The Star-Ledger
Wednesday, April 3, 1996
Piece dividend

Discarded consumer electronics emigrate to Russia
By BETH FITZGERALD

A Russian scientist walking his dog one morning near his North Brunswick home found a discard-ed television on the curb; he brought it home, plugged it in and saw nothing wrong with the picture. 
Could it be, AIexander Bondarev wondered, that Americans routinely discard useful machines that might get a new lease on life in Russia, now stumbling so badly on the road to capitalism that a Communist party candidate might win the June presi-dential election?
That neighborhood stroll in 1993 inspired Bondarev to create the CIS Development Foundation, which set up shop in February in a warehouse in South River to receive tax-deductible donations of discard-ed industrial Americana: Computers, televi-sions, office equipment, scientific instruments, medical equipment. Soon the nonprofit foundation expects to have enough secondhand technology to fill a 40-foot container bound for St.. Petersburg. Military, aviation and space technology dominated industrial output in the former Soviet Union, but the majority of U.S. economic activity has long been devoted to civilian needs and desires. And we Americans are forever trading up, especially to replace an old, slow com-puter with a fast and powerful one. Most school children in the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) don't have computers, said Vadim Arefyev, vice president of the foundation "Even the very old ones, the 286 computers, would be wonderful for teaching kids in Russia the basics of computer science," he said. So far more than a dozen 280 PC’s have been donated.
The computer industry no longer makes the 286, its silicon brainpower having been surpassed by the 386, 486 and now the 586 Pentium chip The former Soviet bloc is generally regarded as lagging the West in computer technology.
Arefiev is a biologist who studied the physiology of horses; his subjects were the thoroughbreds at the Moscow Central Racetrack, and he recalled having to wait weeks for access to biomedical instruments to analyze the proteins in a horse's blood.
Bondarev, 42, is a doctor of chemistry who specialized in metallurgy in Russia, where he had to contend with limited access to the electron microscope he needed to study the structural composition of metals. But while the CIS economy is plagued with shortages, U.S. industry keeps cranking out new instruments that render existing technology obsolete. Hence the U.S. abundance of both new and used equipment. "So much stuff thrown out in this country, it's just unbelievable," said Arefiev, 29. When he came to Cook College of Rutgers University in 1992 for graduate work in the animal science program, he recalled "I was shocked because people would ask me to help them carry wonderful equipment to the dumpster."
Among the CIS charities now flooding the foundation with equipment requests is the Moscow chapter of Soccer for the Disabled, an international agency that orga-nizes soccer matches for disabled children and adults. The agency faxed four pages of equipment requests, everything from ace bandages to computers. A regional educa-tion minister in Grodno requested 10,000 286 computers; the Ukraine requested 2,000 a year.
The foundation will accept any equipment, regardless of its vintage, and will take very large or heavy items. A New Jersey phy-sician retired and gave the foundation his office equipment; a private school in Old Bridge donated more than a dozen 286 PCs and. Rutgers University has donated some equipment.
Bondarev hopes his efforts will foster economic vitality in the CIS and help avert its drift back into Communism.
"Many people in Russia still hold in their heads the Communistic ideology," Bondarev said. "They don't believe in a capi-talistic society because it has not worked out; people are hungry and they are strug-gling, so a lot of people want to come back to Communism. But if people can learn how to feed and clothe themselves, they will not have the thought of evil."
The foundation has gotten an appeal from "Help to the Newborns of Russia," a charity headed by Dr. Vecheslav Tobolin, chairman of the pediatrics department of the Russian State Medical University. He is seeking medical laboratory instruments, including chromatographs, fluorimeters and DNA analyzers. In his letter, Dr. Tobolin said many Moscow babies are born with medical problems.
"Help is needed in the first days, hours and minutes of a baby's life, and often the struggle is for their intellect," Dr. Tobolin wrote.
Several other agencies recycle used equipment for charities here and abroad. Lawrence Rattay is a retired research associate for the American Medical Association and the founder of the Chicago-based American Overseas Medical Aid, a non-profit agency that sends used medical equipment to hospital, schools and clinics abroad.
It all began one day 25 years ago, when Rattay and his secretary were throwing out surplus medical supplies. "One of us said, "this is a shame, somebody could use this stuff,"' Rattay recalled. So they sent some supplies to a friends of Rattay's, the British Embassy physician in Jakarta.
"He wrote back: 'this is great, keep sending things,' "Rattay said.
Since then Rattay and other volunteers have collected about $4 million worth of surplus U.S. medical equipment and shipped it to hospitals and clinics throughout the world; as yet they haven't worked with the CIS.
Several organizations recycle used computers and other equipment to nonprofit agencies in the U.S., according to "Paul Clolery, editor in chief of The NonProfit Times, a Cedar Knolls-based monthly. But most American nonprofits can't use 286s: "It's too hard to find software to support them," Clolery said. U.S. charities want late model 386s or higher, so they can run Windows.
"But if you have nothing, then a 286 looks good," Clolery noted.

* Picture: CIS Development Foundation president Alexander Bondorev1 foreground, stands beside donated equipment destined for the former Soviet Union. Behind him are foundation vice president Vadim Arefiev and marketing director Olga Welsh.

Home