Data centers, whose expansion is being fueled dramatically by the artificial intelligence boom, have a far bigger carbon footprint than previously estimated, according to a new study. The sprawling, power-hungry sites, used to store critical IT infrastructure like servers, are being built worldwide by companies and countries as AI applications…
I have been working in data centers for decades. You have no idea the amount of waste there is. We fill up roll away dumpsters w/ boxes/packing materials when a new customer comes in.
They do an upgrade, ever server/switch/router etc ends up in the dumpster. Even if they are perfectly good and it isn’t worth shipping back or they have devalued to zero so they cannot be sold for tax purposes. Oh and another round of boxes/packing materials in the dumpster.
Some customers demand proof we destroy their servers (not drives). So we record one of us on a fork truck running over hundreds of servers. That part is kinda fun.
Areas uninsulated w/ AC blasting. Machines running that are idle as backup to the backup.
On paper we recycle them, but most of the time they end up in a landfill.
Well that’s just stupid. In my country, if you sell property that’s been depreciated to zero (or lower than its sale price in general), you’re just supposed to record it as profit.
Of course when you’ve depreciated something to zero and it’s not something like a car where it’s registered with the government, you could just give it away to employees or friends.
Technically they can do the same but its not worth the hassle. I could have been more clear on that in my OP.
Case in point, we had a large HVAC fail. They wanted it hauled to the land fill. I thought what a waste, I’ll cut it up and take the condensers/copper to the scrappers and get a bunch of money and send it to HQ. I was already on the clock doing nothing and hoped to my us look good.
Cut it up in less than an hour, took to the scrapper on my time on my way home. Walked out with a fist full of cash and the receipt. Deposited the cash and wrote a check for the amount I got and sent it to finance.
I got is so much trouble for that. Finance didn’t want to deal w/ the paperwork. They went to their exec to complain to my exec and it was a shit show. Basically I was told we are a multi billion dollar corp and these small checks aren’t worth the labor to deal with.
As for “giving it away” you would be fired by COB if they found out. Especially over 3rd party gear. Liability was their biggest concern. I have posted a few examples in other reply’s.
Is it stupid, it is, I totally agree. But its incentivized to take the path of least resistance.
That seems like the perfect department slush fund. Free cookies every friday! Bigger christmas party!
We were allowed to do that w/ scrap cabling/metal and such. But like everything someone had to push it and start recycling new wire to keep the pizzas flowing. Bean counters noticed the spike in cable being purchased. Asked the bosses why so much going out w/ no new projects. Bosses figured out who it was and they were fired. The bean counters we had watched all the numbers like hawks. I got questioned on why the mowing company was billing 20% than last year w/ no contract increase. We are talking maybe a couple grand. I had to put the mowers on a schedule to keep the costs where they wanted regardless of the rain/growth.
ffs, someone always has to ruin a good thing.
The problem is, few employees or friends will want an enterprise grade server screaming in their house.
The waste described above makes me sad. Surely parts of servers can be recycled.
Another good point, I swear they get louder and louder… The last batch of new servers sounded like a 777 on takeoff.
Could that perhaps be an issue of stupid licensing? With, smart licensing, or whatever, if the license is non-transferable, then the hardware is basically an expensive paper weight.
I’ve heard Cisco used to give out Meraki devices for free on some events, because without a license they were totally useless. Until someone figured out how to run OpenWRT on them.
Thats an aspect I hadn’t considered, licensing. Unless you keep it off line your right its a boat anchor. What fun is that as you can’t update?
The amount of waste out there like this is tragic. I could understand destroying hard drives, but the rest of the hardware?
If you saw it when we had to destroy on site it would make you cry. 60’ of servers in 2 rows and we would roll a forklift over them. The most we did was 3 sets of rows in a day.