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Whose Burden is it to Recycle Computers?

Posted by Cliff on Thu Jun 02, 2005 04:30 PM
from the better-than-the-garbage-dump dept.
Hardware
bostons asks: "California places the financial burden of dealing with the electronic waste on consumers, charging a $6 to $10 disposal fee on every computer and television purchased. Maine puts the onus on manufacturers, demanding they pay the full cost of recycling their computers or televisions and pick up a share of the recycling tab for products of unknown origin. Starting next year, Maryland will require manufacturers to offer free computer take-back programs or pay the state a fee. Which do you think is the most effective and appropriate option?"
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  • Prepaid (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fembots (753724) on Thursday June 02 2005, @04:31PM (#12708403) Homepage
    Sorry I didn't RTFA, but $6 to $10 isn't a lot to include in the total price, so this recycling-tax should be prepaid before it gets out of the shop. I think it'll be more difficult to enforce payment during the disposal.

    This extra cost is likely to go unnoticed because a single CPU/RAM/HDD price drop can easily cover that amount.

    One common problem with prepaid tax (like petrol) is they took the money, used it on something else, and turned around to say they don't have enough money for roading/accident management.

    Hence it's important for the authority to not only impose the tax, but also acknowledge it, so that consumers can simply put the computer/TV out on the street for collection and the authority must fulfill its duty to dispose them appropriately.
    • Sounds like what a number of European countries are working towards: including the full lifecycle cost in the purchase price, and ensuring that the money goes to what it was supposed to. It not only helps make sure that hazardous wastes stay out of landfills (as a disposal charge would encourage people to do things like put electronics in the trash can), but encourages producers to make environmentally friendly decisions wherever it is economical to do so, without telling them "You will do things this way,
    • What happens if I, as the consumer, just dump my old monitor or CPU into the dumpster? The tax was paid, but the money was never spent and the computer is right where it shouldn't be.

      The problem right now is that there's no incentive, other than my conscience, to recycle now. Even if it was free, it still doesn't make people want to get off their butts and do the right thing.

      Taxing items when they are sold is worthless because people buy a lot of this stuff on the Internet where tax collection is going
          • This is strange in the USA? Sorry, but it just looks damn bizarre to a Canuck. Here in Canada, trash and recycling pick up are always a municipal service, and the garbage men will often simply not collect your trash if it's improperly sorted. You can drive it to the dump, but that's municipal too. No worrying about "incentives" or separate fees, it's part of the municipal taxes (and thus the price is geared to income).

            Yes, it seems socialist, but when handled efficiently it is far better than clumsy pr
            • I think your viewpoint is interesting, mainly becuase it flies in the face of my direct experience.

              Here in Indianapolis, IN, USA we burn our trash. Sounds healthy...Anyways, my point related to trash pickup. Indianapolis USED to have a privately contracted system where you chose your waste company, and they took your trash to their own sorting system to be disposed of. You paid these companies privately. They were always on time, the workers were (reasonably) friendly, and they did their job well. The tra
    • You're all talking as if recycling stuff is a burden rather than an opportunity.

      For a start, pull scales better than push so instead of making people recycle what you want are people going around scavenging old kit to use for other stuff. At the moment the economics are such that it isn't worth doing this but what if you made it extremely tax friendly for those who do the scavenging? After all, they are providing a social service by taking this unwanted kit.

          • Exactly. The problem is that for hazardous materials, what is best for a single entity (person/company) is not what is best for the entire community. This is what is known as the "tragedy of the commons". For those who aren't familiar with this phrase, it's worth-while to read about it [noogenesis.com]. In many ways, it is similar to the more familiar prisoner's dilemna [noogenesis.com].

            This is a problem inherent in the capitalistic system. I'm not advocating socialism, but pure capitalism is not a valid economical system as these problem

  • I personally pay the "old pit by the highway" to take care of my old computers...one good chuck and the disposal is all paid up :)
    • And rather than make two small piles of garbage. . .

      Sing it with me the next time it comes around on the guitar.

