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Ever Wondered What Happens to All Those Old iPhones?

by KoryE15urb Posted on March 1, 2016

What happens when electronics come to the end of their useful life? For the vast majority of these devices, they either collect dust somewhere in our homes or offices or get sent to the landfill.According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, only12.5 percentofelectronic waste,or e-waste, is recycled in the U.S.

Bloombergrecently dug intoApples e-wasteproblemnamely the fate of the more than 570 million smartphonesthat have been sold since the first generation iPhone debuted in Jan. 9, 2007and found that the tech giant has collected more than 40,000 tons of e-waste in 2014, recovering enough steel to lay 100 miles of railway track.

Apple has sold 570 million iPhones in the past 9 years. What happens to these phones when they reach the end of the road? Photo credit:Flickr

Its clear that our increasingly digital world has left ashocking impact on our planet. These gadgetsrequire amassive amount of energyto manufacture and its potentially hazardouscomponents can havea toxic and evendeadlyimprint on planetary inhabitants.

With agrowing number of smartphones, computers andtablets piling up in our drawers or the landfill, United Nations officialsestimatedthat the volume of e-waste generated worldwide is expected to climb by 33 percent by 2017 to 65 million tons.

Apple will have to face thismounting e-wastecatastrophe as each

new product

comes along. However, asLisa Jackson, Apples vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives told Bloomberg,Apple has led theindustry in recycling efforts:

In the electronics recycling business, the benchmark is to try to collect and recycle 70 percent, by weight, of the devices produced seven years earlier. Jackson says Apple exceeds that, typically reaching 85 percent, including recycling some non-Apple products that customers bring in.

That means it will have to get hold of and destroy the equivalent of more than 9 million of 2009s iPhone 3GS models this year around the world. With iPhone sales climbing to 155 million units last fiscal year, grinding up Apple products is a growth business.

Apple has afree reuse and recycling programthat allows users to turn in their old iPhones, iPads or computers (Mac or PC) for Apple gift cards if the device qualifies for reuse. If it doesnt qualify for reuse, Apple will recycle it at no cost to the consumer.

Apple works with the Hong Kong-based electronics recycler Li Tong Group that follows a strict and secretivemulti-stepprocess that consists of breaking down every single element of an old phone and capturing 100 percent of thechemicals and gasses thats released during the process, Bloomberg reported.

Jackson saidthat the never-endingbuildup of new tech gear is a global issue.

Theres an e-waste problem in the world, JacksontoldBloomberg. If we really want to leave the world better than we found it, we have to invest in ways to go further than what happens now.

Jackson, who once headedthe U.S. Environmental Protection Agecny, has achieveda number of green initiatives since she was tapped to take charge ofApples environmental affairs in 2013. Frombanning a number oftoxicchemicalsfrom their products tooverseeingthe companys $1.5 billion green bond,the largest such bond from a U.S. business.

Apple has banned these chemicals in their products out of concern for the environment. Photo credit: Apple

The Cupertino, California-based company is currently running its entire nation-wide operation on 100 percent renewable energy and has committed to running its overseas supply chain on renewables as well.

I think people expect it of us. I think our customers hold us to a high standard, Jackson told Bloomberg.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is a big believer in big businessestaking charge on environmental sustainability.

The environment must also be on the business agenda, hesaidin a speech at Bocconi University in Italy in November.

As business leaders, we have a responsibility to address this, and urgently, he continued. We have obligations to our companies and our shareholders becauseclimate changeimpacts supply chains, energy crises and overall economic stability.

Written by Lorraine Chow. Reposted with permission from EcoWatch.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Ever Wondered What Happens to All Those Old iPhones?

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Yet Another Oil Train Disaster

by BridgetYGFX Posted on March 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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Another day, another oil train derailment. Early Saturday morning, a Canadian National Railway train carrying Alberta crude derailed outside the tiny town of Gogama in northern Ontario. Thirty-eight cars came off the tracks, and five of them splashed into the Mattagami River system. The accident caused a massive fire and leaked oil into waterways used by locals—including a nearby indigenous community—for drinking and fishing. No one was injured, but according to CN Railway’s Twitter feed, fire fighters were still suppressing fires earlier today. People in the area, including members of the Mattagami First Nation, have been complaining of respiratory issues from the smoke.

This oil train derailment was the second in three days in Canada and the fifth in three weeks in North America. An oil train derailed last week near Galena, Illinois. The oil boom in Canada and the United States has resulted in a dramatic increase in the use of these trains, and derailments now appear to be the new normal.

After the 2013 derailment and explosion of an oil train killed 47 people in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, many pointed to old, unsafe DOT-111 tanker models as a main reason for the disaster and others like it. But at least four of the five recent incidents have involved newer, and theoretically safer, CPC-1232 models.

