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In the slipstreams of consumer and business habits, FAIR has moved on from CRTs and are now exclusively using LCDs. We would like to reflect this with a little touch-up of our logo.
We still want to extend life cycles as much as possible. But it seems clear that we are at a new milestone: We almost exclusively receive LCD monitors, and CRTs are increasingly energy hogging compared to their LCD successors.
This is a difference from some 9 years ago, when FAIR started out. Back then, we mainly received CRT monitors, and the LCDs reached energy consumption levels close to the CRTs!
If let's say 9/10 of energy is from the production phases, we should always be very alert of any kind of replacements motivated by lower energy consumption. That's why FAIR does not buy into arguments about donating brand new netbooks or OLPC (they can be great humanitarian projects, but not environmental in a holistic view). If some product has a life expectancy of another 5-8 years, energy savings have to be extreme in order to justify discarding and replacing.
That was also why we used to say that CRT monitors were fine: They lasted for a very long time (often 10-20 years), and given a CRT monitor, we could expect it to run for another 10 years, likely up to 2x the life span of an LCD monitor.
Things are different now. A CRT monitor that we receive is now typically 15 years old, and this leaves the life expectancy much lower. CRTs cannot be expected to perform well in a sustainable project intended for many years. They would need to be replaced after a shorter time, and the costs of shipping replacements and executing take-back procedures can be contemplated.
The impact however, is tiny as we almost receive no CRTs anymore. Only 1/9 screens in 2013 have been CRTs.
However, the CRTs currently in use are doing great! For instance, the CRTs deployed in Malawi are all still working, and the only casualties came from transport. Thus, once they are sitting comfortably in the IT centres in warm and dusty Malawi, they seem to be doing quite fine. This gives our current CRT monitors already 2 years, so we can only be proud of them.
The rule of thumb is that hardware that can be made use for and has a long life-expectancy should be applied, but seeing that we receive close to no CRTs, we feel quite comfortable to move on to CRT-free projects.
Without CRTs we can pack 3-4 LCDs in the same space. Furthermore, energy consumption will be lowered, and most LCDs require roughly half the power of a typical CRT.
So that's what motivated our change of logo: We want to signal that our genre of reuse is intended to bridge the digital divide, thus no longer can entail something as old as CRTs.