Re:Crush and recycle, what am I missing? (Score 1)

Good Point!

I helped with a recycling facility design that would separate out the plastics from electronics waste ( yes, that actually occurs without going across the water also ). It can be done.

Electronics:
Electronic Recycling generally involves precious metals along with Lead and Nickel. I learned years ago at Amateur Radio Swapmeets (Hamfests) that there is blast furnace in Rockford, IL that will burn your circuit boards down and provide you with an ingot of GOLD, Silver, and another with all of the rest of the metals that were in the circuit boards ( again, no shipping of goods across the water involved ).

Goodwill has always been a willing recipient of my junk computers and monitors. The PCs don't even need to work!

Picture tubes from TVs and Monitors are definitely a separate difficult case though. - I cannot address this myself at this time.

I expect that much of this should go away shortly from the manufacturer's level due to most large and especially multi-national manufacturers having internal committees in-place for probably at least 10years that help ensure that their products and methods don't pollute the landfills as they want to live here also.

Tax It?
We presently have a deposit on Soda and Alcohol containers in Iowa. Years ago, this deposit was really an incentive for people to return the bottles as they were so expensive to make. However, it has now turned into a container tax. Perhaps we now need deposits on Milk Jugs, Cereal Boxes, Cans, Glass Jugs, any Plastic Containers, and even plastic bags also? - not.

I recommend that our communities and businesses develop recycling plans to reduce the amount of recycleables that end-up in the land-fills in general rather than considering new ways of taxing this relatively budding industry - Scrap metal was at a premium up until last summer when the economy tanked.