As products of high quality and with new functions are being produced by the information industry to meet consumers’ needs, the lives of products are shortening. If we take the personal computer (PC) as an example, the product’s useful life is only about 3-5 years. In industrialized countries, the ever-increasing consumption of information products results in a great amount of scrap that is often discarded and gives rise to serious problems of pollution management. Therefore, the disposal of scrap information products will become an important issue in the future. According to the 2007 “Report on the Investigation of the Digital Divide,” prepared by the Research, Development and Evaluation Commission of the Executive Yuan, the frequency of computer usage, Internet penetration, and computer ownership differ between urbanized and residential areas. Residents with high computer usage often have longer ownership and the digital divide is quite obvious in suburban areas. The core of the 2008 project encompasses: “Recycling Computers for New Hope,” which is tied to recycling resources and bridging the digital divide through the donation of used computers to lower income students and NGOs in the hope of a better future by offering training in basic computer skills and information technology. Furthermore, the project can reduce pollution through the scrapping of information products and can also promote the social education of recycling. The main goal for this year includes recycling and reassembling at least 3,800 used computers, and forwarding these recycled computers to lower income students and NGOs for the extension of education in recycling and in order to bridge the digital divide.

used computers, recycling, reuse, digital divide, extension education