-Old Activist Turned 300,000 Pounds Of eWaste Into Computers For Developing Countries

TakePart.com:

He's overseen the recycling of 300,000 pounds of e-waste. He's successfully lobbied the Rhode Island state legislature to ban the dumping of electronics. He's used refurbished computers to create media centers in developing countries like Cameroon and Sri Lanka to foster computer literacy.

Read the whole story: TakePart.com

Comments

[ajwriter]

02:43 AM on 06/03/2010

Brilliant! Alex, another suggestion:

Much equipment going out the door is still miraculous stuff that could be appreciated HERE. People buying new equipment often think it will solve their problems when they upgrade, and usually they get some new functionality. However, upgrades often cost people mastery and function. People lose more time scrambling to re-acquire mastery -- getting the technology to do everything for them that the old stuff did -- than they gain by faster processor speeds. The industry focuses on the processor speeds and bells and whistles, but forgets WHY people have computers.

Newer equipment often obsoletes peripherals, etc., which adds to the e-waste problem. Often-times new processing speed is half wasted from lazy programming.

Figuring out how to make computers AND advances to them that allow people to keep their old equipment -- and add things that only make it all faster, better, and more smoothly interfaced -- would be a total paradigm shift that would solve a lot of the e-waste and also improve productivity. No one has time to relearn how to do everything every few months or years. People are better off building on what they already know.

The analogy is of inventing a new better typewriter, and insisting on rearranging the keyboard because QWERTY is inefficient. But for most people, relearning to type would cost even more time. The iPhone is successful because it does all kind of new stuff AND it still works as a phone!

Pls think about it...

[dgatorr]

08:49 PM on 04/05/2010

smart kid, job well done............UNTIL, that developing country decides to do unscrupulous things such as swarming the internet with phoney pictures of good looking women to use to panhandle lonely men out of money fraudulently, like is common in Nigeria, Ghana, and the Phillipines.

[Celina Fransis]

05:58 PM on 04/05/2010

Great work - but how are you dealing the electricity? As we are planning similar thing in our rural area.

[opama]

04:05 PM on 04/05/2010

hope is alive, just need to wait out the haters

[mi casa]

03:28 PM on 04/05/2010

Great job

[Palemoon]

03:17 PM on 04/05/2010

Great story, and I wish my area of the country would do something like this. I have alot of e-waste sitting in an old storage building in the backyard from my decades of working with computers. Old, outdated printers, computers, monitors, memory, video cards, hard drives, etc, etc.

I've been wanting to get rid of most of it, but I refuse to just throw it in a landfill. I want it either recycled or disposed of properly. Some stuff may, MAY, be worthy of donating to the local Goodwill or Salvation Army, but tech stuff probably isn't their forte and there's still no guarantee that it won't end up in a landfill anyways.

I went to a local computer store, asked the owner who happened to be working the desk that day, if I could bring alot of my stuff by to be recycled. I was sure that he was up to speed on things, and would help do the right thing. His response to my inquiry?

"Shoot, just chuck it into a dumpster. That's all we'll do if you bring it to us."

Yep, I had that look as if he had just kicked a puppy or something. I left without saying a word.

[Steve1]

03:05 PM on 04/05/2010

Now, that's a great story. Too bad others don't think as creatively as this young man.

[Wahchintonka]

07:47 PM on 04/05/2010

Ditto.

[fcsakes]

01:43 PM on 04/05/2010

When I'm feeling more grouchy and surly and negative than usual, I read a story like this and realize there is tremendous hope for this country with young people like Alex Lin coming up in the ranks.

(It's also great to hear that all the recycling we've been doing does help the planet!)

[rollingrock]

11:43 AM on 04/05/2010

Cool story. I'd love to see Alex Lin's recycling program emulated in schools across the country. Every person especially the young people needs to get involved with environmental issues because they are the future, and will inherit the planet left to them by previous generations, who were and still are pretty ignorant of these things.

It's scary to think how little of our e-waste actually gets properly recycled or disposed of, which is a terrible thing for the environment. Improper disposal of e-waste should be made a serious crime, IMO (offenders should get more than just a slap on the wrist).