California Considering Recycling Fees on PCs 325
Jeff writes: "It looks like two US senators are introducing bills that would impose recycling fees on new computer systems sold. These bills look to cover every high-tech product a consumer might buy, including computer and video monitors, desktop and notebook PCs, and handheld gadgets."
The Michigan Plot (Score:2, Funny)
The Michigan Plot (Score:2)
I feel the last part is in this spirit, encourage design for recycling, put the burden on the designer and manufacturer, because once it's in the end user's hands, he has little reason to recycle it, unless there was a core deposit, like on auto parts, to encourage return.
Of course this could be trickier for those of us who by seperate components and build our systems.
Could I get an exemption? (Score:2)
Recycling Fees (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Recycling Fees (Score:2)
Eventually, it'll all be got rid of -- and if it really is special and ends up in a museum, then it's got to be worth a hell of a lot more than a recycling fee... so then it doesn't matter.
You can't go on forever throwing things in landfill, your country will fill up. Just like you can't burn too much oil and expect the environment not to turn on you (unless your GW Bush).
Filling the world with crap is a bad thing, it's something that people have to take a responsibility for, not just let it be someone elses problem
Re:Recycling Fees (Score:2)
You can't go on forever throwing things in landfill, your country will fill up.
I'm sure there is an obvious answer for this, but how can a country fill up due to landfills? The law of conservation says you have to be getting it from somewhere, this stuff isn't just being made out of nothing. So why not put it back where it came from originally?Re:Recycling Fees (Score:3, Informative)
In a similar vein, I read something once to the effect that all the trash the United States would produce in 300 years would fit in a landfill measuring 30 miles per side and 30 feet deep. We're not exactly in danger of running out of space.
Re:Recycling Fees (Score:5, Insightful)
Hm. I have a couple points about this statement I would like to make:
1. I'm not against recycling. It's a good thing in my opnion, but I do not want some big-brother government entity charging me a tax on everything I buy so I can recycle it.
2. I think someone has said it before, but I'll go ahead and say it again. There's a thing called conservation of matter. Sure, stuff gets shifted around alot, but the "stuff" remains the same amount. Filling up a landfill? How about dumping garbage into that stip-mine, quarry, etc...? Yes. It would fill it up. But it was filled with something to begin with.
All we're doing is shifting matter aound this earth and/or recombining it and dropping it off elsewhere. True, sometimes we recombine the stuff here into things that are toxic to us and everything else that lives here. But it's all from the same stuff.
Re:Recycling Fees (Score:5, Insightful)
This is where atoms and molecules -- which existed beforehand -- are combined under circumstances where they change their molecular properties. After having done this, the molecules have different properties: these properties are often advantageous to some process. However, in a different context (e.g., as waste) these properties may in fact be harmful.
And, moreso, the concentrations of material may provide hazards because it overwhelms the environment's ability to tolerate normal levels -- the material being concentrated because someone went to great effort to extract the material from deep in the earth where it was previously harmless, dilluted, and/or in a chemically more neutral state.
I don't know what kind of science you were smoking, but this stuff should be junior high level material.
Re:Recycling Fees (Score:2)
children shouldn't play with dead things
hell those dead things are just rearranged atoms that might have once been part of a great work of art or even a set of lincolin logs. why not let them play with the decaying rotting flesh of a dog?
really though i agree with you 100%, and i dont disagree with laws like this as long as there is some oversight committe makeing sure the money goes to the right people.
Re:Recycling Fees (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're just going to bean-count atoms without giving any thought to the compounds they're in, that's correct. But it's not a meaningful perspective. Atoms can be in reactive or inert forms. There are a few elements that are environmentally dangerous in whatever form they're in (mostly the radioactive stuff). The great majority are OK in some forms and not in others. Only one element (helium) is never toxic. And it's the only one that eventually floats away and leaves the planet.
Phosphorous is 1-2% of your body weight, and forms part of the DNA backbone. But it's always in the form of phosphate (PO4---). Take the oxygens off it, and 50 mg will kill you. Oxygen in the form of ozone can kill you if you breathe it in. Nitrogen and oxygen can combine to create quite a few nasty gases. When it's in the form of cinnabar (HgS), mercury is certainly dangerous but at least it has low solubility and can sit around for billions of years without leaching. (In sulfur containing environments, HgS is an important sink for mercury.) Although mercuric salts are toxins and have long been used in detective stories to kill people, mercurous chloride can be used as a laxative! When elemental mercury sinks down into deep places at the bottoms of lakes and wells, bacteria there get rid of it by methylating it- and then it starts causing serious trouble.
