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California Considering Recycling Fees on PCs

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the nickel-deposit dept.

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."

2 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Recycling Fees by Archanagor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

    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.

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  2. Re:Recycling Fees by Ian+Bicking · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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...?
    The process that makes this stuff hazardous is called, I believe, a "chemical reaction".

    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.