      KFG

      • Natalie's Restaurant (Score:5, Funny)

        by Tackhead (54550) on Thursday June 02 2005, @05:00PM (#12708718)
        > > I personally pay the "old pit by the highway" to take care of my old computers...one good chuck and the disposal is all paid up :)
        >
        > And rather than make two small piles of garbage. . .
        >
        > Sing it with me the next time it comes around on the guitar.

        This post is called "Natalie's Restaurant", and it's about Natalie, and the Restaurant, but "Natalie's Restaurant" is not the name of the Restaurant, it's the name of the post, and that's why I named this post "Natalie's Restaurant".

        You can get any grits you want at Natalie's Restaurant,
        You can get any grits you want at Natalie's Restaurant,
        Monitors, just around the back,
        Just a half a mile from the railroad track,
        And you can get any grits you want at Natalie's Restaurant.

        Now, it all started about two posts ago, it's on two posts ago when CmdrTaco and I went up to eat some hot grits at Natalie's restaurant...

        ...we got up there, found a couple of monitors in the dumpster behind Natalie's, and we figured it'd be a friendly gesture for us to take the spare monitors and distribute 'em around to our other friends at the University that didn't have 21" CRTs, 'cause that's what the Movement was supposed to be all about in the first place, right?

        So we took about half a ton of monitors and stuck 'em in the back of a VW microbus (with RedHat on an old laptop hooked up to a GPS receiver and other implements of destruction) and headed away from the grits shop.

        We got back to the University and there was a big sign across the dorm rooms sayin' "Prepaid Recycling Tax Effective As Of Thanksgiving". And we had never heard of payin' $10 for reusing garbage on Thanksgiving before, so with tears in our eyes we drove off lookin' for another place to hand out the free monitors.

        We didn't find one. Until we came to a side road, and off the side of the road there was a classroom in a fifteen-foot trailer, and inside the trailer was a little pile of 14" monitors. And we decided that a portable classroom fulla 21" monitors was better than a portable classroom fulla 14" monitors, and rather than see a buncha kids tryin' to work at 640x480 on 14" screens, we decided to give 'em ours.

        That's what we did, and drove back to Natalie's to post about it on Slashdot, had a plate o' Thanksgivin' Grits that couldn't be beat, went to sleep and didn't get up until the next morning... when we got a phone call... from Officer Obie of the California Computer Recycling Use Fee Commission.

        He said "Kid, we found your name on a Post-It Note on the bottom of a 21-inch CRT in a classroom, and the Teachers' Union just wanted to know if you had any information about it." And I said "Yes Sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie... I put that Post-It note on that CRT."

        After speakin' to Obie for about 45 minutes on the telephone, we finally arrived at the truth of the matter and said that we had to go down and take back the untaxed freebie monitors, and also had to go down and speak to him at the Environmental Officer's Station. So we got in the RedHat VW Microbus with the old laptop, GPS navigation system and other implements of destruction and headed on down towards the Environmental Officer's station.

        Now friends, there was only one or two things Obie coulda done at the police station, and the first was he coulda given us a medal for bein' so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn't very likely, and the second was bawlin' us out and told us never to be seen upgradin' school computers around the vicnity again, which is what we expected, but when we got to the environmental officer's station, there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was both immediately arrested. Handcuffed.

        • Awwww... that's the Radio Edit version.

          Do you have the full version?

          • Re:Natalie's Restaurant (Score:5, Funny)

            by Tackhead (54550) on Thursday June 02 2005, @06:35PM (#12709506)
            > Awwww... that's the Radio Edit version.
            >
            >Do you have the full version?

            (In for a penny, in for a pound. Might as well finish the job!)

            > > I personally pay the "old pit by the highway" to take care of my old computers...one good chuck and the disposal is all paid up :)
            >
            > And rather than make two small piles of garbage. . .
            >
            > Sing it with me the next time it comes around on the guitar.

            This post is called "Natalie's Restaurant", and it's about Natalie, and the Restaurant, but "Natalie's Restaurant" is not the name of the Restaurant, it's the name of the post, and that's why I named this post "Natalie's Restaurant".

            You can get any grits you want at Natalie's Restaurant,
            You can get any grits you want at Natalie's Restaurant,
            Monitors, just around the back,
            Just a half a mile from the railroad track,
            And you can get any grits you want at Natalie's Restaurant.

