One Man's Trash

By: Ian WylieWed Dec 19, 2007 at 8:40 AM

Trash heaps of outdated PCs are being turned into a treasure trove of low-tech innovation by a group of feisty Brits. As XP renders even more PCs obsolete, can their upstart movement go global?

He dashed off an email to digital artist Heath Bunting, proposing a trash-technology media lab. Mistakenly believing that the initiative had already begun, Bunting forwarded the email to contacts around the world. Soon Wallbank was fielding responses from California to Croatia. "I didn't have the heart to tell them that it was still just an idea."

It was, however, the impetus he needed, and by November 1997, RTI was putting on its first exhibition, creating a primitive falling-snow video wall with 30 086s with 512K of RAM, nabbed mostly from dumpsters. By the end of the monthlong exhibition, visitors had donated another 230 PCs to the organization.

Later, at London's prestigious Tate Gallery, the group -- which by then included four part-time workers plus Wallbank -- streamed video on to 36 screens using old 486 technology and a couple of 300 MB hard disks. "The IT industry will tell you things like that can't be done," smiles Wallbank.

Trash Tech Goes Global

RTI's reputation is spreading. When Wallbank went to Croatia last year to address a conference, he was astonished to find that fellow trash technologists had translated his low-tech manifesto and were planning a second print run.

The group's plan to create a network of community-owned media labs using trash technology and open-source software has just been named Social Innovation of the Year by the Anita Roddick and Brian Eno-backed Institute for Social Inventions.

Yet by Christmas, Wallbank reckons RTI will have used up the last of its public funding. Unless the organization can find a partner, Wallbank's vision will never be realized.

"We're being given many more PCs than we have the resources to deal with. But the real waste is not the PCs -- they'll end up getting junked somewhere along the line," he says. "The real waste is the human potential we're failing to exploit by not allowing people to learn new skills, to get on the Net, and to communicate with the rest of the world."

Ian Wylie (ian@wylienet.demon.co.uk), a Fast Company contributing editor, is based in London. Contact the Redundant Technology Initiative by phone (44 114 249 5522) or email (rti@lowtech.org).