Recycle Fee For Each PC?

UncleJosh writes: "The New York Times (free reg rq'd) has a story about a $25-30 fee to be added to the price of a new PC to cover the cost of recycling it. Sort of like a bottle deposit, but you don't get the money back." What if I just want to buy the case?

Comments

Why put the fee up front?

[krugdm]

I pay a fee for oil disposal when it gets changed. I pay a fee for tire disposal, when I change my tires.

Personally, since I've never had to dispose of a computer (I still have all but one that I've ever bought, the other one I sold) Why should I get stuck with a disposal fee that I may never use?

Why not just make it illegal to throw away monitors, etc. in the regular trash, then have a collection point with a fee for disposal, just like oil and tires?

Shouldn't be a problem...

[tongue]

Personally, I have no problem with this, as long as recycling centers are widely and easily available. I have half a dozen cases and a few boxes worth of broken parts I can't do anything with (and yes, I've tried donating them to a school or non-profit--they are even less able to use them than me) but I can't throw away because its unsafe for the environment. I would gladly pay an extra 20-30 dollars to finance being able to take this crap somewhere and forget about it and not have to worry about poisoning drinking water or wildlife. Look at it this way: at least microsoft (probably) won't see the money.

Re:Gee, another tax.

[wirefarm]

Where I live, if you want to throw away a PC or a monitor, you have to buy special stamps that say that you've paid your "disposal fee" or whatever.
Then you can just put it on the curb once a month.
The trash guys see the stamps on the stuff and know that it's ok to pick up - otherwise you get a visit from the local police and a fine, I think.

(So, if you find a PC on the curb in Tokyo, leave the stamps on - that way you save a few bucks if you ever decide to pitch it later...)

Cheers,
Jim

Re:This is a bad idea

[Jeremi]

I don't take being forced to do anything very well when it doesn't harm anyone else, and neither should you!

If you think spreading lead and other poisons around the countryside isn't hurting anyone else, then you haven't thought things through.

Oh, there's also the little problem of the fact that recycling certain materials is actually more harmful to the environment (energy usage and byproduct wise) than making them in the first place

That is debatable, but somewhat orthogonal to the issue at hand -- the important thing is that the computer parts don't end up spread all over the country, leaking into the ground water, or being burned into the air in China. So the goal here is to make sure they are collected and dealt with safely; whether that means recycling them or just sequestering them in a safe location is a separate issue.

The answer is to make recyling paletable and easy, never _force_.

Nobody is proposing forcing anyone to recycle anything here. On the other hand, when you choose to recycle your old PC, under this plan, you won't be charged to do so. An improvement on this plan would be to charge $10 more on top of the recycling cost, and give that back to the consumer when s/he recycles their computer; this would be a further incentive to bring the computers in instead of just dumping them somewhere.

Note how well a similar system works for income taxes... by giving people a refund check every year, the IRS encourages everyone to send in their tax forms on time. Even though people were charged more up front, and thus aren't really getting any money, they feel like they are getting something out of doing the right thing.