            Now, it all started about two posts ago, it's on two posts ago when CmdrTaco and I went up to eat some hot grits at Natalie's restaurant...

            ...we got up there, found a couple of monitors in the dumpster behind Natalie's, and we figured it'd be a friendly gesture for us to take the spare monitors and distribute 'em around to our other friends at the University that didn't have 21" CRTs, 'cause that's what the Movement was supposed to be all about in the first place, right?

            So we took about half a ton of monitors and stuck 'em in the back of a VW microbus (with RedHat on an old laptop hooked up to a GPS receiver and other implements of destruction) and headed away from the grits shop.

            We got back to the University and there was a big sign across the dorm rooms sayin' "Prepaid Recycling Tax Effective As Of Thanksgiving". And we had never heard of payin' $10 for reusing garbage on Thanksgiving before, so with tears in our eyes we drove off lookin' for another place to hand out the free monitors.

            We didn't find one. Until we came to a side road, and off the side of the road there was a classroom in a fifteen-foot trailer, and inside the trailer was a little pile of 14" monitors. And we decided that a portable classroom fulla 21" monitors was better than a portable classroom fulla 14" monitors, and rather than see a buncha kids tryin' to work at 640x480 on 14" screens, we decided to give 'em ours.

            That's what we did, and drove back to Natalie's to post about it on Slashdot, had a plate o' Thanksgivin' Grits that couldn't be beat, went to sleep and didn't get up until the next morning... when we got a phone call... from Officer Obie of the California Computer Recycling Use Fee Commission.

            He said "Kid, we found your name on a Post-It Note on the bottom of a 21-inch CRT in a classroom, and the Teachers' Union just wanted to know if you had any information about it." And I said "Yes Sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie... I put that Post-It note on that CRT."

            After speakin' to Obie for about 45 minutes on the telephone, we finally arrived at the truth of the matter and said that we had to go down and take back the untaxed freebie monitors, and also had to go down and speak to him at the Environmental Officer's Station. So we got in the RedHat VW Microbus with the old laptop, GPS navigation system and other implements of destruction and headed on down towards the Environmental Officer's station.

            Now friends, there was only one or two things Obie coulda done at the police station, and the first was he coulda given us a medal for bein' so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn't very likely, and the second was bawlin' us out and told us never to be seen upgradin' school computers around the vicinity again, which is what we expected, but when we got to the environmental officer's station, there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was both immediately

        • You ought to at least credit Arlo Guthrie for
          writing Alice's Restaurant http://www.arlo.net/lyrics/alices.shtml [arlo.net]
    • Odd logic: you go dump your old stuff on roadside when you could, with approximately the same amount of effort, bring it to some collection point and have people, who are effectively paid by you with the $10 recycling fee you've already shelled out, take it away from you.

      If you care about recycling, then you'd see your tax dollar at work and you'd feel good about doing your bit for the planet. If you don't, you can still watch people work for you instead of having to haul junk out of the trunk by yourself.
    • Well, except what you pay in higher taxes to cover the cost of cleaning up the pit.

  • What !?! (Score:4, Funny)

    by lordsid (629982) on Thursday June 02 2005, @04:32PM (#12708417)
    ... You mean we can't just keep stacking them up in a corner somewhere?
  • charging a $6 to $10 disposal fee on every computer and television purchased. Maine puts the onus on manufacturers, demanding they pay the full cost of recycling

    which they swiftly pass onto consumers. Net result: consumers always pay for recycling (which incidentally sounds rather normal).
    • Actually, i would expect a $6-10 recycle fee at purchase, would put it on the reseller instead of the consumer. one would assume that such costs go to the consumer but usually, resellers have certain price points they stick things at. Nothing is ever $2005, it's usually $1999. The wholeseller may add in the $6-10 to their price raising the price the reseller pays to get the product, but rather than just raise the consumer price the same amount, they'll probably suck up the cost out of their profit to keep t
    • No, no Michael Dell is going to pay this right out of his own pocket.
      </sarcasm>

  • Ha! (Score:4, Funny)

    by k4_pacific (736911) <k4_pacific.yahoo@com> on Thursday June 02 2005, @04:33PM (#12708428) Homepage Journal
    ...$6 to $10 disposal fee...