Environmentally, a computer is probably the most dangerous thing you own. They're chock full of all kinds of weird metals and halogenated flame retardant crap. And no matter how nice it is, you're eventually going to throw it away. When recycling computers, I believe what they do is chop everything up in a grinder, and then they blast the stuff in a furnace until it's all oxides of things. Then they mix in a binder, and they make "cakes" out of it that look a bit like cinder blocks. When it's been bound up this way, its environmental impact is minimal.
Re:Recycling Fees (Score:2)
Has been in every state I have ever bought tires. I sometimes keep the tires because I know farmers who need tires to put on hay wagons.
Batteries too (Score:2)
Personally I think these are awesome ideas. I think we're all collectively better off shelling out a couple of bucks each to deal responsibly with hazardous waste, rather than assuming that people will do the right thing. I think they've demonstrated that they'll do the wrong thing every time when it comes to asbestos, batteries, tires, etc.
Re:Recycling Fees (Score:2)
If this worked the way it was supposed to in the US, I wouldn't have a problem with it. Pay probably 5$ more than you normally would when buying any kind of PCB product.
Not every piece of hardware is reusable and needs to be disposed. For Example: A long, long time ago, I bought a logitech hand scanner. It came with a IO card. Not a SCSI card, mind, but a proprietary logitech IO card. Now that the scanner's dead, there's no reason to not throw the card in the trash except for environmental concerns. If I could have that card recycled, I would.
Why oh why can't they do things right. (Score:2)
Why do politicians and authorities always come to solutions that never work out in the end.
Charging a recycling fee is only going to make people throw their computers (and worse monitors) into the trash (or worse the river) instead of properly disposing of them.
You have to make it easy for people or they won't do it. Because people are lazy.
Re:Why oh why can't they do things right. (Score:2)
Cheers - JP
Re:Why oh why can't they do things right. (Score:2)
Maybe so, but what these bills will do is require the mfgs to take back their used equipment and pay "recycling" fees to some politically-favored company to dump the stuff in Asia...
Re:Why oh why can't they do things right. (Score:2, Insightful)
Charging a recycling fee is only going to make people throw their computers (and worse monitors) into the trash
While that may be true for fees for getting rid of computers, the fee this article is talking about charging is when you buy the computer. If a few dollars more is going to make someone dump their new system into the trash on the way out of the store, I'm not sure it's the politicians that are misguided.
Re:Why oh why can't they do things right. (Score:3, Interesting)
What they should do is charge a deposit on electronic equipment, and pay you to return it to the recycling cengter.
,p>
No, not like a recycling fee. (Score:3, Insightful)
The deposit doesn't pay for the cost of recycling or reprocessing. It just makes somebody pick it up and return it to the recycling center rather than dumping it someplace. I used to commute by bike during a period when a bottle bill was passed in my state. It really made a difference in the amount of broken glass on the road.
Re:Why oh why can't they do things right. (Score:4, Insightful)
You make a valid criticism, but do you have a better solution?
What does it take to break down an old PC into its constituent parts (iron, aluminum, plastic, copper, etc..) so that it can be re-used? Is it possible? Is it practical? What about smelting?
I guess my concern would be that there may not be a good target for the money, so they'd collect it, but never setup a nationwide recycling system.. so where would the money go? I shudder to think. I'd say "go for it" if they have a very solid plan to setup (the very costly) infrastructure to ACTUALLY recycle discarded consumer electronic devices.
Vortran out
Re:Why oh why can't they do things right. (Score:5, Informative)
In Europe, the law around electronic equipment works as follows. The company that produces the equipment is responsible for its care, use, and disposal before the sale and AFTER the consumer is done with it. While the consumer owns it, its their responsiblity. But when the consumer is done with it, it goes back to the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM). The OEM then disassembles the equipment, and recycles what it can. If the plastic can be reground and reprocessed, that is done. Glass (where possible) is melted down, all metal components are melted down as well (or reused for the same model or other model electronic equipment. Screws, bolts and brackets for example). Difficult items to recycle include circuit boards (epoxy plastic, metal (some of it toxic), silicon and semiconductors), cathode ray tubes, and sometimes the plastic.
What the European OEMs try to do is reuse what they can and incenerate the rest. If the plastic cannot be reused (off color, decomposed), they'll just burn it up and recycle the energy gained from combustion. However, materials that don't burn (semiconductors, silicon, etc.) are left as slag in the incenerator, and also are concentrated in toxic elements which can leach into ground water. How to deal with this waste is currently a big sticking point for the recyling of electronics waste. There are some refining techniques that one can use to separate out the elements in this inorganic "slag", but, they're quite expensive, and, there currently is no desire/regulations in place to reuse this slag material. Electronic circuit board OEMs and chip OEMs don't want to use material from this slag for fear of contamination may ruin finely tuned electronic properties, which are often affected by minute impurities. Part of the reuse taxes that EU citizens pay goes towards research to solve this issue, and set up an infrastructure to get the whole recyling system to work.
