Landfills across the country are leaking toxic leachate into waterways, and when owners go bankrupt or vanish, neighbors and taxpayers are left holding the bill.
Surprised that landfills are such a stagnant matter in the United States of today. China seems to have moved much further by recycling and re-engineering a waste to energy approach.
20 yrs ago we had plasma technology available for garbage processing. The up front cost was too much for “big trash” and hardly anyone used it. It makes me incredibly angry. I blogged about this 20 yrs ago. They want to destroy they planet as fast as thy can.
Not surprised to see Virginia in this write-up. Northern Virginia’s Data Center Alley Processes 70% of Global Internet Traffic & the state is rounding on 600 total data centers. Where there’s data centers, there’s tons of IT hardware waste going to landfills, and no shortage of potentially caustic / runoff materials. The race to “innovate at all costs” is only shrinking the h/w lifecycle-
From the Uptime Institute 2026 Global Data Center Survey:
Server refresh: an increasingly watched metric
IT sustainability specialists have long paid attention to server refresh rates (how long organizations keep servers before replacing them) — because IT equipment contains valuable materials and contributes to embodied carbon and e-waste. Keeping servers in service for longer can reduce e-waste and spread the embodied carbon of the equipment over a longer useful life. However, there is a trade-off: older servers may consume more energy for a given level of work, which can offset some of the sustainability benefits of delaying replacement.
Refresh rates are watched for other reasons too. During periods of rapid innovation, they can shorten as newer and more efficient equipment is brought in; and accountants — and insurers — can be caught out by sudden swings in the cost of replacement equipment. When refresh rates are shorter, older equipment is likely to lose value more quickly.
Between 2015 and 2023, operators reported increasing server life cycles, from around 36 to 44 months. Since 2023, this trend has reversed: operators say they are retiring servers sooner, and the reported server lifetime has decreased to around 41 months, slightly above the 2020 level (see Figure 7).
This partly relates to the current rapid build-out of data centers and a shift toward higher-density applications, including HPC and AI, where newer and more powerful servers are more attractive because they deliver higher performance. However, there is a more specific explanation too: in the period leading up to 2023, Intel, still the largest incumbent supplier of CPUs to the commercial server market, was unable to introduce new processors with enough performance gains to encourage widespread replacement. With the introduction of new processors, Intel (along with competitor AMD) is now correcting this.
Hello folks, I know this is a little off topic but please take a minute to sign a petition to save Big Bend National Park from tRUMP's VANDA:ISM! https://nobigbendwall.org/sign-the-petition/
Erin and Suzanne, a good article. An area requiring more attention. How does the EPA wash their hands of this situation ? Maybe creating toxic wastelands is the goal for these corporations ? They love to force people off the land and into the cities at every opportunity. Is the EPA taking orders from corporations ? These are the same corporations that over package everything they sell !
Surprised that landfills are such a stagnant matter in the United States of today. China seems to have moved much further by recycling and re-engineering a waste to energy approach.
20 yrs ago we had plasma technology available for garbage processing. The up front cost was too much for “big trash” and hardly anyone used it. It makes me incredibly angry. I blogged about this 20 yrs ago. They want to destroy they planet as fast as thy can.
Not surprised to see Virginia in this write-up. Northern Virginia’s Data Center Alley Processes 70% of Global Internet Traffic & the state is rounding on 600 total data centers. Where there’s data centers, there’s tons of IT hardware waste going to landfills, and no shortage of potentially caustic / runoff materials. The race to “innovate at all costs” is only shrinking the h/w lifecycle-
https://www.districtenergy.org/blogs/district-energy/2026/03/18/northern-virginias-data-center-alley-processes-70
From the Uptime Institute 2026 Global Data Center Survey:
Server refresh: an increasingly watched metric
IT sustainability specialists have long paid attention to server refresh rates (how long organizations keep servers before replacing them) — because IT equipment contains valuable materials and contributes to embodied carbon and e-waste. Keeping servers in service for longer can reduce e-waste and spread the embodied carbon of the equipment over a longer useful life. However, there is a trade-off: older servers may consume more energy for a given level of work, which can offset some of the sustainability benefits of delaying replacement.
Refresh rates are watched for other reasons too. During periods of rapid innovation, they can shorten as newer and more efficient equipment is brought in; and accountants — and insurers — can be caught out by sudden swings in the cost of replacement equipment. When refresh rates are shorter, older equipment is likely to lose value more quickly.
Between 2015 and 2023, operators reported increasing server life cycles, from around 36 to 44 months. Since 2023, this trend has reversed: operators say they are retiring servers sooner, and the reported server lifetime has decreased to around 41 months, slightly above the 2020 level (see Figure 7).
This partly relates to the current rapid build-out of data centers and a shift toward higher-density applications, including HPC and AI, where newer and more powerful servers are more attractive because they deliver higher performance. However, there is a more specific explanation too: in the period leading up to 2023, Intel, still the largest incumbent supplier of CPUs to the commercial server market, was unable to introduce new processors with enough performance gains to encourage widespread replacement. With the introduction of new processors, Intel (along with competitor AMD) is now correcting this.
Hello folks, I know this is a little off topic but please take a minute to sign a petition to save Big Bend National Park from tRUMP's VANDA:ISM! https://nobigbendwall.org/sign-the-petition/
Thank you!
I just learned that my area is contaminated by leachate. How dangerous is it to keep living here?
Erin and Suzanne, a good article. An area requiring more attention. How does the EPA wash their hands of this situation ? Maybe creating toxic wastelands is the goal for these corporations ? They love to force people off the land and into the cities at every opportunity. Is the EPA taking orders from corporations ? These are the same corporations that over package everything they sell !