Mandatory Hardware Recycling Coming To US? 218
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."
Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
What does this have to do with EWM? (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe it's not a mistake? ;) (Score:4, Funny)
Well, that's not exactly complimentary. Guess kdawson really likes Metacity.
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Re:What does this have to do with EWM? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Speaking of Icons (Score:2)
I'm a hardware designer. Squeezing space on a product for yet another logo (alongside RoHS, WEEE, CE, C-Tick, Symbol 14, and sometimes MIC, FCC) will be really, really hard; for most of our products we have to put these on the PCB silkscreen around and between components.
The WEEE symbol is a trashcan with an 'X' over it. Surely that'll work in the US, too?
http://www.linak.com/corpor [linak.com]
Re:Speaking of Icons (Score:4, Funny)
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At least they arent using the same old boring icons all the time like they usually do.
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E-waste... (Score:2)
Why stop there? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, they probably have better lobyists, don't they?
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How much steel in the car comes from recycled is irrelevant.
How much of the car itself is recyclable is the relevant part. EU mandates that 95%+ of all newly manufactured cars must be from recyclable material and the manufacturer is obliged to take the car back for processing. I even got a leaflet stating in clear terms how to claim this. The returns are audited and disposal of more than 5% into landfill will bring a fine.
The reason why we do not hear about this that muc
Re:Why stop there? (Score:4, Interesting)
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They'll most likely have a pile of old (but not necessarily broken) appliances that get picked up on a weekly basis. And they could care less if you went and grabbed any of it. In other words, if you ever need a compressor or misc washer/dryer parts, nobody is stopping you.
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Autos are largely covered by the concept of a "trade-in".
Of course, if Congress gets involved, you can also look forward to an inflated, but standard, recycling surcharge on your corporate box orders.
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Perhaps one might say that less government interference is better, but I think the basic idea is that the current situat
... and beer companies too! (Score:3, Insightful)
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 q
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Because recycling, when it's stupid, is STILL STUPID.
Because forcing stupid recycling on people is, well, stupid?
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You ever hear environmentalists moan about this kind of pollution?
Nope, because fireplaces, are like, cool. They pollute more than oil for the same heat output
We have already BEEN there (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
A
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Recycled bullets (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to clean out the bullet trap in the back of the range I used to go to (and without any sort of safety gear -- OSHA would have a field day with that) and it got sold to a local guy who used to melt and cast new bullets out of it. You just put it in a crucible and heat it, and most of the other metals (mostly copper, from jacketed bullets) either floats or sinks, and you get your lead back. There are all sorts of
It's already here (Score:3, Informative)
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Positive incentives work better (Score:2)
Pay them to do the right thing.
A good model is the recycling of aluminum cans here in California. The manufacturer pays a small tax when selling in the state, and then most or all of that tax is retuned to the person who brings it to a recycling center. I've seen people who apparently make a living just recycling other people's trash.
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Uh, the consumer pays the California Redemption Value of 2.5 cents per can at the time of purchase.
There are two reasonable models for recycling electronics. This is one of them; charge them the actual cost of disposal plus some additional money, and when you take them back you give them back the deposit minus the disposal fee. Alternatively, you charge the manufacturer (who p
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I could support a "deposit" like they have on cans and bottles here in the Northeast. Unfortunately, with the growth of the bottled beverage market and inflation it seems that $.05 per bottle isn't quite enough anymore to keep all of our streets and parks clean. But those $10-20 fees on tv monitor disposal are causing a lot of monitors to get left by the side of the road or in public parks here in Massachusetts. Any disposal fees at all cause litter and environmental proble
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While aluminum cans are ubiquitous enough to warrant small-scale bribery (anyone who remembers when that started can probably tell you how ridiculously huge a portion of the public litter was drink cans and bottles beforehand,) other recycling programs have generally worked well without charging the public. In many areas of the US including min
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Going back to the example of my client, they seperate the recyclables from the waste stream. The state ma
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http://www.boe.ca.gov/sptaxprog/ewaste.htm [ca.gov]
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I actually called the waste disposal company for instructions.
"throw it in the trash" was offical answer.
I hope they dig thru the trash to recycle, cause the rest gets incinerated here! I don't see how burning electronics does anything good
I don't understand why prisons/prisoners aren't used for sorting and recycling, would it be done at a loss if you only pay pennies on the dollar for labor
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When we lived in Seattle I had to pay $25 each to get rid of 2 dead TVs.
First Sale (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
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That's different, I think in a subtle but significant way. The law says that oil must be disposed of properly. That's not at all the same as saying that (say) Penzoil is responsible for all the oil they sell.
Whether you're getting your oil changed at the same garage you bought it or a different one, the law applies to whoever is disposing of oil. If you changed it yourself, then you would have to dispose of it properly.
I'd say this is a much better law than one that makes producers responsible for thei
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It's not really that different - electronics good contain some pretty nasty stuff [wikipedia.org], such as lead, zinc, cadmium and mercury. This law is just a way of ensuring that waste electronics goods are disposed of properly the same way as waste motor oil.
You can't require the end user to recycle these electronics materials respon
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Um... okay, 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? Same problem.
And if disposal is regulated, instead of manufacture (as I'm claiming is more fair), the market will place a higher value on less nasty manufacturing. I don't see a difference in the manufacturers' interest.
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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.
