Silicon Hogs – Producing Chips Is Wasteful
from the well,-duh dept
I generally like the environment, and support things that are supposed to make it cleaner, safer, and better. However, I’ve noticed that many (though, certainly not all) so-called “environmentalists” go a little overboard looking for environmental problems – and in doing so, find them where there really isn’t a problem. The latest thing that is likely to cause a sensation among such groups is this useless study showing how wasteful it is to produce microchips. The thing is, everyone knows that there are by-products of producing chips – so that’s not new. What’s “new” in the report is the weight per chip of waste product. Yes, the weight. The comparison made is that 630 times the weight of a single chip is wasted in producing that chip, while only twice the weight of a single car is wasted. This is an absolutely useless fact. By this reasoning, Intel should just make its chips a bit heavier, and they could decrease the waste factor. It also, as the article points out, doesn’t take into account important factors like what these chips are replacing (which could be much more wasteful) and what the chips are used for – which could counteract the wastefulness. I’m all for getting plants to be more efficient about their waste, but they should at least come out with useful studies on the matter instead of this junk.
