Digital waste worth more than gold, copper ore

hardware.slashdot.org -> foreignpolicy.com :

"Imagine sheer mountains of discarded Pentium IIIs, tractor trailers overflowing with discarded wall warts. Photojournalist Natalie Behring visited Guiyu, China and documented the world's biggest digital dump where, for $2 per day, the locals sort, disassemble, and pulverize hundreds of tons of e-waste. The payoff is huge: computer waste contains 17 times more gold than gold ore, 40 times more copper than copper ore. But the detritus also leaches chemicals and metals into local water supplies."

- As a resource investor, I have had some inklings of this. With all the resource depletion that's going on, the next logical place to look for minerals and materials would be the garbage dumps, landfills and what-have-you. Not sure how many grams/ton that these discarded machines contain, but I can tell you that if a mining company can dig up just 10 grams per ton (concentration of gold inside ore), it's considered a good discovery. That's a ratio, if you've been paying attention. 10 ppm (parts per million). 10 grams of gold inside 1 million grams of other stuff.

The problems are in labour and extraction. You need cheap labour to sort out the stuff. That, or a very co-operative citizenry who does the separation before throwing it away (how thoughtful?) Extraction is the other problem - you need to separate the more expensive stuff from the near-worthless boards and plastic casings. That takes machinery, which need energy.

At a certain intersection point, taking into account increasing demand and depleting supplies, leading to soaring metals prices, labour cost, recycling technology, and energy prices, it might be doable.

(2007-06-26 13:06:47 SGT) [Env] Permalink

New York taxi fleet to go all-hybrid by 2012

news.com.com :

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg dropped by the Today show to talk about cleaning up his city. No, it wasn't time for a get-tough-on-crime talk. Hizzoner used the morning news-and-lighter-fare show to say that by 2012, all of the city's taxis would be hybrid vehicles. "There's an awful lot of taxicabs on the streets of New York City, obviously" - 13,000 licensed yellow cabs, 90% of them Crown Victorias- "so it makes a real big difference. These cars just sit there in traffic sometimes, belching fumes." (Just sometimes?) New York is also working to get newer, cleaner technology into its fleet of buses - and maybe even garbage trucks someday. "Some things they just don't make yet, but we're trying to go in that direction," Bloomberg said.

peakoil.com -> biz.yahoo.com :

The city's yellow taxi fleet will go entirely hybrid within five years, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced. Nearly 400 fuel-efficient hybrids have been tested in the city's taxi fleet over the past 18 months, with models including the Toyota Prius, the Toyota Highlander Hybrid, the Lexus RX 400h and the Ford Escape. Under Bloomberg's plan, that number will increase to 1,000 by October 2008, then will grow by about 20% each year until 2012, when every yellow cab - currently numbering 13,000 - will be a hybrid.

(2007-06-26 12:37:31 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

China #1 in CO2 emissions

news.com.com :

China is now No. 1. Not just in population. Nor just in economic growth among major nations. Not just in construction cranes or the building of coal-burning power plants. It's now the reigning champ of CO2 emissions. Despite the best efforts of numerous American utility companies and widespread use of air conditioning, SUVs and our own splurge in coal-burning, the United States has sunk to No. 2 in the CO2 derby.

The first to declare China the CO2 champ is the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. Its estimates show China put out 6,200 million tons of CO2 last year. The U.S. could only manage 5,800 tons. China's huge population gives it the CO2 lead because it still only produces 25% as much CO2 per capita as the U.S. This means continued economic growth for China will bring even more CO2.

The build-up of pollution from China has been foreseen, but topping the U.S. was expected to take a few more years. American efforts to produce more electricity and thus burn more coal remain prodigious. More than 100 new coal-burning plants are being proposed in the U.S. Even that'll not be enough to regain our CO2 emission lead. The reason we care is not just daily health, or acid rain. CO2 is the leading greenhouse gas and worsens the global warming of the atmosphere.

- I like the sarcastic touch in this article. But really, China's lead in CO2 emissions is happening a lot faster than expected. Just the previous entry in this story arc was saying that it would be by Nov 2007. And earlier estimates before that were putting it at 2009 or 2010.

(2007-06-26 12:26:30 SGT) [Env] Permalink

Bidders for ABN AMRO jostle for position

iht.com :

Bidders for ABN AMRO are jostling to position themselves ahead of a Dutch court ruling expected in the coming weeks that will determine the next step in the world's largest banking takeover battle.

Barclays is looking into whether it could sweeten its EUR 67 billion, or $89.1 billion, all-share bid for ABN AMRO, the largest Dutch bank, should it have to go head to head with a rival offer from a group led by Royal Bank of Scotland, said a person with direct knowledge of the offer. The bid by the rival consortium is worth EUR 71 billion, mostly in cash, although it comes with more conditions.

(2007-06-26 12:17:50 SGT) [Biz] Permalink

Toyota to go all-hybrid by 2020

news.com.com :

According to Motor Authority, Toyota's VP of powertrain development Masatami Takimoto has said that by 2020 hybrids would become the company's standard drivetrain, and that hybrids would account for "100 percent" of the automaker's new cars.

Takimoto also said that Toyota expected to improve the profitability of hybrids to bring their price margins up to the same level as gasoline-only cars by 2010. Due to expensive components such as batteries and electric motors, hybrids are currently more expensive to produce and less profitable than regular gasoline-engine cars.

(2007-06-26 12:12:30 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

Quotable quote

wired.com :

"With bated breath and shaken faith we await the return of our Almighty Rig. Because without Prime, we're stuck with whiney Spider-Boys, metrosexual pirates, and koan-spouting kung-fu Christs in designer sunglasses and unisex clubwear. Because he died protecting us in '86, and nothing's ever been the same since. Because these days, the only real men left are giant robots."

- Good to know that someone over at Wired is familiar with the lore.

(2007-06-26 11:08:33 SGT) [Musings] Permalink

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