原创 2017-05-15 树屋文翻组 树屋字幕组
关键词一
生态足迹
environmental footprint
关键词二
能源之星标签
Energy Star label
关键词三
EPEAT注册
EPEAT registry
关键词四
IEEE标准
IEEE standard
Where do laptops go when they die?
Ars takes a look at the current state of e-reincarnation at Dell.
笔记本电脑的最终归宿在哪儿？
Ars(美国科技博客)探讨电子产品的重生状况——以戴尔为例
SCOTT K. JOHNSON - 10/31/2016, 5:54 PM
斯考特 K 约翰森 2016年10月31日 下午5:54
As electronics have become increasingly ubiquitous, the never-ending upgrade churn fills an ever-larger e-graveyard. If that’s where the story ends, we’re in real trouble. The several years of use a typical device sees effectively become a short conveyor belt between mines around the world and the local landfill. The only sensible and sustainable thing to do is to recycle the materials in our devices—ideally right into the next generation of tech.
随着电子设备的普及度越来越高，永无止尽的优化升级让“电子墓地”变得前所未有之大。如果这就是它们的最终归宿，那么我们将面临真正意义上的麻烦。电子设备的寿命通常是几年，而这实际上加快了其从世界各地工厂向当地垃圾掩埋场传送的速度。唯一合理可持续的做法，就是回收这些设备里的材料——最理想的情况是，它们正好可以用于下一代新技术产品的生产。
Responsible recycling operations (that don’t simply dump e-waste in developing countries) have an interesting set of challenges to work on. Recycling is always trying to catch up to—and is limited by—what manufacturers are doing. But opportunities are there for those willing to make it a priority.
可靠的回收措施（即不只是简单地往发展中国家运输电子垃圾）中还有一些令人兴致盎然的挑战有待我们去迎接。回收往往都是在试着跟上生产者的步伐并受其所限。但对于那些想要把回收这件事放在首位的人来说，机会就在眼前。
To learn a little about the kinds of things that can be done now and what stands in the way of doing more, Ars talked to Dell about its recycling efforts. Dell runs a take-back program for old devices in partnership with Goodwill, which sells anything worth selling and sends the rest on.
为了了解目前在这个领域哪些事情是力所能及，哪些是尚不能及，Ars（亚斯）和戴尔聊了聊他们在回收方面作出的努力。戴尔与商誉合作，对旧设备实行一项召回政策，把其中可再销售的重新上架，然后把其他剩余的部分转手。
Closing the loop
建造闭环系统（回收－生产－购买）
In the last few years, Dell has started to move beyond just collecting e-waste for recyclers and is trying to “close the loop” by using some of the recycled material in its products—namely the plastic. Because a limited number of types of plastic get used for electronics, e-waste is a better resource to work with than your household recycling bin would be. Most of the plastic that comes in is suitable to be used in new products. But it’s not quite that simple—paints, labels, “soft-touch” coatings, and additives like flame retardants can render plastic difficult or even impossible to work with.
在过去的几年里，戴尔不再满足于只是从回收商那里收集电子垃圾，而是试着在他们的产品里加入一些可回收的材料以此来建立一个“闭环系统”——即塑料制品。因为有一部分品种的塑料可以被用在电子设备上，而相对于你家里的回收箱而言，电子垃圾更容易操作。大多数回收的塑料制品都可以被用在新产品上。但这其实也没有说起来的那么简单——图案、标签、哑光表漆以及其他外加的部分，例如防火涂层，会导致塑料制品更困难、甚至无法再重新利用。
“The base material is a good place to start, but there’s still a good bit of engineering work to actually get the product to the point where the recycled plastics have the equivalent or better properties of virgin plastics, which is what we have to do to meet our specification needs,” Dell Director of Environmental Affairs and Global Responsibility Scott O’Connell told Ars.
