Mandatory Hardware Recycling Coming To US?

BDPrime writes, "A U.S. congressional caucus has met twice to discuss proposing national legislation that would make hardware manufacturers responsible for taking back their own stuff, similar to what Europe implemented with WEEE (PDF). The story quotes David Douglas, one of Sun's eco-evangelists, reflecting on the alternative: 'If we were having to deal with local regulations and local disposition facilities in every state, to deal with every state's nuanced costs, that would clearly involve cost to our basic equipment.'" It's early days for this movement; the buzzword to watch here is "E-waste."

Why stop there?

[merreborn]

Why don't we place the same requirements on the appliance and automotive industries?

Oh, they probably have better lobyists, don't they?

First Sale

[XanC]

If I sell something, it then belongs to you: you are responsible for its maintenance, use, and disposal, unless otherwise specified in a contract.

When the law starts saying I'm responsible for anything happens to an object I've sold in the future, where does it end? How about people being responsible for their own property?

Re:First Sale

[pertelote]

Well, when I have the oil changed in my car, the shop charges me for the oil they put in. I bought it, and I use it. Then, when I return 3000 miles later, they take back the oil, charge me for the replacement new oil, and charge me "Environmental" fees to take back the old oil. They tell me that it is the law. So, what do you think?

Upside to paying rent

[nickheart]

Not that this effects apartment dwellers. I see TVs, radio, computers, computer monitors, used engine oil... all sorts of stuff in our apartment complexes dumpster. I can't imagine how Rhos is going to effect the end-users (corps have to follow the law, peeps just hide) unless we the consumer can dispose properly of our parts for less effort than it takes to walk down to the dumpster at 11pm. The only reason i recycle my HP ink cartridges is because they include than handy prepaid envelope to send it back - less effort to just put it in the outgoing mail bin, then take it down to the trash.

Does This Apply To Foreign Manufacturers?

[cmholm]

The article doesn't make this clear. If it only applies to domestically produced electronics, watch how fast the remainder of non-defence production gets moved overseas.

Re:First Sale

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Fine. But, the only way to naje this work would be to require people to be responsible for their own property. If you don't take your old computer to a proper waste recycling center (and pay the fee for them to take it off your hands), you go to jail.

Surely you would have no objection to this, after all you are responsible, right?

... and beer companies too!

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Agreed. If you have to eat the waste, you'll think a bit more about what you put into a product. Sure this adds a bit of cost, but if a product is designed for recycling then it will cost less to recycle. The sooner the producers get the bill, the sooner they'll think more about it.

What makes the e-industry e-worse is that there is no practical use for many junked items. Sure, you can reuse the aluminium etc, but there's so little for the amount of work involved in stripping it. Car bodies can be recycled quite easily because there's lots of metal for relatively little effort.

CRT's

[Ponga]

I think the biggest thing in the coming years (if not already) will be what to do with CRT monitors that are being replaced with LCD and other tech. Seems only this past week I've had several people ask me if want some 17" CRT's cuz they just upgraded to flat panals.

What about ....

[gstoddart]

What about smaller computer shops? Surely to god a three person shop which assembles the computers themselves won't be able to implement a recycling program.

At which point, are they exempt due to some threshold? Or does this get extended to the component manufacturers?

It's good in principal, but there could be quite a few which fall through the cracks. (Not that we should abandon an attempt to prevent most of the computers from going into the landfill because a few smaller players won't be able to do it.)

Cheers

What about frankinmachine

[thorkyl]

I have a machine with a Proliant Main and back plane
It has IBM SCSII Hard Drives
Its RAM is from who knows where
Its Nic's... 3-COM, Intel, Winbond
It's Fans... Who knows

Who do I send it back to?
Or do I have to break it into its pieces and send it all back where it came from.

What If I want to keep it forever?
I still have my Northstar (and yes it still works)
I have 4 meg sims (actually sold 3 today to a client for the printer)

Re:What does this have to do with EWM?

[vadim_t]

It sounds to me like kdawson doesn't know the enlightenment topic refers to a window manager, and instead uses it in the cultural (education, spread of knowledge) sense.

What manufacturer? Which manufacturer?

[idontgno]

I don't buy PCs off the shelf. So, if I decide to chuck an obsolete machine, who do I send it back to? I bought the parts from half a dozen manufacturers. Am I supposed to disassemble the thing and scatter the parts to the far corners of the world like the limbs of a traitor? [wikipedia.org] Hell, I have no idea who manufactured the case, and they're in Taiwan or India or something. How do I solve this dilemma, Batman?

Re:What does this have to do with EWM?

[SmilinJoeFission]

I think you are correct. Unfortunately, every time I get excited that there is some great e17 breakthrough but then I read the byline. It seems that some of the "new" folk just don't know what the Enlightenment, Digital (another commonly misused symbol), etc icons mean. It's sad really...

Re:Upside to paying rent

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason why companies include that handy pre-paid envelope to "recycle" the ink carts is that they make a lot of money from it. If you took the empties to a local refiller, you'd get a decent amount for them. Even more if you refilled them yourself.

