David Grey's Blog

Compostable PC's

I have been an avid home composter for many years now. All sorts of things gets composted in our household, including paper, cardboard, kitchen waste, garden trimmings and grass clippings. We have four compost bins and although none of them get hot enough to kill off weed seeds they do all turn out lovely crumbly black compost which the plans love.

I'm always looking to reduce the amount we throw away by composting more and more things so I was intrigued to come across an article in IT Week recently which discussed efforts that are being made to produce personal computers with biodegradable casings. The idea is that once the PC reaches the end of its useful life the casings could be thrown on the compost heap. Fantastic! I love the idea of being able to dispose of my old PC case in an environmentally friendly fashion and also being able to use it grow more vegetables. Of course the innards are not compostable as they contain large amounts of electronics with toxic materials, but who knows what the future may bring.

Apparently the sorts of materials mentioned are being trialled and are not production ready yet but I saw another article this week, though can't remember where, which mentioned that Acer have just produced a laptop with a biodegradable plastic casing derived from corn starch. I'm guessing this is a similar material to that which some supermarkets use to produce biodegradable plastic carrier bags. It will be interesting to see how well such materials do actually biodegrade. My experience of putting corn-starch based carrier bags in my compost heaps would suggest that they take an awful long time to biodegrade. The carrier bags are still recognisable over a year later so I can imagine that a much thicker plastic, such as the casing of an electronic appliance, will take many years to breakdown.

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