Ecotech Services blog

It’s amazing – the homemade LCD screen cleaner

Alan Liefting

23 September 2016

I have been refurbishing a stack of LCD monitors and I had a hard time getting the LCD screens completely streak free after cleaning them. I was using an environmentally friendly general purpose cleaner but I also tried methylated spirits (Oooops – petroleum product. Sorry about that).

So I did an internet search and good old Google gave me some good answers.

The general recommendation is one part vinegar (or isopropyl alcohol) to one part water. So as a greenie and as a cheaper option I tried the vinegar and water mix. I used a sprayer bottle to apply the cleaner to the screens.

The results were really amazing! I had some really dirty looking monitors that came up nicely! There is no need for those expensive LCD cleaner kits at all! Good old cheap, environmentally friendly vinegar does the trick!
Ecotech Services is now a secondhand dealer

Ecotech Services administration

20 September 2016

We have been notified today that as of 13 September 2016 Ecotech Services Ltd is a licensed Secondhand Dealer and Alan Liefting has a Secondhand Dealers certificate.

Ecotech Services Ltd license number: 16-034091
Alan Lieftings’ certificate number: 16-034092

Details are listed on the public register at the Ministry for Justice.

An increasing amount of our work comes under the purview of the Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Act so our level of trading may soon reach the threshold defined in the Act.

administration, recycling
Carpet downcycling and hot water cylinders

Alan Liefting

14 September 2016

We had a hot water cylinder come in for recycling. It is not something that we have had before but I knew that they have valuable copper as the actual cylinder. It was pulled out of a house because it had a leak in the base. A date written inside the cylinder for an element change said 1986 so it is at least 30 years old.

Before I started pulling it apart I saw some wadding that looked like carpet. Sure enough, when I took the ends off this is what fell out:

You don’t see shredded carpet used in modern hot water cylinders. The newer ones are pumped full of insulating foam from what I gather. Sure, specialist insulating foam is probably better than shredded carpet as an insulator, but it is not a recycled product. And can the foam be recycled at the end of its useful life?

The carpet has been downcycled, which is recycling into something of less use that the original thing. Downcycling is better than not recycling at all but it is not as good as recycling it into something that can go back into what it came from originally (or an equivalent).

I don’t think shredded carpet has any real use so unfortunately we will have to dump it. Damn, it looks like our monthly mass balance will be on the environmental debit side!

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recycling, waste
McDonald’s Princess Bubblegum Happymeal toy and e-waste

Alan Liefting

21 August 2016

This is a packet from a McDonald’s Princess Bubblegum Happymeal toy:

It had blown off the street into our driveway.

The bag is made in China, the contents are made in Vietnam, and it is distributed in New Zealand and Australia.

There are some pretty strong parallels between this incident and the whole e-waste problem. That is a long bow to draw you might say so let me explain. A lot of cheap commodity electronics items are made in China from parts made there and elsewhere. They are distributed around the world. At the end of their useful life they are discarded, sometimes on roadsides.

To me it also epitomises the uncaring, wasteful society in which we live.

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e-waste, waste
Global e-waste flows

Ecotech Services administration

6 August 2016

E-waste processing is shifting polluting industries from the developed to the developing world, as illustrated by this infographic from Nature. This has been happening for a number of decades (and credit goes to BAN and others in bringing it to the attention of the public) and over that time has spread to additional countries.

e-waste
Ubuntu and laptops

Alan Liefting

15 July 2016

For a few years now I have been running Ubuntu 14.0.0 on an old Toshiba Satellite A100 laptop (from the Microsoft Windows XP era). It was sort of as an experiment but it was also because I like to keep the old stuff operational for as long as possible. Linux operating systems are less resource hungry compared to the offerings from Microsoft and so the good old Toshiba did everything you would expect from a much newer computer.

There were a few issues though. It would run quite hot for one. I don’t know if the hardware did not like to be pushed too hard with playing full screen videos, or that there was a problem with the thermal management, lack of Ubuntu drivers, or all three issues.

The lack of integration with Microsoft products also made using a Linux based operating system a little awkward.

For a little while the laptop had developed a fault where the screen would flicker or briefly disappear and then the cursor could be moved but clicking did nothing. Also, it would sometimes not wake up after going into standby. It seemed to be a fault that was related to movement of the motherboard. I had stripped it down after it started happening but there was no obvious cause. As is often the case for these faults it stopped playing up for a while after being checked.