Environmental and safety advocates say oil-by-rail needs even more stringent safety measures, but they have been slow coming. The US government reportedly balked at creating national standards to limit the amount of potentially explosive gas in tankers carrying oil from North Dakota. And the White House Office of Management and Budget has said it will need until May to finalize rules proposed by the Department of Transportation last summer that would slow down crude-by-rail deliveries and require tankers to have insulated steel shells. The CPC-1232 tankers that derailed in Galena did not have these shells. I asked the Canadian National Railway Company if the tankers involved in Saturday’s derailment had these shells. The company didn’t directly answer that question. In an email, it stated: “The tank cars involved were CPC 1232 tank cars. The exact specifications will be information gathered as part of the ongoing investigation.”

Below are Twitter pictures of Saturday’s derailment in northern Ontario.

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Yet Another Oil Train Disaster

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TransCanada has big new plans for moving oil around, and you won’t like them

by MontySchleinitz Posted on February 20, 2015

Since Keystone is stalled out …

TransCanada has big new plans for moving oil around, and you won’t like them

By on 20 Feb 2015commentsShare

TransCanada, the company pushing the Keystone XL plan, is cooking up some new projects. Watch out.

First: A pipeline going in the other direction. This one would move oil from North Dakota, where drilling is booming, up to Canada. The company hopes it will be particularly appealing since the alternative method of moving that volatile crude is by rail — and, unfortunately, the trains keep blowing up. From the Associated Press:

TransCanada Corp.’s proposed $600 million Upland Pipeline would begin near the northwestern North Dakota oil hub of Williston and go north into Canada about 200 miles. At peak operation it would transport up to 300,000 barrels of oil daily, connecting with other pipelines including the Energy East pipeline across Canada. …

TransCanada hopes to have the Upland Pipeline operating in 2018, pending approval from the U.S. State Department, North Dakota’s Public Service Commission and Canada’s National Energy Board. The company plans to submit an application to the State Department in the second quarter of this year. …

TransCanada spokesman Davis Sheremata on Thursday said the company can’t speculate on whether it might run into similar problems with Upland [as it has with Keystone]. Company President and CEO Russ Girling last week told analysts and reporters that he hopes the drawn-out Keystone XL process is “an anomaly.”

And though the pipelines-are-safer-than-trains angle is a major selling point for this new project, the company is hedging its bets: TransCanada “will probably enter the rail business in some form or fashion in the coming months,” said its CEO, Russ Girling, in a speech earlier this month. From the Canadian Financial Post:

Facing increased pressure from rail cutting into its business, while the Keystone XL pipeline remains under unending American review, TransCanada Corp. said it is planning to diversify into the oil-by-rail business within months, improving its customers’ ability to connect to its sprawling North American pipeline and storage network. …

TransCanada’s move to include rail in its arsenal has become necessary as rail companies Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. enjoy a windfall from the oil transportation business. TransCanada’s competitors, including Kinder Morgan Inc. and Enbridge Energy Inc., are also building rail capacity to get around pipeline infrastructure constraints.

That oil-by-rail side business would just be a temporary solution until Keystone gets built, Girling said.

Both new efforts could face heavy opposition. Environmental activists are getting good at making big oil infrastructure projects into political sinkholes, and oil trains are coming in for particularly virulent criticism these days. Opposition to Keystone might no longer be an “anomaly,” as Girling described it; try the new normal.

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TransCanada has big new plans for moving oil around, and you won’t like them

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Oil trains are blowing up all over the place

by VernellClouse Posted on February 17, 2015

Oil trains are blowing up all over the place

By on 17 Feb 2015commentsShare

Two tanker trains full of crude oil have derailed and burst into flames in the last few days, one in West Virginia and one in Ontario. They’re the most recent examples of a phenomenon that’s increasingly common as fracking for oil becomes a top American pastime.

The West Virginia accident happened on Monday — and the aftermath stretched well into Tuesday. The AP reports:

Fires burned for hours Tuesday after a train carrying 109 tankers of crude oil derailed in a snowstorm alongside a West Virginia creek, sending fireballs into the sky and threatening the nearby water supply.

Hundreds of families were evacuated and two water treatment plants were shut down after dozens of the cars left the tracks and 19 caught fire Monday afternoon, creating shuddering explosions and intense heat.

Part of the formation hit and set fire to a house, and one person was treated for smoke inhalation, but no other injuries were reported, according to a statement from the train company, CSX.

The train was carrying crude from North Dakota’s Bakken shale and was on its way to a terminal in Yorktown, Va., not far from where another train headed to the same terminal derailed last April.

