TechSoup has been a long-time advocate for refurbished PCs. They're low-cost, they work well for most purposes, and there's a brilliant environmental case for electronics reuse. We offer a whole host of them to nonprofits and libraries through the Refurbished Computer Initiative (to which we just added 16 new products!) and have found it to be a really successful offering for our users.

One major area of controversy about reburbished computers is the question on whether or not the used PC market can last given the diminishing prices of new equipment. Kevin Lo wrote about new, lower-cost netbooks a while back on this blog, posing the question of whether they're ready for the spotlight in nonprofits or not. I think the jury is still out, particularly since many can't run enterprise-class programs and networks, but they may be a good solution for smaller nonprofits.

Jim Lynch, regular blogger and our director of computer recycling and reuse decided to see what research is out there on the subject of whether or not the used computer market is going away any time soon, and has come up with some interesting results in his new article, Is the Used Computer Market Going Away?

A bit over a year ago, we talked about U.S.-based EPEAT, the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, which is a non-commercial program that rates how environmentally friendly new IT equipment is according to three tiers of environmental performance which they mark with bronze, silver, and gold.

EPEAT ranks computers, monitors, and (soon) TVs based on 23 required attributes and 28 additional optional attributes. The criteria range from energy use to elimination of hazardous materials. EPEAT is essentially the only green IT product accreditation program in the world. The big green IT news this week is that the program has now expanded to 40 countries (PDF) worldwide including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Taiwan, and the 27 countries of the European Union.

TechSoup is hosting upcoming 6th Annual International Computer Refurbisher Summit (ICRS 2009). This year's summit will be held in Miami Beach, Florida on October 14 and 15 with the theme of "Prospering in Recessionary Times."

ICRS is one of the lesser-known events in the electronics recycling industry. Most electronics recyclers do some amount of whole-system or parts reclamation, but this is the place where people who focus on electronics reuse get together to talk shop every year. It's the best opportunity to meet people and form relationships with refurbishers and asset recovery managers, coordinate efforts, and to get some clarity on issues from a reuse perspective.

TechSoup has been working on the strangely difficult problem of increasing the volume of five-year-old-and-newer computers donated to our Refurbished Computer Initiative (RCI) program and also to other refurbishers that supply IT equipment to schools, nonprofits, and low-income families for some years now. In RCI we accept bulk donations of 100 or more computers at a time.

When we published our Islands in the Wastestream report on the state of the noncommercial computer refurbishing field in 2004, one of our essential findings was that a lack of steady donated computer supplies is one of the primary inhibitors to the computer reuse field. It was true then and it's still true now, especially in recessionary times when companies are either extending the leases on their IT equipment or simply holding on to the computers they have beyond the normal three to four years they ordinarily keep them.

Just last week, TechSoup officially has a new donor partner — Sun Microsystems — which has started donating remanufactured Sun Fire X4100 M2 x64 servers to eligible nonprofits and libraries through TechSoup. These are robust, factory remanufactured 2.5 GHz computer servers that have hot-swappable hard drives, power supplies, and fans. If one essential part of the server fails, it can be replaced with minimal downtime. These servers come with the Sun Solaris 10 operating system, but will work with other operating systems and also with virtualization software that allows a single server to do the work of multiple servers.

In the US, there is no national system to ensure the proper collection and disposition of reusable electronic equipment or end-of-life e-waste disposal. It is, perhaps, a sign of the times that on Thursday, May 28 2009 the US Congress is going to clean out its closets and hold a discarded electronics collection event for the first time in its 220 year history.

The event will be on Thursday, May 28 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern and people from congressional offices will be schlepping any electronic items with a plug or battery over to the National Mall at the corner of 3rd Street, NW and Pennsylvania Ave. The electronics recycling and asset recovery company, Redemtech, has been chosen to do the collection event for Congress. They are also TechSoup's refurbishment partner for our Refurbished Computer Initiative (RCI).

All collected equipment with data storage will be swept clean, and all equipment that is old or broken will be end-of-life recycled without being exported, incinerated, or being sent to a landfill. The event will have something additional that many e-waste collection events don't have — a robust charitable reuse component.

Redemtech has been working with the Green the Capitol office at the US House of Representatives, whose mission is to reduce carbon emissions, save energy, and make the House a model of sustainability. Congressional staffers from the House E-Waste Working Group have also been involved in the project. They were very receptive to Redemtech's request to optimize the charitable reuse aspect of the event.

As a major asset recovery company, Redemtech readily champions electronics reuse, often citing recent Gartner statistics on the topic:

Next Thursday, I, along with a fantastic group of smarty-pants co-workers, will be hosting a webinar called Learn How TechSoup Can Help Your Organization. This one-hour online event will take you on a tour of all the things TechSoup does to help nonprofits and libraries around the country (and world) have the technology resources and information to reach their goals. Sounds lofty, right? But it's true!

From all of the donated and discounted products made available through TechSoup Stock, to the articles, webinars, forum discussions, and blog posts to help you figure out how to use them, we'll be covering these things and more. Here's the official description. I hope you'll join us!

Join TechSoup content creators, community leaders, and customer service support on May 21 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon Pacific for a tour of how your nonprofit or library can use all that TechSoup has to offer to improve your technology and help reach your mission.

TechSoup has for a long time been a fervent advocate for refurbished PCs. They're low-cost, they work well for most purposes, and there's a brilliant environmental case for electronics reuse in that it is roughly 20 times more beneficial environmentally to reuse computers than to recycle them at 3 to 5 years of age. Reuse is the most efficient form of recycling and addresses the current paradigm of the throw-away society.

All that is fine, but one question on refurbished electronic equipment that invariably comes up is what happens when the price of new computers rivals that of used equipment? This week, Sean Nicholson* of Microsoft Unlimited Potential published some thoughts on the subject on the Unlimited Potential World Updates blog.

Nicholson's view is interesting because his job at Microsoft as Manager of Emerging Solutions and Refurbishment is their global expert on the subject.

In his blog piece, he compares the new low-cost laptops called netbooks that were introduced by ASUS in 2007 with the emerging worldwide market of used desktop and laptop PCs. He finds that currently in places like South Africa, "you can buy an A-brand refurbished desktop with a faster processor (1 GHz), bigger screen (15inch+) and larger hard drive (20GB) than a new netbook, for under US $100." Refurbished PCs are still less expensive than netbooks and currently provide more power, more screen space, more storage space, and are easier to repair. But what about the future?

One of our missions at TechSoup Global is to supply low-cost refurbished IT equipment to nonprofits and libraries. That in itself is good and useful, but a surprising additional aspect of this is that refurbished and remanufactured electronic devices provide the most environmentally friendly way to acquire and use computers, copiers and other IT equipment.

The scientific basis for the environmental kudos refurbished IT equipment receive is from Dr. Eric Williams of Arizona State University in his book, co-authored with Ruediger Kuehr, Computers and the Environment, Understanding and Managing Their Impacts.

In it they find that the environmental cost to produce a computer and monitor is immense, especially for microprocessors. Producing the average 53-pound desktop computer and CRT monitor requires 530 pounds of fossil fuels, 50 pounds of chemicals, and 3,330 pounds of water. Adding additional life to computers saves 5 to 20 times more energy than recycling over the computer's life cycle. It's much better for the environment to extend the life of a computer for an extra two or three years than to buy a new one every three to four years.

CNet/TechRepublic is publishing a series of photos from Colombia's Computadores Para Educar (Computers for Education), whereby old computers are refurbished for schools and schoolchildren. Instead of being tossed to the landfill and heavy metals contaminate the water table, computers are given new life to those who need the resources most.

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