There are systems in place to get this to work, so you just have to give them time to catch up and get fully implimented. It took 10+ years to get PET and HDPE (#1 and #2 plastic) to the level where it was widely implimented and cost effective. Electronics recycling has probably only been going on for 3 years now, so give it time.
Re:Why oh why can't they do things right. (Score:2)
Sure. As mentioned in a Slahsdot article yesterday, it is possible. You load it up on a boat, send it to China, they pick apart the pieces that are useful and can be used again and then they either burn what's left over or throw it in one of their rivers.
And they actually pay to pick it up in the U.S. Instead of paying a tax to recycle the computer we can get paid by the Chinese to take it off our hands. Free market at work, not even that complicated.
Re:Why oh why can't they do things right. (Score:2)
That's why you charge the fee at purchase time. Hopefully this makes recycling it a low cost option.
Low Cost? No, shifted cost. (Score:2)
Re:Low Cost? No, shifted cost. (Score:2)
No, no, no... a dollar today is not the same as a dollar tomorrow, is not the same as a dollar yesterday.
For example: Assuming an inflation rate of 3% per year, if I paid $10 today, an equivalent amount three years from now would be $10.93. But if I bought a computer today, and three years from now I paid $10, an equivalent amount today would be $9.15.
So paying X amount today is more expensive than paying X amount at recycle time... Unless there is deflation (where the reverse would be true) or zero inflation (where your statement would be true), but that's not likely.
Here's the solution (Score:3, Informative)
Our industrial economy needs to become a closed cycle and this is the first step. Now that we know how to build monitors and computers, we need to figure out how to build them so that they're easy to take apart and modular enough that old components can just be re-used. Re-using the gallium and mercury and other raw materials is a first step, but really a lot of components can just be re-used. Do you really need a new component that's ten percent smaller? Or can you just use the old one? Now if you're talking 90% smaller then yes you may need the new component. But for many needs old parts can be recycled.
you mean we can throw out... (Score:2)
I have a stack of them in the garage, just in case I need that 20 MB hard drive (they make great paperweights)
One man's junk is another man's treasure... (Score:2, Offtopic)
Not obsolete! I've turned them into fishtanks ala http://mendax.org/article.php?article_id=388 "Scrap"! Bah! Old CD drive = cupholder Old boards can be recycled into clipboards and business card holders. The possibilities for the "junk" are endless.
Re:One man's junk is another man's treasure... (Score:2)
Re:One man's junk is another man's treasure... (Score:2)
Re:One man's junk is another man's treasure... (Score:2)
voodoo economics (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:voodoo economics (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:voodoo economics (Score:2)
Well, of course you are right. Somebody has to pay. But under our current system, computer consumers are encouraged to pass the cost on to the rest of the world in the form of environmental damage. Computer users have no incentive (other than their own conscience) to recycle their toxic equipment, and a fairly good incentive (recycling fees) not to. Having the consumers pay a deposit up front should at least remove the disincentive (since the recycling would now be "free"), and could even provide an incentive to recycle (partial deposit refunds).
Deposits works pretty well for cans and bottles; a similar scheme works nicely for income taxes; I don't see any reason it couldn't work for computers as well. So I'm all for it. If you're well-off enough to buy a computer, you're well-off enough to pay a little extra to make sure it gets disposed of properly when you're done with it.
Re:voodoo economics (Score:2)
2) To repeat what I've posted elsewhere: these bills probably will NOT ensure the stuff gets properly recycled. Rather, politically connected "recycling" companies will take fat fees, and ship the stuff to China... This has been how environmental laws have generally worked out -- it creates a class of parasite "environmental compliance" companies that don't actually do much to help the environment, but do make lots of money filling out the paperwork to prove compliance with the regulations. Quite often the only actual "abatement" has been to make the smokestacks taller, so instead of Chicago (for instance) having polluted air at ground level, it drifts into Michigan.
3) Another effect of environmental legislation has been to insulate the polluters from private lawsuits. Sure your skin will dissolve if you step into the river, but we've got 20 tons of properly filled in forms showing that our emissions are in compliance with the law...
I would like to see some real transfer of environmental costs back to the producers and users -- but under the patterns so far followed in the US, it just doesn't happen.
Donations and Recycling Programs (Score:5, Informative)
You can go there to see what options you have on recycling computer parts in your area.