The West Virginia derailment was the second in 48 hours — the first occurred Sunday in a remote area of Canada. The CBC reports:

The Transportation Safety Board and environment officials were investigating Sunday at the scene of a derailment of a Canadian National Railway train near Gogama, in Northern Ontario.

Seven rail cars caught fire when a train carrying crude oil derailed late on Saturday night, CN said on Sunday.

The train, heading to eastern Canada from Alberta, derailed shortly before midnight about 80 kilometres south of Timmins, Ont., a CN spokesman said. Canada’s largest rail operator said 29 of 100 cars were involved and seven had caught fire.

An unknown amount of oil spilled into the snow at the site of the derailment.

Oil shipments by rail have increased by more than 400 percent since 2005, and with the trains have come many minor disasters and a few major ones. The worst yet occurred in 2013, when a derailment in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, killed 47 people.

Since then, U.S. and Canadian officials have started moving toward requiring railroads to switch from 1960s-era tanker cars to sturdier, less accident-prone ones, but a timeline for the shift hasn’t yet been set. Even when it is, the new rules may not be effective enough — Reuters reports that the train that derailed in West Virginia was pulling newer, supposedly tougher railcars.

The West Virginia derailment is also the latest in a series of fossil fuel-related disasters to affect that state’s water supply. The biggest recent example came a year ago when Freedom Industries dumped 10,000 gallons of MCHM — an industrial chemical used in the coal-cleaning process — into the Elk River. A month later, more than 100,000 gallons of coal slurry poured into Fields Creek, a tributary of the Kanawha River that swallowed up an oil-filled railroad car yesterday.

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This Train Plowing Through Snow Is Absolutely Astonishing

by BerryKDPPmmpcp Posted on February 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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There’s a strange corner of YouTube where train-spotters post their conquests in exhaustive detail. It’s one of the weirder YouTube holes I’ve been down in a while. But…oddly comforting. This video—of a Canadian National Railway locomotive making a meal out of snow drifts left by major blizzards in New Brunswick—is like something directly out of Snowpiercer, the 2013 dystopian ice age thriller set in a climate-altered future.

While certainly mesmerizing, there’s an important issue to note that has gone unremarked upon since the video went viral. It’s unclear what precisely the locomotive is carrying, but it’s definitely pulling tankers. Its cargo may very well be oil, given that its destination is St John, New Brunswick, the location of Canada’s biggest oil refinery, the Irving Oil Refinery. That refinery was the destination for the train laden with Bakken oil that derailed and exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, in July 2013. The Lac-Mégantic accident killed 47 people and prompted calls across Canada and the United States for tougher safety standards for the booming oil-by-rail network.

Mark Hallman, director of communications for Canadian National Railway, refused to give specifics about the types of cargo being pulled by the train in the YouTube clip, calling it a “mixed freight” service. But Jayni Foley Hein, an expert on energy and transportation at the Institute for Policy Integrity, says crude is one likely possibility. “Its carrying the type of tankers that generally carry oil, and given its proximity to this refinery, it’s certainly a reasonable prediction,” she said.

Despite the soaring plumes of snow, Hallman told me that the train in the video was “totally safely operated,” adding, “That’s winter in Canada. That’s what we have to deal with.” The railway’s own “Customer Safety Handbook” says that operators should take special care in wintry, snowy conditions: “Many of the service disruptions center on accumulations of snow and ice,” says the handbook. “On the track, snow mostly constitutes a problem in switches, as well as at crossings—so once the snow is cleared, the problem is solved.” In general, winter hits railway lines hard, contracting the tracks and making fractures more likely, according to Canadian National Railway.

A 10-year US Department of Transportation analysis of weather-related train accidents in America, from 1995 to 2005, found that the accidents related to snow and ice, when they did occur, often resulted in dangerous derailments. “During the winter months of December through March, the highest accident numbers arose from preexisting snow and ice conditions such as buildups that cause malfunctioning switches and derailments,” the report found.

After the Lac-Mégantic disaster, both the United States and Canada agreed to get rid of the older and more dangerous versions of the tanker involved in that tragedy, the “DOT-111.” (We covered the cons of this tanker extensively last May.) In mid-January, Canada announced it would take the tankers off the network years sooner than the United States will, putting the two countries at odds over increased safety measures on the deeply integrated system.

The dangers of carrying oil by rail have fueled a key aspect to the ongoing debate over the Keystone XL pipeline. When the US State Department issued its long-awaited environmental-impact statement on the project last year, one of its most significant findings was that if the controversial pipeline wasn’t built, oil-laden rail cars would pick up the slack. “Rail will likely be able to accommodate new production if new pipelines are delayed or not constructed,” it argued. (More recently, falling oil prices have led the EPA to question that line of reasoning.)

NBC recently reported that in America, trains spilled crude oil more often in 2014 than in any year since the government began collecting data in 1975.

