Whose Burden is it to Recycle Computers?

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?"

Re:old pit by the highway

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

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. Not to mention, not having to watch right and left to avoid getting caught littering...

Re:old pit by the highway

[gcatullus]

You mean you don't actually pile all the old stuff up in your basement? The yawning chasm of clutter is my solution.

You've all got it backwards

[Colin Smith]

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.

Re:Free market burden on disposal

[Anonymous Coward]

A good idea in principle. However, 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.

I would provide a good link, but I'm far too lazy to dig up my sources. I believe the globe and mail did a piece on it a while ago.

I agree with you though, that the companies have more ability to reduce recycling costs than individual consumers.

In Germany, the government charges companies up front for disposing of all their products (or at least did a few years ago). Funny thing, in a very short time of their implementing that, gratuitous overpackaging went way down.

Re:No, but seriously...

[tedrlord]

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.

Re:Natalie's Restaurant

[wings]

You ought to at least credit Arlo Guthrie for
writing Alice's Restaurant http://www.arlo.net/lyrics/alices.shtml [arlo.net]

No Taxes or Fees!

[BaldingByMicrosoft]

Make it an inexpensive service provided by the local sanitation company. I know mine has a once-a-year event when you can drop off your nasty household chemical waste for free -- that would work for this, too.

Why should the government take money for this? Are they even doing anything in return to effectively collect and dispose of the stuff? My guess is that the money goes into a general fund and is completely unaccounted for.

Re:Free market burden on disposal

[adamfranco]

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 make standards of "due diligence" in order to allow those who need to recycle computers to be able to know which recyclers investigate their sale and disposal chain to make sure that all of the material is disposed of in a responsible way.

Who recycles the computers is a rather big problem. Due to the money to be made by collecting recycling fees and the lack of standards and accountability in the electronics recycling industry, many companies simply "recycle" computers by shipping them off (mixed working, non-working, and garbage) to China, India, and other places where often they are picked through and dumped. The BBC has article with a good picture of the results [bbc.co.uk].

As an aside, a lot of Retroworks/Good-Point Recycling's white-papers [retroworks.com] are on the environmental impact difference between [even toxic] recycling and mining. As you may imagine, mining turns out to be vastly more toxic to the world than even burying computers in landfills.

* (They are run as a non-profit, but aren't registered as one since the paperwork isn't worth the tax-savings on their small revenues.)

Tragedy of the commons

[benhocking]

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 problems so simply demonstrate. A mixture (which both the US and most of Europe already has - although definitely in different percentages) is a reasonable compromise.