If someone is willing to "help" you dispose of your property, you should stop and think about it for a minute.

Transport and Pick-Up

[Bones3D_mac]

I'd personally love to see something like this go into effect, so long as the "recycling" doesn't involve shipping the toxic parts to 3rd world countries. However, there are a lot of us here in the US that can't really "lift" some of the older generation hardware (such as CRT displays). So why not impliment a system where you can schedule a pick-up of old hardware to be taken to one of these recycling facilities? (Maybe even for a small fee to be paid at the time of pick-up.)

If people had the option to have their useless electronic hardware hauled away instead of trying to transport it all themselves, I think hardware recycling could really take off here in the U.S. It's really just a matter of making it accessible to those of us who don't have the physical strength to move such items, or simply making it more appealing to the lazier parts of the population.

Re:Upside to paying rent

[fithmo]

I can't imagine how Rhos is going to effect the end-users (corps have to follow the law, peeps just hide) unless we the consumer can dispose properly of our parts for less effort than it takes to walk down to the dumpster at 11pm.

Oh, I don't know.... environmental morality?

Kind of the same reason I'm willing to wait until I can find a bathroom before I go poop, except on a much larger, longer-term scale.

It certainly takes less effort/time to just poop on the sidewalk, or in a drainage ditch, but we've made strides as a society to condemn this action as unsanitary and uncivilized. We could make similar strides to condemn "e-waste".

Re:First Sale

[Strolls]

so how do you make the end users turn their machines in to Sun instead of putting them at the bottom of their trash bag?

Education. When it's not costing them anything the consumer isn't going to mind phoning 1-800-SUN-CYCLE and asking where their local Sun recycling depot is. There'll probably be one in each town. The customer only has incentive to bury the electronics in the trash if doing so is (immediately) cheaper than being responsible.

And if disposal is regulated, instead of manufacture, the market will place a higher value on less nasty manufacturing. I don't see a difference in the manufacturers' interest.

Ummm... no the market won't put any value on less-nasty manufacturing, because the consumer won't be aware of the cost of disposal when they buy the product. Even if one product has a "Nasty1" rating against the "Nasty5" consumer-rating of the other, the consumer may well decide to save $50 now and buy the nastier TV, because he's not concerned about the environment and not forward-thinking enough to consider saving $150 in 5-years time. And when you buy 2nd-hand goods, how do you know how nasty the manufacturer is or how much the cost of disposal might be?

Placing the cost on the manufacturer is the cheapest way to do this, because the manufacturer can make reasonably educated guesses about the cost of disposal. If they make a nastier product then they'll have to charge more for it in order to cover the future cost of disposal and consequently they'll be less competitive against a company that uses lead-free solder.

Stroller.

Re:It makes sense

[MightyYar]

I'm sure that you are familiar with the Commerce Clause, and how it has traditionally given congress the power to do things like this, so I won't bore you with that. I will say that it makes sense to invoke the commerce clause whenever there is a decent one-size-fits-all solution to a problem in the country - especially in economic matters. It simply does not make sense to rely on every state (or God forbid, local) government to enact thousands of laws concerning hazardous waste. It becomes very expensive for any company to navigate all of these laws, and provides little or no benefit to the population. A national waste disposal policy does make sense, as long as it is well thought out and provides exceptions where needed.

We have already BEEN there

[WebCowboy]

Why don't we place the same requirements on the appliance and automotive industries?

Wehere I live, we ALREADY have mandatory recycling for refrigerators and freezers (by law they MUST be taken to an approved disposal facility--and all of those facilities recover the refrigerant and have the rest of the appliance recycled). As for other large appliances, recycling is not mandatory but they are virtually all recycled at the end of their useful lives already so it makes no sense to waste time legislating it.

Automotive industry recycling is the same here as well--used oil must be disposed of at apporved facilities by law, and those facilities almost universally recycle this oil. When we purchase new tires here we have to pay a "recycling fee" similar to paying a deposit on softdrink containers (though the consumer never gets that fee back....hmmm). There are few laws mandating automotive recycling however it is almost universally practised already. When you go to a parts store you always get credit for "core exchange" when you turn in the old/broken part. Nearly 100 percent of some parts are now recycled (starters, alternators, water pumps and so on).

So I don't know what box you've been hiding in but the appliance and automotive industries (ESPECIALLY the latter) are pioneers in recycling. In fact automobiles are one of (if not the most) extensively recycled items in the world. There is not only an automotive industry, but a very large AUTOMOTIVE RECYCLING industry. And guess what? They have very good lobbyists too! In fact, the automotive recycling lobbyists have managed to successfully out-lobby the automobile manufacturers lobbyists on a few occasions! I recall a case where one of the big 3 carmakers (can't remember if it was Ford, GM or Chrysler) was lobbying for regulations that would make it tougher to recycle or provide aftermarket parts (kinda like Lexmark trying to shut down ink cartridge refillers). Of course, this would hurt auto wreckers and aftermarket parts makers so their lobbyists fought back. The recyclers one that battle.