Safety deposit (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Recycling 80% of all beer bottles and cans (Score:2)
When you buy a bottle or can of beer you end up pay about 18 eurocents more than the product itself would cost. Then, when the hard night of beer drinking is over, you take all the empty bottles and cans to the shop, feed them into a machine that counts them and prints out a receipt which you can cash on your way out.
Effectivly you are paying a deposit on the container.
Also not just glass bottles, the same method can be used for plastic bottles.
What will the fee structure look like? (Score:2, Interesting)
1. The recycling fee should be paid up-front, when purchasing a new computer/monitor/pda/etc. Then, when you go to dispose of said item, you should get at least a portion of that money back as an incentive to dispose of your item in a proper manner. Obviously the recylcing fees have to generate revenue to aid in the recycling effort, so a fee $10 per monitor (for example) of which $5 is returned to the consumer upon disposal might work.
2. The up-front fee and returnable fee should vary depending on the size and weight of the item. If you pay $10 up-front for the monitor, you should pay something like $5 for a PDA or cell phone.
Re:What will the fee structure look like? (Score:2)
Hopefully the fee would be structured to directly relate to the amounts of such "persistent biolaccumulative toxins" within each and every product sold. There is already a fee in most states for lead acid batteries, and some states are actively seeking to eliminate products that lead to non-point source mercury polution such as Maine that has outlawed mercury thermometers [state.me.us].
There is technology being developted that would replace the lead in car batteries with nickel/iron [evworld.com], and sufficient lead tax should also encourage the switch to flat panel monitors and TVs.
I just hope that the tax/fee is applied evenly to all consumer products, and not just to high-tech products, and that high-tech products not be taxed simply due to guilt by association. The proposal above to tax lead-laden CRTs $10, and PDAs $5 seems to take no consideration of the impact these products have on the environment.
Re:What will the fee structure look like? (Score:2)
Very true. You must understand that most environmental TAXES are just that: justification for taxes.
Common sense envrionmnetal regulations are ok and good. I don't want a chemical company dumping acids into the river that flows by. Logical.
But at this point there are so many regulations and taxes being imposed using the environment as justification that, in reality, the environment was forogtten long ago.
It's all about the money. And when it seems like it isn't about the money, it's still about the money.
You want to solve the problem? Make it illegal to dump computers in the landfill. Then let the free market deal with how to solve the problem within the confines of the law. More taxes isn't the answer.
Recupel tax in Belgium (Score:2, Informative)
As of 1 July 2001, (Belgian) consumers pay a small contribution on all new electric and electronic products. This contribution goes towards covering the collection, treatment and recycling costs of these products at the end of its useful life. The end result: less pollution and waste.
This system results out of a recent governmental decision and an agreement between the competent authorities, the importers and producers of electric and electronic goods.
Premiums are calculated on the basis of the estimated costs of treatment and recycling. They must be clearly indicated next to the purchase price and on the product invoice. For my new Philips TV set (consumer price: +/- 1.115), I paid 10 for the recycling premium. (1 ~ $0.9)
According to their website (Yes, they recuperated enough money to even create a website about it: http://www.recupel.be [recupel.be]) a new PC would now have a 9 recupel tax.
Re:Recupel tax in Belgium (Score:2, Informative)
California *state* Senators, not US Senators (Score:2)
Considering the environmental impact of failing to recycle the glass in a beer bottle (minimal) which California already encourages with fees, and the impact of failing to recycle a computer (considerable) this only makes sense. Other things we ought to be fined for failing to recycle - Car Batteries,
However, I think it is clear that regulation of the fashion in which computers are recycled, which, according to a recent article in the ny times [nytimes.com] (blood sample required) is not environmentally or humanistically sound, is probably more important than regulation trying to encourage people to turn used computers over. Of course, that wouldn't generate any revenue.
On the other hand, given the attrocious working conditions under which consumer electronics are manufactured in the first place, complaining about the conditions under which they're recycled seems almost irrelevant.
Well, (Score:2)
We already got these taxes in Europe (Score:4, Informative)
Re:We already got these taxes in Europe (Score:2)
Re:We already got these taxes in Europe (Score:3, Interesting)
I was reading in my newspaper last week that the UK, and Scotland in particular are the worst for recycling in the world... I'd try and find a reference, but i've binned the paper (landfill I bet). Even worse than the US, which really amazed me.
We're (i'm Scottish) are actually going backward - when I was 'wee' you could get a deposit back on glass bottles. The recycle facilities at the local supermarket were actually REMOVED last year (and Edinburgh tries to say it's 'Cosmopolitan'!). The year before that the council were saving money by just landfilling the 'to-be-recycled' items...