The intermittent fault was getting a little worse but then one evening, quite suddenly, the laptop stopped charging. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the battery was pretty well stuffed and the charger had to be plugged in virtually all the time. I did all the usual things a technician does. I checked the charger. No problems there. So I stripped down the laptop and started doing some fault tracing. The two fuses were ok, the low ohm resistors were ok, the coils were ok but one looked like it had been running hot.

And then I noticed this:

Looks like the magic smoke escaped from the chip.

Looks like the chip is toast and pretty much so is the whole laptop. The chip is close to the hard drive connector but the hard drive was still working. Interesting. It does not matter if the hard drive is stuffed because everything that is important is on the cloud.

Time to dig another laptop out of the recycling pile. I found a Toshiba Satellite M300 that looks like it only needed an LCD cable. Cheap enough on Aliexpress so I ordered one. Another laptop that was kicking around was a HP G60 that had been running Windows 7. It had a stuffed hard drive.

Now I know from past experience that you cannot pull a hard drive out of one machine and just bung it into another one and expect it to work. There are all sorts of driver issues. To possibly make things easy and as an experiment I thought I might try to drop the hard drive out of the Toshiba straight into the HP. And guess what! It worked! I am typing this blog post minutes after the transplant! The only thing I had to do differently is to enter the wireless password. I have struck this before. It seems that the wireless password is stored in hardware somewhere rather than on the hard drive.

So is this all an indication of how good the generic Linux drivers are? It is not really a security issue since I still had to enter my login password. So is this the way of the future where we pull the solid state hard drive out of a stuffed old machine and bung it in a new one? Sounds like a good idea to me.

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electronics, repair
Brexit and green electronics

Alan Liefting

4 July 2016

In a referendum on 23 June 2016 the voting public of the UK chose to leave the EU with 52% wanting to leave and 48% wanting to remain. This will possibly have implications on addressing the many negative environmental and social effects of electrical, electronics, and computer technology.

The EU has long been on the global forefront of policies that promote sustainable technologies. One of the earlier Directives draw up by the European Economic Community on limiting waste led to a Directive on battery recycling. Anecdotal evidence from European tourists in New Zealand suggest that it has produced a culture of battery recycling. The tourists are astounded that there is no means of easily having their batteries recycled while in New Zealand. Amongst other things the EU is now working on policies that include trying to address conflict minerals and developing the idea of a Circular Economy.

Thanks to the EU the Micro B USB plug is now a common standard on phones, tablets, and e-book readers.

EU policies have had a global reach. Here in New Zealand I can think of two that have had an effect. One of them would be noticed by electronics engineers and technicians every time they order a part since they are often specified with the RoHS compliance information. RoHS is the EU Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive limiting the levels of toxic materials contained in products.

Another effect of the EU, which many people can see on a daily basis, is the micro B USB connector used on a large number of mobile phones and other portable electronic devices. As an attempt to reduce the environmental impact of the large number of incompatible chargers the EU proposed a Directive to force standardisation onto the manufacturers. Most of the manufacturers banded together and responded by developing a Memorandum of Understanding to hamonise portable device charges based on the micro B USB connector.

In correspondence earlier this year with the Minister for the Environment Nick Smith said that there are no plans at present to emulate EU policies such as reducing hazardous materials contained in products (as per the EC RoHS), identification and the possible ban of the importation of conflict minerals, development of a Circular Economy, priority product status, producer responsibility, or product stewardship for electrical, electronic, and computer devices (addition to what is currently being done), adopting a universal charging standard for mobile devices, mandatory battery recycling, or adoption of an Integrated Product Policy. As a country we are at least twenty five years behind the EU in terms of technology related environmental policy and this is another black mark against so called clean green New Zealand.

Because it is a significant player an exit by the UK from the EU waters down the the strength of the EU bloc and there is also a possibility that other countries may follow. Given the level of disruption, the level of dissatisfaction with the referendum result, and that it is nonbinding it is possible that a Brexit may not actually happen.

With the global environmental, social, and economic issues with which we face there is a strong need for a supranational organisation with governance that is acceptable to every nation-state.

