SalParadise

It poisoned some worker's broad!

strider_mt2k

Remember: Water is a solvent.

See also: Zodiac by Neil Stephenson.

Jeff the Riffer

Yeah, because that sounds completely fair and reasonable.

Actually, it does. It would force companies to rethink their designs to make the products more componentized for disassembly, with greener materials, and easier to recycle.

charliedigital

"It's better than the hands of underpaid, underprotected workers trying to scratch out a living."
So we'll be putting underpaid, underprotected workers out of jobs. Nice.

packetsniffer

bms

shouldn't we have refurb companies getting this stuff for free and throwing a linux distro on it?

the rest of the tech should be recovered for the IC's atleast - that's the biggest cost in the form of dead electronics - the IC's need to be replaced.

oh well - most of this stuff has been sitting around people's houses and most likely poisoned them already and now we're dumping this crap to the garbage pickers - and they for some reason have it in their head that they are actually getting something of value and then dumping it on some other person with the same stupid mentality.

I do my best to keep every bit of electronics that breaks down and reuse it for other purposes - and for the low end processor systems I give them a linux distro and a good cleaning, instant terminal for anyone that wants to get on the internet.

skulldriveshaft

thefizzle

It is so sad that the only solution as consumer is to a) slow down the purchase of new technology, extending the time/use of the current devices we have and b) recycle (for reuse if possible) the devices we dispose. here in Portland there is "free geek" and they take your electronics, but you need to pay fee for recycling for monitors and they suggest contribution fee for the rest of electronics.

dysthymia

GregCo3000

Kevin1a

1) Sending e-junk to be "recycled", which involves some poor bastard in China melting it down in his living room and taking a couple decades off his life in the process

or

2) Throwing it in the trash, where it ends up in a landfill and some of the toxic components might (in a few hundred years if the landfill is very poorly designed) start to leach into the groundwater

?

I'm sure someone like Apple or Dell processes their recycling the right way, but I have no idea where stuff ends up if I use, say, my city's recycling program. I presume the people who take it either sell it to the highest bidder, or pay the lowest bidder to haul it away. I imagine either way it's fairly likely to end up in China. So what's the right thing to do?

superbad

pinkfloyd1972

mettleh3d

California does charge a recycling surcharge, which allows you to bring the item back to the point of purchase when you're done with it. It depends on the cost of the item, but the max is something around $8. That doesn't even come near the cost of actually recycling the item, and the retailers flipping hate it. They have to devote floor space to storing all of the crap until someone comes to get it - which makes all prices go up.

There's no disputing that pretty much everything that the Giz writes about needs to be disposed of properly, but the problem the world over is that everyone wants to do so for free, or get paid for it, like cans and bottles - because that's the model we're used to. People don't want to let it stack up in their homes until a free recycling day or drive it across town to a recycler that can handle it (if one exists in that town at all). The problem is that recycling the stuff is a cost center - break even at best. The likes of Apple and Dell do it because it's cheaper than the hourly rate of a PR firm to cover their eco-issues. HP does it so they can refill and resell ink. Cell companies do it so they can refurb and then take as a charity deduction.

I guess what I'm really trying to get at is until products are made in such a way as to increase their value to a recycler, the products will be treated like the chick with herpes - nobody wants to pick it up. Couldn't pay someone to pick it up. Nope, not in a million years. Not with your buddy doing the lifting and 3 other guys cheering him on is anyone going to pick up a 17" crt monitor.

Elvisisdead

Elvisisdead

A deposit system may not work unless they make the deposit obscenely high, because 3 years after paying for a product, the consumer might not give a damn about the $50 deposit he paid for his $1000 TV, and may decide the $50 is not worth his trouble trying to recycle using proper channels. However, if by paying $30 upfront guarantees him the right to just put the TV out on his driveway for a free pickup by official recyclers every other Thursday, he's not going to go out of his way to dump it "improperly".

Dearhaw

sinz

I believe that individual states should be able to set as strict a policy as they like - like California does. But, there should be a Federal baseline by which all states have to operate.

The largest problem here is $. Nobody wants to pay to deal with this stuff. It can be recycled, and there are plenty of recyclers that can handle it. It's the transport costs that make it unprofitable to deal with. Nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to deal with transporting the crap from point of collection to point of recycling. This is where charities/non-profits with existing transport structures (Like Goodwill and Salvation Army) have come into play in CA. They get, I think, around $.17/lb to transport the stuff from stores to recyclers, and are raking it in.

Anyway, not to be long-winded, but making manufacturers take it back makes absolutely no sense from a logistics standpoint. If local won't pony up for recycling centers and Federal won't either, the only solution that will be hammered out is a patchwork of state regs with varying degrees of success.

Elvisisdead

mikerm19

bbfreak

WilCon

altus

anyone else see the irony?

if we do it here, it's a win-win-win situation...in the short term at least

discounteggroll