It's a wonderful place!
Re:We already got these taxes in Europe (Score:2)
Will be as tough - like interstate sales tax (Score:2)
Right now, of course, those mail-ordering from out-of-state retailers are supposed to remit the sales tax by filing all the paperwork and sending a check to the state. But individuals rarely (if ever?) do this. Many businesses (who are supposed to be doing this on any expense) don't do this either, though they get caught at it fairly often by state income tax audits.
California actually is pretty good at finding out-of-state car buys and collecting tax on them, but the paperwork involved with registering a car makes sure these get put in the system. Are we gonna have to register our CRT's with the DMV?
Where's the money going? (Score:2, Insightful)
If they simply told the manufacturers to set up a program or get nailed with a massive fine, you could bet your sweet ass the consumer would be paying for it in the end. In fact, what I see happening is a new tax put into place, the money from the tax funneled into pork projects, the manufacturers setting up the program without funding from the state, and the consumer getting stuck with the bill for the set-up programs, thus increasing sales tax. So....strike up two knocks of taxes, a new bureaucratic process, and a a couple politicians who can now claim to be pro-environment while doing nothing but padding the state budget.
Re:Where's the money going? (Score:2)
Drowning in dead equipment... (Score:2, Insightful)
I work as a computer technician for a small private college, and I know exactly what this article is talking about. As the title of this post says, we are drowning in a see of dead equipment that we can't get rid of, and we only have 1,000 students! I'm scared to see the problem at a large university.
Being that we are located in a small town, there is literally no place to take the 14" and 15" monitors, motherboards, cases, etc., that are quickly piling up. We are running out of storage space for all of the broken and useless junk that has no place to go. So far, it seems our only option is to pay to have HP [hp.com] to take it. How we are going to get all of this crap to them is a whole other problem, however.
I, for one, would happily pay an extra fee per computer bought if the state, or a company designated by the state, would take the old equipment for free when it dies. My fear however, is that we'll be charged this extra amount on the purchase price and then have to pay again for someone to take the machine. That would be even worse than it is now. If this is done right, it could be a great program.
If its done right...
I don't know what the problem is here. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's always gone within 24 hours. I can only assume that some techno-geek takes them and uses them for spare parts.
I did the same thing to my comic book collection.
Re:I don't know what the problem is here. (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, I do the same thing with all the crap I don't want anymore. Old car batteries, used oil, broken refrigerators. Out of sight, out of mind...
Reading Problem (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, we're discussing old computers here. There's very little irony in them. It's mostly steely, aluminumy, silicony, coppery, plasticy and leady, with a little goldy and heavy metalsy.
Good thing I cleared that up.
Virg
Re:I don't know what the problem is here. (Score:2, Interesting)
Sooo... why would I be paying a recycling tax? Oh yeah! It's so the government can take my money about 5-10 years before they actually use it! This is worse than the notion of social security in the US!!
I mean the government bitches if you owe money to them in taxes. And if you don't have taxes deducted from your checks, they get really pissed if you don't file taxes quarterly. Whine whine whine that they don't have their money immediately. And yet, they expect me to give them my money for use in 5-10 years! Screw that! Bastards!
Yes, I live in California. This is BS! The I'm all for recycling (although I don't do it ALL the time), but the friggen recycle hippies have gone TOO far. This sounds a lot more like political abuse and ignorance to me.
-Alex
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Responsible thing to do. (Score:4, Insightful)
Adding, $5, $10, or even $20 to a system is not going to kill us. However, I would want it to be used directly for the recycling of the machines and everyone (business and individual) alike must pay at point of purchase. The fact that a company buys 1000+ boxes, is no reason for a discount on recycling. By putting it at point of purchase, we can still donate boxes, etc. without having to worry about the charity paying the fee.
In addition, we should be able to put the stuff at the curb with the other recyclables. Who would spend $100 shipping back a PIII three years from now? It would end up hidden in the dumpster.
Finally, my favorite statement was:
"the high-tech industry hasn't done nearly enough and foists costs onto consumers that should be picked up by the manufacturers themselves" There are no zero return business costs anymore. NONE, ZERO, zilch,
Re:Responsible thing to do. (Score:2)
Nice idea, but the curbside recyclers are the ones who will take plastic milk jugs, but not plastic milk jug caps. Can you see them trying to figure out what to do with a PC?
yet another failure of private industry... (Score:2)
i find it amusing that while many people will point to gov't waste, they just accept failures in private industry as part of the process. obviously on that playing field (gov't only works if it makes no mistakes, private industry is supposed to make mistakes) then of *course* private industry is better...
