Monday, 5 April 2010

GeekFest Dubai 4.0 – When Geeks Go Green


We’ve got together with recycling company EnviroServe to arrange a gigantic old technology collection at GeekFest 4.0. Enviroserve is a Public Private Partnership with the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Environment and has a dedicated e-waste recovery facility in Dubai. Before anyone accuses me of organising something, this is all thanks to Spot On resident tree-hugger, Alec Harden (@alecharden).

It’s an often under-appreciated fact that our favourite geeky toys can actually be recycled usefully when we’ve upgraded to that lovely, sparkly Next-Gen device– and can often be harmful to the environment if they’re not properly recycled. Just think of all those nasty heavy metals in all those Lithium batteries, circuit boards and old toner cartridges – let alone all that recyclable plastic!

What’s more, there’s gold in them there motherboards, as well as a range of other recyclable goodies – in fact, EnviroServe attempts to offset as much of the cost of recycling as it can from recovering those goodies from your old toys.

So here’s the deal. We’re bringing our old stuff to GeekFest and collecting in at The Shelter ready for EnviroServe to pick up in one great big bag of old geekery – and if your old GeekLife is interesting, you can even share it in the display of Ancient Geeks we’ll be mounting before we junk the whole damn lot.

What counts as recyclable? Old printers, PCs, phones, toner cartridges, hard disks, speakers, hifis, iPods – anything electronic, in fact.

DIC recently announced it had managed to recycle a whole 1,000 bits of technology. We’re gonna beat that at GeekFest 4.0. See if we don't!

We've got some stunning GeekTalks as well as other stuff up our sleevies - more later!

GeekFest Dubai 4.0 will take place on the 29th April 2010 at The Shelter in Al Quoz. You can do the Facebook thing, follow @GeekFestDubai on Twitter or just pop back here nearer the date for more information.

Don't forget, BTW, GeekFest Amman 1.0 taking place on the 17th April - follow @GeekFestAmman on Twitter or you can find it here on Facebook!

And GeekFest Beirut (you guessed it, @GeekFestBeirut or Facebook) might just happen on the 30th April, but they're being too UNorganised to predict just now!

8 comments:

Oussama's Take said...

29 March 2010 Alex, really. My time machine is down for maintenance, can I hitch a ride.... lol

EyeOnDubai said...

Oussama, you beat me to it! Calendar malfunction? Would be a shame, because I've managed to miss every single GeekFest so far, to that makes four...

EoD

ghoonk said...

"GeekFest Dubai 4.0 will take place on the 29th March 2010 at The Shelter in Al Quoz. You can do the Facebook thing, follow @GeekFestDubai on Twitter or just pop back here nearer the date for more information."

Oh dear. How uncharacteristic of Alex. tsk tsk tsk.

Mita said...

Give 'im a break, he's on holiday!

Rupert Neil Bumfrey said...

Because I am aware of English unreliability, I did make a note in my calendar when first aware that GeekFest Dubai 4.0 would be taking place on:
Thursday, 22nd, April, 2010.

You have all become reliant on a Brit?
Oh dear, what has the world reverted to?

Alexander said...

Yeah, yeah, 29th April.

Now go boil yer heads, all of ye...

KJ said...

Psssht! All this to organize something for a tree hugger! Fool! The planet is a complete waste, the sooner we rid of it the better!

Melvin Pereira said...

Is the Geek fest still on ?? I am interested to join as well ..

Wanna know more about the recycling as well as the agenda ... can you please let some information out about it .

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