UK's annual PCB waste = 81 HMS Belfasts, says National Physical Lab

We're obliged to reader Simon Moore for flagging up a heavyweight improbable measurement unit, deployed by the National Physical Laboratory in an attempt to quantify the amount of printed circuit board waste dumped into UK landfills every year in terms of Royal Navy light cruisers. According to this enlightening report into …

[Robert Helpmann??]

Note Icon →

Tell us in the comments if you can reverse-engineer the NPL's shonky sums.

Classic engineering method: number pulled out of hat.

[Captain DaFt]

Alternate classic engineering method:

Mixing precision measurements with 'Meh, close enough.'

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me of the classic

trick played on apprentices.

'Off you go to the stores and get me a 55.3K Ohm resistor. don't come back until you get it'.

hours later Apprentice comes back with 56K resistor and says

"I measured every 56K reistor in the stores. This one is 55.6K Is this good enough?"

Happened to a good friend of mine circa 1970.

[BoldMan]

Re: Reminds me of the classic

I prefer the classic sending the apprentice to stores for a long weght...

[S4qFBxkFFg]

Re: Reminds me of the classic

Equivalents from catering, when the new kitchen porter gets sent to the supplier for:

1lb bell-end cheddar

20 salmon legs

[Pedigree-Pete]

Re: Reminds me of the classic. Catering industry.

Go fetch a bucket of steam for the Sauce Vapeur.

[auburnman]

Re: Reminds me of the classic

Sometimes it's a Long Stand...

[Lester Haines]

Yes indeed

Sky hooks, left-handed screwdriver, etc

[The March Hare]

Re: Yes indeed

Don't forget a metre of fallopian tube...

[Kane]

Re: Yes indeed

Tub of elbow grease?

[Lester Haines]

Re: Re: Yes indeed

Yes, they store that next to the striped paint.

[Allan George Dyer]

Re: Reminds me of the classic

I think the long stand is an acceptable alternative. Not to mention the metric adjustable spanner, tartan cotton and red-and-white striped paint.

[CaptSmeg]

Re: Reminds me of the classic

Ah yes. I have fond memories of falling for that one. The guy in stores dully provided me with one. After I'd been standing there for 10min it dawned on me. Lesson learned never blindly follow instructions.

[TWB]

How do they know weight of HMS Belfast?

Are there set a of scales big enough? (and how do you lift it on? - I see no lifting eyes)

Or did they weigh all the bits as they assembled it? - what about all the extra stuff that people took on board while no one was looking?

Ok - I guess they measure the displacement with a giant Eureka jar....

I reckon someone looked at it and made up a number and no-one has ever questioned it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How do they know weight of HMS Belfast?

"Or did they weigh all the bits as they assembled it? - what about all the extra stuff that people took on board while no one was looking?

Ok - I guess they measure the displacement with a giant Eureka jar...."

Put in dry dock. FIll dock. Water to fill empty dock - water with ship in = displacement.

But yes, they probably did weigh the bits (or measure dimensions and calculate from there) as it was assembled as the weight is rather crucial for a ship, not just the actual weight but as to where the centre of gravity will be. So the parts will be checked against the design.

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Displacement is not weight of the vessel.

I see what you did there!

mixed units of weight in the same paragraph.

2000 tons and 8,000,000 pounds

Over here in Blighty, we don't use millions of LB's. that stupidity is reserved from them there colonials out to the west.

Paric because she hates putting on a even a few avp ounces.

[Mark 85]

Re: Displacement is not weight of the vessel.

My apologies. You are correct in that I was using Blighty info from the 1700's and it's not a 100% correct. My fault as lately I've ben wrapped up in the old wooden ships and their history and design.

Yes, the weight of the vessel is equal to displacement. I'll go stand in the corner and repeat 1000 times "don't use old info"...

I'll also remove my post.

Icon for "my bad"...............

[AlanS]

Re: Displacement is not weight of the vessel.

Ever heard of Archimedes' Principle? The weight of a floating ship is identical to its displacement.

[Tromos]

Doesn't add up

I'm finding the original million ton figure for PCB waste a little difficult to reconcile. That is somewhere in the region of 16 kilograms for every man, woman and child in the country. There must surely be an awful lot of recyclable metal (e.g. transformers and bits of chassis) included to get to this figure. Even a big old TV would only have a couple of kilograms of PCB with components and I can't see the average family scrapping the equivalent of about 30 TV's worth of electronics annually.

[madick]

Re: Doesn't add up

Agreed. It doesn't add up.

The NPL report states:

"The electronics industry has a waste problem - currently over 100 million electronic units are discarded annually in the UK alone.... This amounts to around 1 million tonnes in the UK annually"

i.e. 1/100 tonne (about 10kg) per "electronic unit".