Re:yet another failure of private industry... (Score:2)
private industry - which actually wants consumers to throw things away so they will buy new ones - has continually failed to follow through on that complete cycle.
Donate! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Donate! (Score:2)
Re:Donate! (Score:2)
How much time and effort would they have to waste configuring such a system?
If the computer is more than 2-3 years old, please don't waste a schools time by donating it unless you intend to donate the time involved to make it work for them.
Re: (Score:2)
I am all for it... (Score:2)
I don't buy the arguement that the fee will stop people from buyine new stuff. It hasn't stopped people from getting new tires (recycle fee), an oil change (environmental fee), and drinking beer or soda ($0.05 or more back!!!).
I try to dispose of my electronics responsibly but there are too many people who just toss things in the trash. You HAVE to hit people where they will pay attention - in the pocket.
Reminds me of here.. (the Netherlands) (Score:2, Interesting)
Unlike other electronic equipment, where the price is a set fee which you are charged in the shop on top of your purchase (think in the area between 5 and 40 euro, a lot like the amount proposed in the
This also encourages the producer of the systems to try to keep the recycling costs low.
While it may hurt a little bit in the wallet it can not be denied that the systems do have an environmental impact when they are disposed of.
It does not really leave much room for geeks like me who still have their first computers 'somewhere around', but I have no objections to a system like we have it here.
Re:Reminds me of here.. (the Netherlands) (Score:2, Informative)
I think Lazarus Long said it best... (Score:2)
There are a hundred ways you could skim off the top of a program like this; this isn't even something that necessarily needs to happen. Computers can be reused almost indefinitely. Why don't we have a tax on televisions, Saturn automobiles, and everything else with reusable plastic (which means too expensive for recycling to pay for itself) stuff as well?
The sort of reminds me of the old tax that Feudal Lords used to put on their fiefs when the came for dinner - the "tooth wear and tear" tax, which taxed based upon the fact that the dinner caused the teeth to wear down to some degree.
Current technology is too disposable! (Score:2)
If it could be done cost effectively and profitably, the other benefits would be an added incentive.
END COMMUNICATION
Tapping the revenue stream... (Score:3, Insightful)
With widespread mandated fee-based recycling for computing components, I fully expect to see the leeches emerge. But at least some good should come of it.
Ideal time to do this. (Score:2)
Of course, there is the cost of actually doing the recycling to be considered. However, it is important to note that the cost of disposal is not zero, it's just not absorbed in a market in which people get to voluntarily play (e.g. some poor shmoe is forced live with contamination because his neighbor is running an underground disposal operation).
So if, to be fair, we should charge users of computers the cost of recycling. How we doe this doesn't matter much : charging the manufacturers is no different from charging the consumer or vice versa. Would it be very expensive? I don't think so, provided we charged everybody. The greatest costs of proper recycling are investments in the technology to do it properly. If done on a wide scale, the unit cost of recycling will fall dramatically.
Also, the environmental coss of recycling will fall dramatically as the scale increases. Scale has a funny effect on environmental impact. Pop quiz: if you have a choice of three garments, cotton, wool and polyester fleece, which is the most environmentally friendly? The answer is polyester, even though it is made from petrochemicals. It can be produced from ground up bottles, is easy to dye with nontoxic dyes; at some point in the future given enough polyester usage in garments, it will be possible to recycle old garments into virgin quality fabric. Cotton, on the other hand, has a tremendous environmental impact due to irrigation and related problems like soil salination. The destruction of the Aral sea, possibly the most spectactual environmental disaster of the twentieth century, was due to cotton production. Wool has the direct impact on the environment due to sheep flocks, the toxic sheep dip used to keep the animals pest free, and has an indirect cost in that it is hard to dye in colors preferred by consumers without using and releasing toxic materials.
Scale affects the best choice to make environmentally. On a small scale (say producing thousands of garments), producing polyester would be by far the worst choice, and cotton and wool the best. On the large scale needed to clothe humanity (producing billions of garments), polyester is the best choice, wool is a bad choice and cotton a terrible choice.
The same principle of scale dependent impact will affect computer recycling. The mom and pop operations in China are environmentally horrible -- a proper land fill would be a better choice. However, when we are talking about a system that would be capable of recycling all electronics, then you would have a system which is much more environmentally benign than disposal, even if you don't count the reduced impact by making less extraction necessary.
So, I'm very positive about this in principle, although it would be better if (1) users were refunded enough of their fee to incent them to return the equipment for proper processing and (2) it were national in scope. Such a system would have little long term impact on computer purchasing decisions and actually improve the financial and environmental efficiency of recycling operations
Fees Needed (Score:2)
This is silly... (Score:2)
The /. introduction from Jeff is a little misleading - Byron Sher's bill is for CRTs, Gloria Romero's is for everything.