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e-waste, electronics, politics
Repair technicians’ creed

Ecotech Services administration

17 June 2016

Repair technicians should follow a code of ethics and the statements below, as defined by iFixit, is how we run our business. We promise to always observe the following:

Honesty in Business

We are honest in business dealings. Our contracts, invoices, bills, statements of work, and all other business documents are accurate and honest.

Integrity in Advertising

Advertising for our company and services does not stretch the truth or misrepresent reality.

Privacy with Client Data

All private information that our clients share with us is confidential. All data on the software/hardware we work with is kept confidential. When we refurbish or recycle hardware, all user data is removed according to data security best practices.

Commitment to Environmental Responsibility

All e-waste generated by our business is recycled responsibly and in accordance with all local laws.

Respect for the Law

We abide by all local, regional, and national laws dealing with my business, employees, taxes, e-waste, and software licensing.

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administration, repair
Poor quality Ozito cordless drill charger

Alan Liefting

1 June 2016

An Ozito OZCD12V1A cordless drill came in to us for recycling and it looked like it had hardly been used. Rather than recycling it I thought it might be a good candidate for repurposing or rehashing with different batteries.

Never been soldered!

On inspection I found that the NiCd batteries were leaking (this may or may not be an issue since I have no idea how old it is) but more importantly I found that a wire on the transformer in the power supply had never been soldered at the factory! It didn’t help that the circuit board on the transformer was only flimsily attached.

The drill was hardly used, possibly because that batteries could not get charged?

I don’t know how the mechanical side stacks up but the electronics is pared back to an absolute minimum. Firstly, there is no filter capacitor in the charger power supply. You can get away without one in some cases but it is usually good practice to have it. The NiCd charging circuit is really basic. Maybe even too basic to the extent that it may damage the NiCd cells. It consists of six components, and two of those are indicator LED’s. Having the two LED’s (one red and one green) is one positive thing. Sometimes cheap products only use one. Temperature sensing of the NiCd cells is also non-existent and that, coupled with the lack of battery voltage detection, means that the really basic charging regime will shorten the lifetime of the cells.

It is a real shame that consumers demand cheap products and manufacturers supply them. It is creating unnecessary environmental problems

e-waste, electronics, quality, recycling
Repairs – hard work but a good idea

Alan Liefting

30 May 2016
Kathmandu, a New Zealand based outdoor equipment supply company, made it to the news when employees from one of their stores were observed slashing sleeping bags and other products before throwing them in a rubbish skip. The company said they were faulty goods returned by customers. They were destroyed to prevent them being returned again as faulty goods. That is a cop-out of course, because they can demand a sales receipt from the customer or the products could have been identified as being faulty stock and therefore not eligible for replacement.

Household appliances such as radios were economical to repair but cheap electronics products sourced from the Asian countries gradually made repairs less likely.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

What happened at Kathmandu also happens with electronics products.

Consumer electronics, as with outdoors gear, is made cheaply in China. The wholesale price must be stupefyingly low considering that you can buy a complex bit of electronics gear for something like $10 retail after it has passed though wholesalers and transport companies. These low wholesale prices are a disincentive to have items repaired. An item with a retail price of $10 is obviously a throw-away item if it fails but I have heard of electronic equipment with a sell price of up to $600 being treated as a throw-away item if it fails within the warranty period.

There are a lot of things that can be done instead of throwing electronic products into the rubbish.
- Companies can have products repaired at their cost rather than throwing it out. It would give them a degree of environmental credibility. If there are a lot of faulty items they can be done in a batch to make gains in efficiency.
- Some faulty products can be stripped of usable spare parts to fix up other ones. A good technician would know how to do this in such a manner that the reliability of the repaired product is not compromised. Sometimes this technique cannot be used when the same part fails in every individual product.
- To reduce the rate of failure, a company should ensure the products are made to a decent standard in the first place. This generally makes products more expensive and unfortunately consumers buy on price rather than reliability or effect on the environment.
If none of that is possible recycling is a viable option and may not cost anything.

All this reminds me of a story I heard back in the mid 1980s about television parts. Philips New Zealand, the local branch of the Dutch multinational, had a whole stack of television circuit boards that they probably could not sell so they took them out to the car park and destroyed them. In this case it was apparently for tax purposes. Writing off old stock is good for the company profits.

It is a shame the profit is always the bottom line in the corporate world.
repair