    Ha! Joke's on them! Most of my computers were fished from dumpsters.

    • Re:Ha! (Score:4, Funny)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane (209368) on Thursday June 02 2005, @04:41PM (#12708514)
      ...$6 to $10 disposal fee... Ha! Joke's on them! Most of my computers were fished from dumpsters.

      Erhm, joke's on you actually: you take care of the recycling for them and they cash the $10 recycling fee.

      • Re:No, but seriously... (Score:4, Informative)

        by tedrlord (95173) on Thursday June 02 2005, @07:13PM (#12709789)
        Technically you can get your deposit back by bringing in the bottles and cans yourself. I used to take them back to the store as a kid and use the money I got to get more soda. I noticed that in Oakland (some parts at least) they have little bins on top of trashcans to put your bottles and cans in so homeless people can collect them. Now that's an efficient operation.
  • I don't think anyone on slashdot has ever thrown a computer away..


    • Almost true. I gave my PDP-11/03 to my little brother last year!

    • I don't think anyone on slashdot has ever thrown a computer away..

      I am reading this on my 386 in a text only browser. You got something against that?

      I know a guy who collects 486's. He has about 20 working machines in his basement, many with a monitor hooked up. Each computer station is manned by a G.I. Joe action figure or Transformer. My buddy goes in front of the class and teaches for 4 hours a day. It is a grueling schedule for him.

      Many of his students have gone on to work for prestegious compa

  • Every consumer electronics item should be sold with a deposit that is a percentage of its value. That way, consumers have to recycle the product at the end of its lifetime to get their money back, just like with aluminum cans.

    Currently there are armies of homeless people who roam around the cities and countryside picking up cans to claim the deposits. However the problem is they only pick up the empty cans and leave the other trash on the ground until it washes into the lakes, rivers, and oceans after the
  • I don't care who pays for it as long as I don't have to do anything. As long as I can call for special pickup and dump it on the curb like anything else then it could cost me $50 more for my state tax for all I care.

    But if I have to do anything different from what I would with normal odd-sized trash then I'd just throw it in the dump when they aren't looking and then everybody loses.
  • Whose Burden is it to keep the computers in a landfill?

    If the computers are not recycled, they will most likely end up on the side of the road or in a landfill. Considering that there are materials in the computers which are toxic, this means that the toxins will eventually leak out into the surrounding environment.

    So before we ditch recycling, the following questions should be asked: Whose Burden is it to keep the computers in a landfill? Whose Burden is it clean up the toxins? Who's burden is it to pay
  • On recycling companies.

  • If you buy a computer from Dell, they send you a DHL shipping label for recycling your old computer. It's free for the customer and you can just use the box that your new machine came in. It would be great if more companies could offer this kind of service.
  • So it's sort of a moot point. The money may travel a circuitous route, but if you force manufacturers to cover the cost of recycling, it will filter into consumer cost one way or another.

    Doesn't everyone just sell their old computers for ten or twenty bucks on eBay? People actually throw these things away?

    • So it's sort of a moot point. The money may travel a circuitous route, but if you force manufacturers to cover the cost of recycling, it will filter into consumer cost one way or another.
      If that's truly the case, then the manufacturers would have no objection to taking on the responsibility for recycling. Yet somehow I doubt they would submit to this without a fight.
  • If you tax manufacturers to pay the recycling bill, the cost increases will just be passed on to the consumers, either directly or indirectly.

    Adding a surcharge on buying electronics is perfectly reasonable. After all, it's not like those "EVIL MANUFACTURERS" are alone responsible for creating this awful toxic waste that has to be recycled. If nobody were to buy the items, the manufacturer wouldn't manufacture them. The manufacturer only manufactures to satisfy a need in the market.
  • It does not matter whichever way. We (consumers) ultimately pay the state AND the manufactuer to carry it away.

    Knowing state governors, they will probably charge us at POS, then go ahead and bill manufacturers, who will in turn put the tab on our bills.