I seriously wonder if Sher really knows what he's talking about - a CRT is not a pop bottle and has a much longer life. My Macintosh (Model M0001) still can attest to the life of a CRT. Collecting fees on the consumer level is utterly silly and isn't going to make me want to move to Cali any time soon.
Romero's plan might have some feasibility in that the emphasis would be placed on the company to come up with a reclaimation program, not placing fees on the consumers. I personally think that, in the long run, it would be cheaper for a company to take back the old machines. They can reclaim the gold from the boards, etc., and if they use proper plastic they could recycle to cases.
Now, I'm not a fan of Dell (politcally or in terms of OS choice), but I'm throughly impressed by the fact that whe Dell receives an off-lease machine back they clean it up and sell it on eBay for a decent price. I consider that a first step in the direction Romero and Sher are headed. I just think Sher could have talked with some folks in the real world before drafting his bill.
Another Fee? Why not! (Score:2)
What about the AOL disks? (Score:2)
Another scam (Score:2)
I guess that I will just take it as a given that there is an actual need and a viable plan for this computer 'recycling'. I would want to know if the government will actually spend it on what they claim it is needed for. If it is for the 'starwars project (I mean missile defense system)' or some other half concocted pipe dream, I would be rather upset.
They're not U.S. Senators (Score:3, Informative)
That's OK; most Californians I know can't name the two U.S. Senators they elected (Barbara Boxer [senate.gov] and Dianne Feinstein [senate.gov])
Re:They're not U.S. Senators (Score:2, Funny)
Can't? Or won't admit that our state as a whole would elect these two idiots. I am ashamed that they represent the great State of California.
Another bogus tax (Score:2)
Additionally, it assumes that the computer wil someday be recycled. Perhaps when it no longer serves me I'll part it out. Or perhaps I'll upgrade it and not need to throw it out. Or perhaps it'll run on a Linux box and never have to be upgraded because it gets the job done.
How do I get a refund if I never trash/recycle my machine?
More left-wing tax-and-spend envrionmental-based psycho-babble. Taxes must be resisted in all its forms. If they want money to do this, take it out of one of the useless programs they already spend my tax dollars on.
Junkyard wars for the less physical (Score:2, Funny)
"You have ten hours from when the ball reaches the bottom of the Scrapheap clock to bulid... a working firewall!"
"W00t! I found a dual processor mobo!"
"Excellent! DDR Memory!"
"I know we wanted a 10Gb hdd, but all I could find is these 200Mb paperweights."
"Jackpot! Linux distro!"
Maran
quick question (Score:2)
U.S. exporting e-trash anyways.... (Score:2, Informative)
Doing a search on Google for "recycling computers" [google.com] takes a person to a lot of "we'll take your old computer and shuffle it off to little kids at 4-H for reuse". Nothing about actual recycling in the sense of "What happens when the computer can no longer be used and needs to be thrown away?" I shudder to think about the cathode tubes exploding in garbage dumps.
So what will they do with it? (Score:2)
But what will either of these bills do.... (Score:3, Insightful)
One of these bills doesn't seem to do anything about the problem; it just wants to set up yet another tax. Does that mean, okay we've collected the tax, now you can throw your old computer in the dumpster?
I would much rather see something closer to the second bill: an active recycling program that encourages computer makers to get older computers to schools and others non-profits so as little as possible ends up on the dump. I would rather see a reward system set up rather than a punitive one, however. Any costs penalizing these companies will simply be passed on to us.
In Europe... (Score:3, Interesting)
If only... (Score:4, Insightful)
No one had any clue.
I spent a several afternoons trying to find an environmentally-friendly way to get rid of the damn burnt out monitor, but without any luck. Eventually I was forced to just put it out on the curb for the garbage men to pick up.
So I was determined to recycle my old monitor, but still failed in the state of CA. You think people who don't care in the first place will do anything other than just chuck the thing in the trash? If there's a purchase-recycling fee, then they sure as hell need a very robust system to actually do the recycling. And the most important part of such a system would be advertising to let people know the service is available and how to use it. Because otherwise there will be people like me who have the best intentions, but don't know where to take the hardware.
Recycling: when? (Score:2)
Ah, recycling. What a noble concept. I wonder when (if ever) we're going to start doing it?
"Recycled" US computers typically end up as Chinese landfill [slashdot.org].
At a local level, my local civic amenities centre has finally started taking sorted refuse... but when pressed (again and again and again) they finally admitted that - with the exception of lead-acid batteries - it all goes to landfill. Glass, card, paper, everything. They can't give it away, not even to burn as fuel. The sorting is just to build up a reliable supply in case someone can be persuaded to recycle some of it in the future. YMMV, and I truly hope that it does.
