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Seattle, WA - The growing problem of digital waste has many cyber-environmental
groups concerned.
 The
environmental group People Against Wasted Bits (PAWB) thinks education
is the key. Debbie Hart who heads the organization explained, "Most
people don't know that when you empty your Recycle Bin the contents
are transferred to one of the big digital trash companies like CyberWaste
or Digital Junkheap for processing. The capacity at these facilities
is not infinite."
A representative from CyberWaste, which maintains the largest group
of digital landfills, or cyberheaps as they call them, confirmed
that many of their cyberheaps are at or near capacity and if something
isn't done soon it will become a major problem.
Hart also worries that viruses and other infected programs aren't
being properly handled. "Many people just throw these toxic
bits away, which only passes along the problem to our children. What
if one of these cyberheaps springs a leak and taints the bit supply?"
E-mail is the largest contributor to digital waste. In their pamphlets
on digital conservation PAWB preaches the "Write Once, Send
Many" strategy for e-mail. "There's nothing wrong with
using the same rejection e-mail, or memo about people stealing food
from the refrigerator more than once," said Hart. "It's
called a recycle bin for a reason people. You're supposed to take
those files back out when you have a use for them, or until someone
else has a use for them and removes them."
The pamphlet also suggests not deleting whole lines of text unless
completely necessary. "Those characters might be able to used
elsewhere, so make cut and paste your friend, and delete and backspace
your enemy," advised Hart. "If you absolutely have to empty
your Recycle Bin please "Sort by Type" so the workers down
at the processing plant don't have to."
In addition PAWB supports classes in object-oriented programming,
which is able to reuse large chunks of code, and open source programming,
which builds on already created programs.
"In fact we filed an amicus brief in the SCO vs. IBM case because
we think the positive benefits of reused code in Linux from Unix
greatly outweigh any problems copyright infringement," shared
Hart.
Second on the list of digital polluters is file sharing programs.
Many groups would like file integrity checks be required of all peer-to-peer
sharing programs. "I'm almost in tears every time I hear of
a 640 MB file being downloaded and then the user finds out it is
corrupted or not labeled correctly. It's one more step towards digital
eco-Armageddon," said a saddened Hart.
The PAWB "Think of the Children" pamphlet suggests cutting
and pasting these corrupted files to CD instead of deleting them.
It would save valuable space in our cyberheaps.
PAWB's extensive lobbying effort has convinced Washington Senator
Maria Cantwell whose state houses the most digital landfills to introduce
legislation mandating digital recycling at companies with more than
100 employees. "We don't want our kids to run out of e's or
surf in on a littered information superhighway, do we?" asked
Cantwell.
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