A typical laptop weighs about 2.5kg (including its battery and screen) and the electronics inside a typical desktop or tower weigh about the same. Even household electric motors (from tumble dryers, washing machines, fridges and freezers) rarely weigh more than 6kg each. (And they shouldn't count because they're metallic.)

So what are these heavy "electronic units" that push the average weight up to 10kg?

[Pen-y-gors]

Odd materials

I know the military have been cutting back for years, but did they really make HMS Belfast (and all the other ships of that class) out of PCB waste? I would have thought steel plate was more effective as armour.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Odd materials

" I would have thought steel plate was more effective as armour."

It is. But the Navy forgot that after Belfast was built, and by the 1960s started making ships out of aluminium and formica (both found sadly wanting in the Falklands). However, given that the Royal Navy is now about ten ships, each with a popgun and two firework rockets, it no longer matters what they are made of, which is probably just as well.

[Doctor_Wibble]

The reason it goes to landfill

The PCB and electronic stuff goes to landfill because it's a pain to dispose of it properly.

My council (in common with most I expect) won't take an old vido in the main rubbish and don't do electronics collection days and nobody is going to go all the way down to the tip just to throw away a dead calculator or a lightbulb or a PCI card.

As per the remark above this sounds like a rather big figure and I suspect this might be the total weight of electronic stuff which includes PCBs - anything with a transformer or which was in a steel case will be adding to that.

[TitterYeNot]

Re: The reason it goes to landfill

"The PCB and electronic stuff goes to landfill because it's a pain to dispose of it properly."

Yes, the only time I've seen this stuff reused was when I was given a set of recycled PCB drink mats (indeed my cup of tea is sitting happily on one as I type.)

Brilliant, I can now think of each one as being approximately 0.5 µ-HMS Belfasts! Ahem, or I could get a life...

As far as the accuracy of the definition of an HMS Belfast is concerned, we have to remember that this is the National Physics Laboratory we're talking about here. The ship's relative mass remains undetermined as there is no figure given for what percentage of the maximum speed of a sheep in a vacuum the ship is travelling at when weighed, which may explain the discrepancy.

Or this could just be another sign that I really, really, need to get out more...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The reason it goes to landfill

"As per the remark above this sounds like a rather big figure and I suspect this might be the total weight of electronic stuff which includes PCBs - anything with a transformer or which was in a steel case will be adding to that."

Or maybe they've included the CRT TV and monitor mountain as part of their waste sums? Even including the transformers, casings and components, we're talking about 43 kg of waste per household per year. Taking the entire unit weight, that's still either three 42" flat screen TV's per house per year, or an equivalent mass.

Not looking good for the NPL's ability to do maths.

[BobRocket]

Dumping stuff in landfill

is not really a problem, this stuff currently has no commercial value and would cost a fortune to reprocess into raw materials so dumping it for now is fine by me.

They should sort the stuff before dumping though and dump in identifiable areas.

In the future some of this stuff will be worth digging out and reusing and if we know where it is concentrated then landfill is not a dumping ground but long term storage of natural resources.

[Doctor_Wibble]

Re: Dumping stuff in landfill

> They should sort the stuff before dumping though and dump in identifiable areas.

Ancient civilisations already did this, to make sure it would be possible to have mines to dig it all back up - as we are indeed doing now - once nature and a few years had worn away or dissolved the labels.

Old wood was trickier because it had to be ground up first and have some fake 'fern' shapes added in layers so nobody got suspicious which is why we are now under the impression that e.g. an entire forest could collapse and squash itself into coal.

Oil obviously comes from old squeezy bottles which is why soap works on it because not everybody rinsed things out before disposal so it's all the same stuff really. This is also related to the reason that oil with tomato in it will permanently stain plastic.

It's The Real Undeniable Truth Hidden.

[nematoad]

It's in the title.

Any ideas? Tell us in the comments if you can reverse-engineer the NPL's shonky sums.

Being as it is a quote from the national Physical Laboratory it'll be quantum.

[graeme leggett]

dumping HMS Belfasts as waste

You don't wont to do that, it/she has a lot of asbestos on board. I remember the signage last time I was on it/her.

[Attila of welshpool]

flags weight

Could be that when carrying an admiral plus staff ( as she was at the battle of the North Cape) the additional; weight of all that brass made up the difference!!

[x 7]

the 11550 tons was empty displacement, after the 1942 rebuild - you can add another 900-1000 tons to that for fuel / ballast / water / stores which takes the figure toward the value you need for the claim. Confusing the issue would be the large number of refits subsequent to 1942 which may have added even more weight: e.g. the covering in of the bridge (for NBC protection) in the 1950's

I wouldn't be surprised if no-one knows the real displacement

[I am replete.]

It can be done now, today. Just note the draught marks on the sides of the ship, there might even be 6 sets, and then consult the book which is onboard. The various weights for the ship can be read off.