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Technology-Brazil: E-Waste Can Produce Marvels
by Clarinha Glock* - IPS/IFEJ (porto alegre, brazil)
Saturday, April 25, 2009

Inter Press Service
Using pieces from all sorts of useless equipment, students at the Computer Recovery Centre in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre have put 1,700 computers into operation in three years.

By the end of 2009 they should reach 2,500 computers, which will be distributed to schools, day care centres, non-governmental organisations and computer centres, bringing technology to people who otherwise have little or no access to it in this city of 1.5 million people, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul state.

CRC's raw material is electronic waste from the federal government, banks, private companies and individuals, who get rid of outdated computers to make way for newer ones, or because they aren't able to repair the ones they have.

Before, these computers, printers and tech accessories would have been dumped in landfills, but now they are seeing an extension of their useful life, or are even recycled as part of works of art.
The project is part of the Brazilian Programme for Digital Inclusion. As in the others, CRC of Porto Alegre is located in a poor suburb. There, 88 young people from low-income families receive a scholarship that allows them to learn to dismantle, recondition, adapt and rebuild equipment, install free software, and programme and configure computers.