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Data centers emitting more CO2 than thought: study
(japantoday.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2026
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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.
How many customers do this?
At least here in the Bay Area, hard drives and SSDs get destroyed, but a lot of the other equipment goes to e-waste recyclers who end up refurbishing it and selling it on marketplaces like eBay.
A lot of homelabbers get their equipment from eBay, and the source of that equipment is almost always second-hand data center equipment.
Everyone.
Its not worth it to them. They are making money hand over fist with these services and they right them off. So there is zero incentive to keep the gear.
Sometimes we buy the entire system for a dollar if we can use it on our network. Meaning we built these data centers for our systems. If there is space in them we allow colocation of other companies gear. Its better than empty racks and we charge a lot.
And I would be interested on how they are referbing the equipment and selling for a profit. When its devalued to zero it gets messy w/ the tax code. Not throwing shade, I would rather go this way then the landfill but this is what I was told by the executives. Also liability, someone illegally dumps them and the DNR runs the serial numbers they come back to you.
I got in a ton of trouble when I recycled (for no money, I raged on this point) a pile of battery bank cells and didnt require the scrap dealer to list all the SN on the invoice.
My understanding is that an e-waste recycling company is contracted to take all the old equipment. The original company can say they've recycled it, record it as such, and doesn't care what's done with the equipment after that - whether that be reselling it, recycling it, whatever. The e-waste company is the one that handles finding the useful stuff and refurbishing it.
Interesting, maybe w/ my company they just don't want to risk it w/ 3rd party (customers) equipment. Or more likely we don't have the authority to tell the recycler that because its not our gear?
I know with our gear we ship it back to depot when its no longer in use as we have other centers that can use it. Or the repair group will part it out for future repairs.
I will say it chaps my ass seeing a roll away taken away w/ 5-10 million dollars of gear to be crushed.
Same w/ the cardboard, I asked for a bailer, too dangerous, denied. Asked for a cardboard only dumpster, again denied. We had a local charity picking it up as they made a few bucks off it. That got nixed for liability concerns... I gave up at that point.
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.
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.
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?