In the original run of the great scifi spoof cartoon Futurama back in 2000, there was an episode called “A Big Ball of Garbage,” in which the show’s characters—living in year 3000 New York City—are threatened by the titular object: all of the Earth’s garbage from the 20th century was packed up and shot into space, only to return 1000 years later. (The episode was essentially a parody of the already-parodical movie Armageddon.) At one point, after landing on the ball of muck, they locate a giant store of discarded American Online diskettes. Remember those? Back in the 90s, it seemed once a week we got those those 3.5-inch floppy disks, then CDs. How much e-waste did they contribute? (Some enterprising folk developed kits to turn those old CDs into coasters. (I still have one myself.) Although I am doing my best to keep music CDs a viable medium, the CD itself is gradually being phased out—and DVDs are likely next to go. (It is telling that the latest generation of Macbooks from Apple do not have CD or DVD drives—remember when the new G3s back in the late 90s did away with floppy drives? We grumbled, but got over it pretty quickly.) Anyway, we have a surfeit of old, potentially discardable CDs and DVDs out there. What to do with them? Well, via Environmental Leader, Fujitsu has come up with a system to collect the plastic from CDs and DVDs and recycle it into cases for PCs.
Compared to conventional notebook PC manufacturing processes, this system is expected to reduce the amount of newly produced plastic used by 10 tons per year and cut CO2 emissions by about 15 percent per year, Fujitsu says Fujitsu used this recycled plastic for part of the front panel (pictured) of its LIFEBOOK P772/E notebook PC for enterprise customers, a model in its summer 2012 lineup. The recycling system performs quality control based on a chemical substances risk management database developed by Fujitsu Laboratories, to avoid mixing contaminants into the recycled plastic, the company says.
The company plans to further develop this system to handle other types of recovered materials.