I’ve just finished reading two important write-ups done for Chips Communities United on the use of PFAS chemicals in the tech sector, one about their presence in wastewater outflows from a semiconductor manufacturing site in Washington state (Siegel 2026b) and another about their use for cooling of data centres (Siegel 2026a). There’s a lot going on in both of these write-ups, so I want to draw out a few key points from each of them.
In our book, Discard Studies: wasting, systems, and power, Max Liborion and I write about defamiliarization and problem framing. in the context of the book we’re talking about how personal experience with garbage and waste […]
Chemicals are an issue over which a powerful coalition disagree.
US geopolitical worries, largely focused on rivalry with China, have given permission for the federal government to offer an overt industrial policy for semiconductor manufacturing. The US has embarked on a massively state funded program […]
"Current costs to remove perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs), a subclass of PFAS, from the environment at the same rate they are being added were estimated here at 20 to 7000 trillion USD per year."
--Ling, A.L. 2024. “Estimated Scale of Costs to Remove PFAS from the Environment at Current Emission Rates.” Science of the Total Environment 918. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.170647.
It is common practice for companies in the electronics sector to publish annual environmental reports. These reports can be very enlightening. After all, they represent a story about a given company in a situation in […]
A short interview about semiconductor manufacturing and the climate emergency. The audio is here: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-47-on-the-go/clip/16064904-semiconductors-climate-change The[…]
"The electronics sector is so symbolic of what’s going on in the world. It’s a very narrow aperture that allows you to see a very broad field of problems." See Tech's Toll.
Fortune picks up the story on the CHIPS Act, semiconductor manufacturing, water stress, and the climate emergency: “But in Phoenix, where the factories are going to be built, TSMC faces a lingering question: Where’s the […]
Electronic Planet Research Lab 
You must be logged in to post a comment.