Re: [asa] Ban on computers reportedly wanted.

On 4/5/07, Janice Matchett <janmatch@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>
> "..the very act of manufacturing a computer degrades the environment by
> using massive amounts of resources-clean water, intensive labor in clean
> rooms-and producing toxic waste in quantities that far outweigh any
> potential positive effects that one computer could have on the world.
>
> In fact, these are the resources used to make one 8-inch wafer:
>
> 4,267 cubic feet of bulk gases
> 3,787 gallons of waste water
> 27 pounds of chemicals
> 29 cubic feet of hazardous gases
> 9 pounds of hazardous waste
> 3,023 gallons of de-ionized water
>

A primer on computer wafers. Semiconductors are made out of dies that are
then packaged. A wafer has many copy of the dies on it. Over the years, the
dies have generally gotten a little smaller and the wafers a lot larger.
Thus, the number of dies per wafer has increased dramatically. Over my
career we have gone from 3 to 4 to 6 to 8 to 12 inch wafers. For the numbers
above, divide by 200 to get the cost per semiconductor chip. It's out of
date because the 12 inch per-die number are much smaller. Net net, the
environmental effects have gone down dramatically for semiconductors without
anyone really trying.

 *
>
> *"..Household power used by lightbulbs is actually dwarfed these days by
> major appliances and high tech consumer electronics- such as wide screen
> TVs, computers and video games along with internet servers, the biggest
> energy hogs *besides cars and trucks.
>

This isn't true. I checked the EIA reports and lighting is slightly larger
than consumer electronics. Both are around 10% of the total electrical usage
each. That being said computer usage is an issue. So, I suggest that Janice
lead by example by turning off her computer. :-)

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Received on Thu Apr 5 18:08:44 2007