Shop Talk: Temple University’s Computer Recycling Center

Temple University Computer Recycling Center Assistant Director Jonathan Latko stands in the 5,000 square foot recycling center located in the university's Tech Center.

When the Computer Recycling Center at Temple University first launched in 2003, a cleaner environment wasn’t its only priority. It was developed to address an internal problem.

“In order for people to prevent having to pay Facilities to come pick up [old computers], they were just taking computers and throwing them in the dumpster,” Chief Information Officer Tim O’Rourke said in an interview with Technically Philly Tuesday. [Full Disclosure: TP's founders are Temple alumni.]

Yet just last month, the innovative program was awarded a Mid-Atlantic Environmental Achievement Award by the Environmental Protection Agency, an honor picked from a pool of more than 60 candidates, Computer Recycling Center Assistant Director Jonathan Latko says.

Certainly, electronic waste has become a growing global problem, as Western nations ship containers filled with antiquated computer parts to developing nations like Ghana, an issue we’ve covered several times in recent months.

But it’s the computers that are saved that drives this story.

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UPDATED: School District e-waste investigation three months later: no reported progress

Screenshot courtesy of PBS Frontline documentary

Update: A School District spokesman called to clarify several statements: 9/30/09 @ 3:50 p.m.

The latest in an ongoing series on School District of Philadelphia e-waste. Reporter Stephen Zook walked the West African landfill in question to file this report exclusively for Technically Philly.

ACCRA, GHANA — The air stinks of oil, fish and grease, only to be overtaken by that of garbage and sewage. It surrounds you as soon as you near Agbogbloshie, a neighborhood on the outskirts of this West African country’s capital city.

In most of Accra — a coastal city about the size of Philadelphia — open sewers carry little more than rainwater and a few pieces of debris in their troughs. In Agbogbloshie, even after a fresh municipal clean, a milky sludge sits in the sewers, alongside garbage left to dry on the road beside them, probably adding to the stink created by the town’s rambling landfill.

It is there, where many of Agbogbloshie”s children make a living looking for metallic scraps to be sold, that at least one printer from the School District of Philadelphia was found. It was shipped here as part of the growing practice of e-waste from wealthy nations being brought to developing countries, like Ghana. The printer, spotted in a PBS Frontline documentary exposing the e-waste trend and first brought to the fore locally by Technically Philly, created a call to action that has yet to be fulfilled.

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Technically Philly makes brief appearance on Fox 29

After the School District of Philadelphia said in a statement to Technically Philly yesterday that it was investigating how one of its computer peripherals ended up in a landfill in Ghana, Fox 29 reports that the City Controller’s office is also looking into the issue.

John Atwater added good reporting to our piece from yesterday concerning the district’s e-waste. Most importantly, and as we suspected though couldn’t confirm, Atwater reports that Regentech, the district’s current technology recycler, wasn’t on the job in 2004, when the shipment that ended up in Ghana appears to have left Philadelphia.

As we tweeted last night, TP reporter Christopher Wink appeared in Fox’s 10 p.m. newscast, discussing with Atwater details of the story. To see the station’s coverage, follow the jump.

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Shop Talk: School District of Philadelphia launches probe into its computer recycling program

Refurbished computers in a technology recycling warehouse in Fairmount.

How at least one School District of Philadelphia computer monitor ended up in a massive e-waste landfill in Ghana remains unclear.

But, after a PBS Frontline documentary camera spotted the hardware and Technically Philly made repeated followup inquiries, the district has announced it will launch an investigation, according to a written statement given by district spokesman Fernando Gallard.

“The School District of Philadelphia does not encourage or condone the illegal dumping of any school district property anywhere in the world,” read the statement, given first to Technically Philly. “As a result… [we are] currently investigating the source and disposal record of the equipment found in Ghana.”

The computer monitor, which had a district sticker on it, was just a brief moment in the explosive PBS Frontline report on e-waste that was released last month. Likewise, the monitor is just a small part of the hundreds of millions of tons of e-waste that flood the West African country and other developing nations each year.

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School District of Philadelphia, among other e-waste polluting developing nations

A compter labeled "School District of Philadelphia" pollutes a Ghanaian city. This screenshot is taken roughly three minutes and 55 seconds into a PBS Frontline video report.

Computer waste from the School District of Philadelphia is polluting the urban fringes of Ghana.

But then, the computer, depicted above and tagged for having come from the district as seen in an explosive PBS Frontline report on e-waste, is just a small part of the hundreds of millions of tons that flood the West African country.

The rapid transfer of technology has developed a shady, poorly regulated electronic waste recycling industry, Frontline reports, sending computer goods to developing nations, often with easy port access. When old technologies from Western nations, like the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom, are “recycled,” they increasingly are finding their way to places like Ghana’s Agbogbloshie, which Frontline reports has become one of the world’s largest digital dumping grounds.

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