My point (now that I'm finally getting to it) is that recycling is a feel-good crock. Unless you actually know for a fact that the components you hand over are going to find their way back into the manufacturing chain - and without being stripped out by unprotected third world labor - then the best thing you can do with old equipment is re-use it. A Pentium-anything with at least 16Mb of RAM will never be obsolete, because you can use it as a DSL router. You don't even need a monitor, if you use an OS that supports a serial console. In fact, you don't want to use a "modern" system, because they just turn more electricity into heat, for exactly zero extra useful work.
If you absolutely can't find a use for it, then sure, give it to schools or colleges (and if they won't take it even to pass on to students, ask them why not). Sell it for chump change in your local paper. Give it away in your local paper, or at yard sales. The one thing I wouldn't recommend is the (semi fatuous) method of leaving it lying around with a "free" sign on it. Yes, you'll probably be rid of it, but the taker will most likely toss it in a dumpster once they find out nobody wants to buy old hardware.
Shipping to China (Score:2)
Unless, of course, this is to merely defray the cost of shipping them to China.
Re:Shipping to China (Score:2)
Re:Shipping to China (Score:2)
Re:lucky for me.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: School PC donations (Score:3, Insightful)
You know what's the most frustrating thing about it though? All those "rooms full of 8088's and 386's with no hard drives" would make excellent student projects. Instead of viewing it as "useless junk" because it won't run current Microsoft operating systems, use them to teach the history of computers, hands-on! Let students learn PC troubleshooting and upgrading in an electronics class with them! Teach them that just because something is old doesn't mean it's automatically no good; set up some of these systems to boot from floppies and run DOS-based testing software, math tutoring packages, etc.
Or are we all so hopelessly caught up in the "2 minute attention-span of kids" that we've convinced ourselves they can no longer learn from any software package that only displays text w/no multimedia?
Re: School PC donations (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I played with those very same computers when I was young, and got a lot out of it and all that. But at the time those computers were good, or at least decent, and weren't simply arcane. The arcane is not that useful... it doesn't feel adventurous or exciting to use something who's time has passed. Those computers are so far behind the time that it would be like giving a kid a broken calculator 15 years ago and expecting them to be excited about it.
And setting up old software is certainly not helpful. Educational software sucks -- it's only good for keeping kids busy while the teacher takes a break. The only valuable way for kids to use computers, IMHO, is doing real tasks with real software, where the computer is a tool not an end. Old DOS programs make lousy tools.
Re: School PC donations (Score:2)
But I still tend to disagree with you, to an extent. (Where I do see your point is where you talked about the ridiculous "red-tape" in place, that prevents you from giving away the donated PCs to students or even throwing them out.) Honestly, I think that type of legislation was put in place with good intentions, but they didn't forsee this type of thing happening.
If the right legislators were written, explaining the problem, I'd bet these laws could be changed. It probably wouldn't hurt to call up the local TV stations either, and tell them how you're "not allowed to give away old PCs to students to further their learning and education at home" because of outdated laws preventing it.
I guarantee that it will, indeed, feel "adventurous and exciting" if a student's project is to get an old PC fully working and able to perform basic functions (get on the Internet to check email, write papers, etc.), and afterwards, said student gets to keep it!
If you feel DOS is "too arcane", then why not Linux or FreeBSD? It doesn't really matter what OS you choose, as long as it's something one of these old machines can run respectably well.
Even today, if you gave a kid a broken calculator, their level of excitement would have a lot to do with the quality of teaching that accompanied it. I bet someone who knew enough about the design and components in a calculator could manage to make a very good class out of that. (People have been asking kids to dissect frogs for years, and they're considerably less appealing to tear into than most electronics. I never had a calculator that smelled bad or got goop all over my hands.)
What total crap. (Score:4, Funny)
The job of Freddy J. Bumfuck High School down the street is to teach things like reading, writing, math, history, biology, physics, chemistry, etc, not to make dozens of computers, all different mind you, function. It's a high school for God's sake, not ITT Tech. 99% of schools have enough trouble with the basics to bother teaching kids how to be computer repair people. The idea that you can throw your useless piles of 10+ year-old hardware their way and have them do something with it is idealistic to the point of silliness.
I'm amazed at the naivete of this. You're computer people dammit, doesn't "Garbage In Garbage Out" mean anything to you?
Re:Charge Microsoft (Score:2)
Re:And in other breaking news... (Score:2)
Tolls and trolls, tolls and trolls...