“回收基料很好上手，但还是会有相当一部分工程上的工作需要去完成好让它们能够真正意义上和新的塑料制品有一样或者更好的效果，这才是我们为了满足这种特殊需求而要去做的。”戴尔环境事务与社会责任主主管斯考特 奥康内尔这样和Ars（亚斯）说到。
All that plastic gets processed at a recycling plant in Texas run by Wistron, a manufacturer that was already handling refurbishing before it got into the e-waste business. One approach is to just shred the whole mess and sort the pieces, but workers at this plant dismantle devices by hand to separate materials more cleanly. Plastics with disqualifying characteristics head off in other directions; the rest is sorted by chemistry and color.
所有的塑料制品都会被位于德克萨斯由纬创集团运营的回收工厂进行处理，这个生产厂家在进入电子垃圾处理产业之前一直都在从事翻新的工作。方法就是将一团糟的塑料绞碎，再进行整理，但是工厂里的工人是手动摧毁电子设备的，这样被拆开的材料会更加干净，质量不好的材料会被转到其它地方；剩下的塑料会根据其化学性质和颜色来分门别类。
That plastic is shipped to Wistron’s operations in Kunshan, China, where a number of plastics manufacturers are located. (Unfortunately, e-waste collection efforts and manufacturing are on opposite sides of the planet.) Wistron’s plant, Senior Manager of Business Development Eric Huang explained, takes in dismantled plastic and spits out resin ready to be molded into something else.
那些塑料会随船送往位于中国昆山的纬创业务基地，许多塑料生产商都聚集在这个地方（不幸的是，电子垃圾回收和生产分别位于地球的两端）。纬创工厂，其商务发展部门的高级经理艾瑞克黄的解释到，是将已经解体的塑料并射出成树脂材料准备好放入模具以做成其他的配件。
That “something else” has so far been back panels for Dell’s monitors and all-in-ones. “We do encounter some potential for cosmetic issues and for performance issues [with pure recycled plastic],” O’Connell said. “Before we rolled this out in 2014, we had about a nine-month trial process where we actually had to do a lot of engineering work. What we found is, to get the properties right you do have to have a blend of recycled content along with virgin plastics.”
这些“其他的配件”目前是指戴尔显示器以及一体机的背部嵌板。“我们确实偶尔会碰见一些外观上或者功能上的问题［用纯再生塑料制作的机器］，”奥康内尔这样说道，“我们在2014年首次推出这个项目之前，经历了大概九个月时间的试验期，在此期间我们需要做大量工程设计上的工作。然后我们发现，如果想要产品功能完善，你需要把回收的材料和新材料混合在一起使用。”
There’s more to this recycling thing than “melt and pour,” unfortunately. Part of the recycling process involves grinding up the plastic—sometimes more than once—and this changes its properties. At every step in the processing, and even in the design of the product, there are variables that could potentially be tweaked to increase the share of recycled plastic in the blend.
比想象中不幸的是，回收这件事远比“融完后再倒出来”要复杂。回收过程的中就包括把塑料制品绞碎——有时候还不止一次——这会导致它的性质发生改变。在处理过程中的每一步，甚至是产品的设计环节，都会有潜在的可能性使得混合物中回收塑料的比重增加。
What about the guts?
内部零件的命运
The rest of the e-waste entering Wistron’s recycling plant has a different fate. Cables go one way to have their copper recovered. Steel frames go another. Lithium-ion batteries go to dedicated lithium operations. Case fans might even be saved and reused. Any components that can be yanked off circuit boards are, and then it’s on to precious metals.
其余的的电子垃圾在进入纬创的回收工厂后，会有不一样的命运。电线中的铜会被重新利用。钢架却不能被再次利用。锂电池被送往专门的锂加工车间。风扇甚至可能会被留下并重新投入使用。所有能从电路板上拔出的部件都会、并将被转变成有价值的金属。
Smelting operations in Europe and Japan have traditionally just burned off the fiberglass and melted the metals, but Wistron’s Texas plant relies on water rather than fire. Chemicals (which can be recycled for the next batch) leach gold-plating and solder until everything just falls off the fiberglass board. Grinding and more chemistry can separate the various metals that remain.