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Whoa there! State lawmakers try to make oil trains safer

by LeonoreBoyle Posted on March 19, 2014

Whoa there! State lawmakers try to make oil trains safer

By

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The wheels of railway safety reform may be in motion in Minnesota, but they’ve ground to a halt in Washington state.

Each day, an average of six trains bearing particularly incendiary fracked crude travel through Minnesota’s Twin Cities, rattling the nerves of residents and lawmakers. The main worries are about potential derailments and explosions, but oil spills are also a concern, as evidenced by the recent leak of 12,000 gallons from a moving train in the state’s southeast.

On Monday, Minnesota state Rep. Frank Hornstein introduced legislation that aims to protect the state from oil-by-rail accidents. The Star Tribune reports:

“We have a proliferation of oil trains and pipelines in this state,” Hornstein said in an interview. “This is an unprecedented challenge to the state. We need to have these resources to keep communities safe.”

Three bills were introduced Monday that would require railroads to regularly notify local officials about oil train movements, require railroads and pipeline operators to respond to spills promptly, improve grade crossings and add state track inspectors.

The legislation grew out of concern that firefighters across the state lack training and specialized equipment to fight a massive fire like the Dec. 30 oil train wreck near Casselton, N.D., in which multiple tank cars exploded and burst into flames.

Meanwhile, in Washington state, bills that would have boosted oil-train safety died last week after Republicans and Democrats couldn’t agree on them and the state legislature adjourned for the year. From the Associated Press:

Several measures to address oil shipments by rail died as lawmakers adjourned the 60-day session, including a resolution calling for tougher federal standards for tank cars and a bill aimed at ensuring that state laws on oil spill response cover oil from Canadian tar sands. …

Three terminals in the Northwest are already receiving crude oil by trains that run through Washington. Other facilities are proposed at the ports of Grays Harbor and Vancouver, and at refineries.

The federal government is also gradually moving forward with efforts to make oil trains safer. Last month, railway operators met with federal regulators and agreed to slow certain oil trains down to 40 miles per hour as they pass through 46 urban areas, starting on July 1. Railway companies also agreed to boost rail inspections and take other steps to improve safety.

But the feds need to be doing a lot more to crack down on railway companies, like requiring them to use sturdier, safer cars — starting yesterday, not next year.


Source
3 Minnesota bills seek to address oil transport safety concerns, Star Tribune
Washington lawmakers take little action on oil transport bills during legislative session that adjourned last week, The Associated Press

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Crude on the tracks: Oil spills from trains skyrocket

by PhoenixBrook3 Posted on July 19, 2013

Crude on the tracks: Oil spills from trains skyrocket

By Claire Thompson

As more oil is being shipped by train across North America, more oil is being spilled from trains. EnergyWire reports:

The number of spills and other accidents from railroad cars carrying crude oil has skyrocketed in recent years, up from one or two a year early in the previous decade to 88 last year.

Most of the spills are relatively small — nothing like the deadly disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, earlier this month — but with oil shipments on the rise, there’s cause to be concerned.

Oil production has increased thanks to fracking and other drilling technologies, but North America’s pipeline network hasn’t kept up, so railroads are stepping in to fill the void, especially in areas not served by pipelines. Rail transport is more expensive, but it doesn’t require new infrastructure or permits. U.S. railroads have already moved 40 percent more crude and refined product this year than in 2012.

Reuters reports:

With that growth has come a number of high-profile spills and accidents, many on Canadian Pacific Railway’s network, which runs through Alberta, the largest oil exporter to the United States, and the Bakken field [in North Dakota].

Canadian Pacific suffered the industry’s first serious spill in late March, when 14 tanker cars derailed near Parkers Prairie, Minnesota, and leaked 15,000 gallons of crude. Regulators have not released the results of their investigation into the incident, and Canadian Pacific declined to comment.

Critics point out that old tank cars can puncture easily, and that trains carrying heavy oil loads can wear down railroad tracks.

But it’s difficult to compare the safety of railroad shipments versus pipeline shipments. Edward Whittingham, director of the Canadian environmental group Pembina Institute, told The New York Times earlier this month that the methods are “equally unsafe.” While rail spills are more frequent, they generally result in less oil spilled. In comparison, pipeline spills can be both more difficult to detect and greater in volume. More from EnergyWire:

Federal law requires railroads to report smaller crude oil spills than pipelines, which rail officials say makes their total numbers look higher. Pipelines must report spills of 5 gallons or more. Of the 88 rail spills last year, 23 were 5 gallons or more.

Gee. If only there were some source of energy that didn’t need to be transported thousands of miles and didn’t pose a constant risk of mass ecological contamination. Let me know if you hear of one.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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