    Oh i can forsee it something like this:

    1. Cost of iBook 14" 512 MB RAM: $1456.00.
    2. State cess towards hazard disposal: $10.00
    3. Manufacturer charges for waste disposal: $10.00
    4. County charges: $6.00

    We will end up paying $26.00 for a $10 charge because the s

  • It does not matter who pays for it, it is the consumer's burden. Consider the four alterantives for disposal:
    1. If the buyer/consumer is legally required "properly dispose" of a the computer, then the consumer pays directly.
    2. If the seller (computer maker/dealer) is required to do it, then the consumer will still pay for it in the form of a higher price on the computer
    3. If the government offers "free" disposal then the taxpayer (= the consumer) pays for it. (Admittedly it may be non-computer-using taxpayers
  • ..but it will always be the consumer that pays. You don't think manufacturers will just let any government levy come out of their profit margins, do you?
  • How does a computer enter the waste stream? The consumer buys it, uses it, and then decides for his own reasons that he doesn't want it any more and discards it. I see no reason to put the onus on the manufacturer or vendor here. Once you buy it, it's yours and it becomes your problem. I don't notice anyone ponying up to pay for keeping my old washing machine and dryer out of the landfill -- I had to haul them to the scrap metal recycling bins myself. This is no different.

    Besides, it's not hard (at le

  • It is unfair to charge a person a disposal fee at the time of purchase, because it is entirely possible that the person will handle disposal himself at some later point. Rather, a disposal fee at the landfill gate will target those buyers who chose to dispose of a computer in that way. Recycling companies may do likewise (and perhaps compete with landfills.) Lastly, the consumer may simply choose to keep the old hardware in his basement, or bury it on his own land.

    (Why yes, I do have a stack of old tire

  • Equivalent (Score:3, Interesting)

    by readams (35355) on Thursday June 02 2005, @04:44PM (#12708551)
    According to basic economic theory, no matter who the tax is levied on, the end result will be the same, depending on the elasticity of demand. If demand is highly elastic, then the manufacturer ends up bearing the burdern of the tax, and if demand is flat, then the consumer ends up bearing the burden, with a whole spectrum in between.
  • It may not solve the disposal problem, but services such as FreeCycle [freecycle.org] helps old, but usable, items find new homes. The longer people can use an item, the fewer items per year that need to be disposed.

  • Free market burden on disposal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by standards (461431) on Thursday June 02 2005, @04:49PM (#12708608)
    The ideal situation would be to place the burden on the market in such that there is an incentive to reduce costs.

    Therefore, if manufacturers have the burden, they will have to charge customers indirectly by increasing purchase price (after all, customers pay for everything in the end).

    And if manufacturers carry the direct burden, they will also have the desire to lower disposal costs. Instead of a flat $6 for disposal costs, the manufacturer will want to lower it as close to zero as possible.

    This becomes a win-win. It costs the consumer in the end (as it always does), but manufacturers have a strong incentive to minimize the disposal costs.

    At the end of the day, I'll speculate that this could be a profit center for the manufacturer - the resale of whole components and quality recycled raw materials could wind up making them money.

      • Yes. It's a question of putting the incentive close to where the action will be direct, effective, and habitual. The reward has to justify the effort involved.

        In the case of beverage containers, it makes sense to collect and refund a deposit from the consumer, because the choice point occurs at the moment the container becomes empty. The incentive works because it's possible for a consumer to get into a pattern of thinking that the cans have enough value to be worth collecting.

        In the case of recycl

      • what often happens is that the parts then get shipped to China, where 8 year olds identify plastics by heating them with a lighter and sniffing the fumes (no kidding), salvageable parts get recovered, and the solder-covered motherboards get dumped in a canal.

        A friend of mine has been working for the past year for a small, non-profit* electronics recycler run by an environmentalist, their site [retroworks.com] has lots of white-papers, publications and links on this. One of the main thrusts of their work has been working m

  • It's not about cost (Score:3, Insightful)

    by erroneus (253617) on Thursday June 02 2005, @04:54PM (#12708648) Homepage
    The action should reflect the purpose as directly as possible.

    That said, I am reminded of the fact that, in Texas at least, places like JiffyLube and any place that changes oil are required to accept old motor oil for proper disposal at no charge. This is a burden on these oil changing places but the purpose is to benefit the evironment, not to "tax" people. This approach is definitely not a tax and has the least amount of bureaucratic overhead. (The benefit to the oil-changing people is that because the outsiders still need to dispose of their used oil properly or face heavy fines if they are caught which means it is less convenient to change their own oil and since they need to make the trip to the lube shop anyway, they just might get more business in the process.)