欧洲以及日本的熔炼企业传统意义上都只会把玻璃纤维烧断同时把金属熔化，但在得克萨斯的纬创工厂却不是用火，而是依靠水来加热。化学物质（可被重新回收利用于下次批量生产）将镀金层和焊料过滤出来，直到所有东西都从玻璃纤维板上脱落为止。研磨机和其他的化学制品能把剩下的各种金属分离开来。
None of these materials is plugged directly back into electronics made by Dell or anyone else. They just hit the commodity market as another source of copper, or lithium, or gold. “I thought metals would be easy when we started working on this several years ago, but they have actually turned out to be a little more complicated than plastics,” O’Connell said.
所有的这些材料都不会被直接用在戴尔或是其他厂商生产的电器里。它们只会以另一种形式上的铜、锂或金制品出现在商品市场上。“在我们几年前刚开始这项工作的时候，我以为金属（回收）会比较简单，但它们实际上要比塑料更复杂一点。”奥康内尔这样说道。
For many metals, the electronics industry does not dominate demand, so it makes sense for recycled metal to simply hit the open market. There are clearly opportunities for electronics companies to use those recycled metals directly, but O’Connell thinks the open market will probably always be part of the story. There may someday be good enough tracking in the industry that you at least know how much of the metal you’re buying is recycled, but for now recycled material just slips invisibly into the stream.
对于金属来说，电器产业并不主导它的需求，所以把回收金属直接投入开放市场是有理可循的。显然，电器公司可以直接采用那些回收金属，但奥康内尔认为开放市场始终都应该在考虑范围之内。或许到之后的某一天，这个产业会发展到你至少会知道你采购的金属中可回收的占比是多少，然而现在，回收金属只是零星投放在主流市场里。
But for all the ways recycling could be improved, the real obstacles still come from the way products are designed. There are simple things manufacturers can do to make products more easily recyclable, like skipping adhesives, minimizing the number of screws used, and maximizing the ease with which a product can be taken apart. (Apple, for example, recently highlighted a robotic disassembly process for end-of-life iPhones it is working on.) “We routinely take product designers into the recyclers themselves so they can see good design versus bad design,” O’Connell said.
但尽管在回收过程中还有很多地方仍需改进，最主要的难关仍然是产品的设计。生产商可以做几件简单的小事来让产品更容易被回收，比如不采用黏合剂，最小化螺丝的使用，同时最大化产品的可分拆性（用苹果公司来举例，他们近期正在重点研发一条自动拆解废弃iphone的流水线）。“我们通常会让产品设计师自己兼任回收人员，这样他们自己就可以辨别设计的好坏。”奥康内尔这样说道。
Obviously, the choice of materials is the other big variable, but it’s even more complicated than just using easily recyclable materials. Minimizing the use of expensive materials can bring the cost (and environmental footprint ) of a product down but can also have unintended consequences on the economics of recycling. The precious metal content of integrated circuit chips has declined over time, for example. “Because our manufacturing techniques are so air-tight and so much more clean, there’s not as much need for precious metals in those types of materials because their innards never get exposed to oxygen,” Huang said.
显然，材料的选择是另外一个大的变数，但它却比只是简单地使用回收友好性材料要复杂得多。最大化地减少昂贵材料的使用的确可以降低产品的成本（以及生态足迹①），但也会对回收经济产生意料之外的影响。比如贵金属集合电路芯片的比重一直以来都在减少。“因为我们的生产方式有非常强的密封性与清洁度，所以在这些材料中不需要投入太多贵金属，因为它们的内部结构永远都不会暴露在氧气环境里。”黄经理这样解释道。
That’s good, but it also means it’s tougher for recyclers to turn a profit.
减少成本是好事，但这也意味着，对于回收方来说，他们更难从中获得利润。
Huang describes the situation as a sort of race between manufacturers and recyclers, with recyclers forever catching up to all the new things manufacturers throw at them. The growing “Internet of things” is also an “Internet of e-waste”—even light bulbs can contain circuit boards that need to be recycled. Recyclers have to figure out how to work with each of those things as they start showing up alongside the usual computers, printers, and phones.