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Pretty simple. You get a cash deposit back when you turn the machine in. If you don't turn it in, the cash goes towards cleaning up whatever place you dumped the toxic waste.
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The best bet to stop outsorcing to China, is to introduce import taxes on the basis of how much CO2 is produced in the manufacture of the product. If we take Japan as the benchmark, we use about 5 times as much energy here in the EU, for the USA it is about 8 times and for China it is a staggering 11 times. Save the enviroment and stop manufacturing being outso
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There's nothing wrong with regulating the disposal of hazardous wastes. But what the hell's up with this 'Make the manufacturer responsible' crap?
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Surely you would have no objection to this, after all you are responsible, right?
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Currently, hardly anyway disposes of e-waste responsibly because it costs a lot of money to
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I'm really not seeing a difference. Either way, you're forcing the manufacturer to be responsible for the disposal of an item they sell, which will increase their prices.
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So? If all manufacturers increase their prices then who loses? The consumer? This law ensures that the cost of disposal to the consumer is minimised, because it's in the vendor's interest to do so.
If, instead, one requires the consumer to dispose of the electronics responsibly then in 5 years time consumers will be bitching about the cost and surreptitiously fly-dumping. "
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This is supposed to be a libertarian's wet dream for environmental legislation - don't ban stuff, just make the manufacturers pay its true environmental cost and let them decide what to continue marketing.
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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?
I think of this more along the lines of like HP toner cartridges. Every single HP toner cartiridge that we buy has a UPS sticker for return of the old cartiridge in the box of the new one
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Passing the cost of recycling in that case to the consumer is ass backwards.
The idea is to make manufacturers more responsible about not only the type of materials used, but also how easy it is to recycle them at the end of their useful life.
In Germany, the manufacturers are responsible for all the packaging that their products come delivered in. Under your rules, they could use massive boxes and fill them with an
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Cost of disposing of a 20" monitor: $30.
Cost of replacing an extinct species: priceless.
For libertarian rhetoric, there's XanC. For everything else, there's reality.
Remember, ecosystems are complicated and we don't really understand all that great a percentage of what really makes them tick. A lost species is just one species... unless it's one that occupies a critical position in the food chain, or it's the one that would have produced a cure fo
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No, you missed the point. That is a rational position. What's irrational is deciding that it's okay to do incalculable environmental damage in the course of economic pursuits. The real issue is that, except where mandated, corporations typically do nothing to protect the environment from their pursuit of money. So, you need regulation like this. The planet doesn't belong to any one person, it must be held in trust without allowing anyone to ruin it.
Another issue: how do you calculate the monetary value
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Okay, so how much are you willing to spend, and how many freedoms are you willing to destroy, to prevent one drop of lead-based solder from spilling on the ground?
The answer is always "more", no matter where things stand. The enviros have lost all credibility.
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To people like you, they never had credibility. You're just saying that in an attempt to appear rational.
In reality most environmentalists are pretty moderate. There's a lunatic fringe to every group, and they're the ones you hear from the most often, because they talk the loudest and humans are attracted to noisy and/or shiny things.
There are numerous examples of excellent regulation - most of them ar
Re:Ramifications of manufacturing must be controll (Score:2)
First of all, that's refillable glass bottles, and last I checked they still used them in Mexico, but it's been a while since I was there. A LONG while actually; it was 3,000 messican pesos to the dollar when I went. But the point is that a soda was, IIRC, 300 pesos with a 600 peso bottle deposit.
Second, assuming they did swit
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Even with the prices being higher than when you went there it was still a bargin being there compared to the US.
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Old News (Score:3, Funny)
Oh wait, it's the United States not us.
A Different Approach (Score:2)
Do you live on Gilligan's Island? (Score:3, Funny)
Tell me, Professor, how fast is the connection on your coconut-and-bamboo computer?
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nothing is instant.
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Ditto mercury - for example mercury is used in compact flourescent lamps - but using these lamps actually leads to less mercury in
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Upside to paying rent (Score:3, Insightful)
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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 ma
It makes sense (Score:2)
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Does This Apply To Foreign Manufacturers? (Score:4, Insightful)
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(You can substitute "EU" with "US" or "South Africa" or any other nation.)
They could always choose to not do business... but that's unlikely
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If you can consider this contingency only an hour after the article was posted to Slashdot, then it's probably occurred to legislators, too. In the EU the importers of such products now have to register their interest in the goods and accept the responsibility of disposal before the goods are allowed to clear customs.
IE: Microsoft are not at a cost disadvantage by having to re
if it costs money or is a pain in the ass (Score:2)
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Stroller.
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The people who collect my trash haul it off to a big warehouse where my trash gets picked through. Anything that is recyclable is picked out and recycled by the trash company.
Of course, this also means I had to buy a shredder to make sure people picking through my trash don't get old credit card statements, etc. But I end up with two trash cans in the house--"Confidential" and "Other." Not the maze that the environmentalists would h
CRT's (Score:2, Insightful)
What about .... (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Unless it is a Mac, (Score:2)
What manufacturer? Which manufacturer? (Score:3, Insightful)
Transport and Pick-Up (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Key qoute (Score:2)
Translation: it's easier and cheaper to bribe, er... ummmm... I mean give campaing contributions and junkets to a few key congressmen than it is to bribe every city, state, county, solid waste district or other such official across the country. Look for lobbyists to converge trying to get loop holes for certain gro
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