    With that as my own mental image of what an appropriate solution might be, a mandatory "take-back" program is the only way I think is appropriate. Then the sellers can do whatever they [legally] need to do in order to dispose of them properly. This would accomplish the main purpose, which is to decrease the amount of this waste in landfills. Taxing is not appropriate in this case.

  • The customer ALWAYS pays (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jherek Carnelian (831679) on Thursday June 02 2005, @05:06PM (#12708769)

    One way or another, the customer is always the one who pays, it is just a question of "how much?" and "when?"

    My preference is that the fee be levied as far down the "value chain" as possible - probably at point of sale, like it is for the states with recycle fees on soda containers.

    Charging the fee at point of sale does a couple of good things:

    1) The customer knows what they are paying for, it isn't hidden away in the total price. This knowledge helps to prevent the fees being raised as an arbitrary form of taxation - income tax gets taken out of most people's paychecks before they ever even see the money, thus obscuring the direct impact of the tax. I wish to avoid that happening with any new taxes.

    2) If the fees were directly assesed to the distributor or manufacturer, then they would be inflated with each step in the process just as the price of the system is. In effect, paying the fee at point of sale is like paying the "wholesale" cost but charging the manufacturer the fee would result in it being marked up to "retail" pricing by the time the end-consumer pays for it, possibly even doubling the original "wholesale" fee level for no added benefit to the environment or the consumer.

  • It HAS to be free (Score:5, Insightful)

    by smchris (464899) on Thursday June 02 2005, @09:53PM (#12710849)
    I live on one side of a shallow urban brook that has many good points: ducks, geese, carp, turtles and the occasional heron. Unfortunately, it has a tire in it about every 40 yards or less. 1/4 mile upstream on the other side is the municipal physical plant that accepts recycling. They charge to take tires.

    The conclusion seems obvious. Hell, I don't even have incentive to volunteer my time to fish them out if I will suffer the insult of paying to deposit the fruits of my good citizenship.

    • Presumably, the goal is to keep toxic materials out of landfills (so those materials won't leach into groundwater). Charging the manufacturer or retailer won't stop the consumer from tossing old electronic equipment. For that matter, neither will charging the consumer.

      Unless...what if it was more of a deposit system? Have the consumer pay an extra $20 up front when they buy a computer, but give them an incentive (maybe $15?) to return the computer so its components can be disposed of or recycled properly.
    • True... though if you make the consumer pay for it when he buys it, (as a tax or other addition to the purchase price) then that's manditory, and guarantees the recycling costs of all hardware is paid for, because it's paid for in advance. By the time it's ready to be recycled, the consumer has forgotten they already paid for recycling, and hapily brings it into the center to drop off, at no additional charge to them.

      Now on the other hand, if we charge for recycling when you bring it into the center, then
    • I'm confused.. I thought recycling was supposed to save energy and reduce costs

      You're confused because you believe something which is not true, namely:

      if you operate under the assumption, as I do, that cost is a reasonable proxy for resources consumed

      In a perfect world where all costs are properly accounted, recycling would be profitable and end users would be turning in their goods to recoup the cost tied up in no longer useful items. However, one of the reasons we get our copper from Chile is so that we can avoid proper cost of mining it. We're essentially disintermediating the proper environmental, social and labor costs that copper mining in the US would incur. In this sense, we get the copper whithout the side effects of not paying those costs. The Chileans will, eventually. Some corporations and local governments stateside have actaully come to the conclusion that it's actually cheaper to do this stuff abroad than deal with these problems over the long term at home. The hard rock mining industry is a premier example of this and because computers require so many rare earth resources and energy to produce, they're essentially a huge black market of hidden costs that somebody somewhere is stuck with.

      Item deposits are not a great way to deal with this problem, but they are one way of dealing with them. The great side effect is that you get the underprivilaged to tidy up the place as they scour your neighborhood for dumped deposit items.

      Before you get all huffy at the last remark, please note that it was in the vein of The Onion's story about increasing the bottle deposit to aid the indigent.

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