黄经理认为生产商和回收方之间是处于一种类似竞速的状况，回收方永远都在追赶生产商扔给他们的所有新的东西。“物联网”的发展也是“电子垃圾网路”的发展——连电灯泡里都会含有需要被回收的芯片板。回收人士们需要去找到处理这些产品的方法，因为它们已经开始出现在日常用的电脑、打印机以及手机中。
“In some ways, it’s gotta start on the front end, in terms of consumers wanting products that are more recyclable,” Huang said.
“从某种意义上来说，这应该从产业上游（前端）开始，就要考虑到顾客想要更加具备可回收性的产品。”黄经理说。
That’s a particularly tough sell since consumers get almost no information about how recyclable any given product is. A company may improve its image by advertising “green” programs, but there is little financial incentive beyond that to put the work into solving these problems and designing for recyclability. It’s hard enough to match competitors’ progress on all the characteristics consumers know they do want.
而这其实是很困难的，因为顾客手上几乎没有任何关于产品可回收性的信息。公司可以通过对“绿色”项目进行广告宣传来提升形象，但却几乎没有什么奖励机制来解决这些问题、来根据可回收性做设计。仅仅是赶上竞争商家的进度，满足顾客已知的产品需求就已经不是一件容易的事情了。
The closest thing to an Energy Star label for recyclability is the EPEAT registry, where companies can verify that their products meet an IEEE standard. (The interpretation of that standard has not always impressed, however.) This has helped large entities like the federal government follow their purchasing rules but isn’t necessarily the most useful thing for the average consumer.
在回收界和能源之星标签②最接近的就是EPEAT注册③了，各公司可以通过这个来确认他们的产品是否符合IEEE标准④（然而对这项标准规则的解释并不能总是令人信服）。这样做已经帮助大型机构，比如联邦政府，能够遵从他们的采购规则，但对于一般顾客而言却不一定有很大帮助。
Consumers do, at least, control what they do with a device at the end of its useful life. You can make sure they end up in recycling programs—and hope those programs continue to improve.
然而顾客们至少可以控制他们对废旧设备的处理方式。你可以确信这些设备最后都进入了回收项目——并且期望这些项目能够继续改进。
注释：
①生态足迹：指支持每个人生命所需的生产土地与水源面积。系用以衡量人类对地球生态系与自然资源的需求的一种分析方法。此分析将人类对自然资源的消耗与地球生态涵容能力进行比较。（维基百科）
②能源之星标签：是针对节约能源的消费产品之国际标准及计划，于1992年由美国环保署所启动，目的是降低能源消耗及减少发电厂所排放的温室效应气体。此计划并不具强迫性，自发配合此计划的厂商可以在其合格产品上贴上能源之星的标签。（维基百科）
③EPEAT注册：即电子产品环境影响评估工具，是美国推出的针对电子产品的多维环境绩效标准。2006年EPEAT通过美国国家标准协会(ANSI)认定的程序，在美国绿色电子委员会（Green Electronics Council，GEC）的运作下，正式采用美国电子电器工程师协会(IEEE)第1680号标准，实施和推行EPEAT认证系统，对电子产品在其生命周期中就环境的影响进行评估认证。目前EPEAT仅适用于台式电脑、手提电脑和电脑显示器等产品，并正在着手制定电视产品以及影像设备产品的IEEE标准，并将逐渐扩展到白色家电产品领域。（互动百科）
④IEEE标准：电气和电子工程师协会( IEEE，全称是Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)是一个国际性的电子技术与信息科学工程师的协会，是目前全球最大的非营利性专业技术学会，其会员人数超过40万人，遍布160多个国家。IEEE致力于电气、电子、计算机工程和与科学有关的领域的开发和研究，在太空、计算机、电信、生物医学、电力及消费性电子产品等领域已制定了900多个行业标准，现已发展成为具有较大影响力的国际学术组织。（百度百科）
翻译 by Amel
校对 by Viola
终校 by Gabriellaz
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