Here’s a story from the front page of the Portland newspaper about an innovative community organization recycling old computers.
You can get a computer for free (with instruction) by donating 24 hours of volunteer time to recycle old computers. It’s called Free Geek. Here’s part of the story [edited for brevity from The Oregonian].
Oso Martin launched Free Geek on Earth Day 2000 with a stack of misspelled brochures and a Web site describing an organization that was more virtual than real.No nonprofit had done exactly what Martin envisioned: Collect old computers, teach volunteers to fix them, give the good ones away to good causes and make sure the rest are responsibly recycled.
There were times, especially in the first year, when Free Geek almost didn’t get off the ground. Finding people willing to donate old computers wasn’t the problem. Paying for a place to store and refurbish them was. At one point, Free Geek owed $12,000 in back rent. Still, the landlord and others were enchanted by the ponytailed Martin, who drives a beat-up truck fueled with 20 percent vegetable oil biodiesel and talks really fast when he’s excited.
Today, Free Geek not only is current on its rent, it has expanded its space twice. The organization occupies an old Langendorf Bakery building that stretches across a southeast Portland city block. Last year, when Oregon employers were either laying people off or locked in a hiring freeze, Free Geek boosted its staff from six to 13 plus added four paid internships.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates there are 315 million obsolete computers, monitors and other peripherals in the country, containing an estimated 1 billion pounds of lead, 2 billion pounds of cadmium and 400,000 pounds of mercury. Most everyone agrees that these toxic materials should not be disposed in the country’s landfills, where they might leach into groundwater. There’s also agreement that it’s best not to ship these old machines to a developing country, where improper dismantling can threaten both workers and the environment.
There’s widespread disagreement, however, about how obsolete computers should be handled and who should pay for it.
In June 2001, the EPA convened a panel of experts representing government, the electronics industry and environmental groups to develop a national strategy for dealing with computer waste. The panel, known as the National Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative, held its final scheduled meeting earlier this month in Portland, ending three years of talks without developing a plan everyone could agree upon. Industry has committed to keep talking.
In the meantime, with no national solution to computer waste and old machines piling up, Oregon and other states likely will come up with their own recycling and disposal rules. Martin is a member of an Oregon state electronic waste advisory committee that has held its first meeting. He’s not waiting for government or the electronics industry to dictate Free Geek’s future, however.
At first, Martin looked for a job in architecture. The only thing he could find was designing medical office buildings for Kaiser. Been there. Done that. He finally settled on doing some consulting, and he whispers when he says, “I only had to work four or five hours a week.”
He earned enough money to cover rent and buy food for himself and his dog, Jake, a black and white Border collie.
Martin decided to commit the balance of his time to the social and environmental causes he believed in. For a while, he and Jake spent 50-plus hours a week volunteering for City Repair Project, a group of activists dedicated to creating public gathering places. Martin helped organize the 1998 “Hands Around Portland” event — which drew thousands of people for a symbolic protest against what activists then characterized as a “growing isolation brought on by freeways, gated communities and unregulated technology.”
One day, Martin and a fellow activist, Matthew Follett, sat looking at the half-dozen or so computers piled high with books and papers in Martin’s dining room.
“I really should get around to fixing the computers to give them away,” Martin said.
Follett’s response: “Why don’t you just do it, then?”
Today, Martin has 16,600 square feet of space in which to fix and store old computers and electronic equipment. And the machines keep coming.
Free Geek’s warehouse is filled with central processing units and computer monitors stacked from the floor almost to the ceiling. There’s a separate room for printers — known affectionately by the Free Geekers as “printerland.” There’s also “stereoland,” as well as a yet-to-be-named pile of laptops, phones and other gizmos taking up space Martin would like to see turned into a free Internet cafe. Someday, he’d also like to have a “museum of weird stuff.”
A private donor gave Martin enough money to start Free Geek. But the organization won its big break when it received a $40,000 grant from the state Department of Environmental Quality and the city of Portland in 2001. Other public and private grant money has trickled in.
Then, Free Geek received $159,000 in the summer from the Meyer Memorial Trust, a Portland-based foundation that supports a broad spectrum of nonprofit efforts in Oregon and Clark County, Wash. The money is to be used to expand Free Geek’s staff and operations and to help other nonprofits learn to use Open Source Software, freely available applications that are easily customized.
Lately, Martin has been asked to help establish a Free Geek operation in Lancaster County, Pa. Another guy e-mailed from South Bend, Ind., asking whether he could use the Free Geek name for his computer recycling operation.
Sure, Martin said. No charge.
“Oso has this rare vision, and Free Geek is a magical organization,” says Marie Deatherage, program and communications officer for the Meyer trust.
In fact, Deatherage says, if the state of Oregon is looking for people to feature in its “We love dreamers” campaign, state marketers ought to put Oso Martin in the ad.
“He’s the guy they’re talking about,” she says.
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