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Japan Introduces Consumer-Paid Computer Recycling
Azuma writes "According to the Japan Times, starting Wednesday, new Japanese legislation takes effect that compels personal computer manufacturers to collect used PCs from households and recycle their parts, with consumers footing the bill, which will total anywhere from 3,000 yen ($28) to 4,000 yen ($37). So from today onwards, if you buy a new computer in Japan, your new computer should have a new logo besides commercial ones such as Intel Inside... 'Recycling Fee Prepaid'."
Ever live in Japan? There is simply no room for keeping all your old stuff. Incidentally, when I was there in 1987-88 there was a Japan Times article about people (usu. us gaijin) furnishing there entire apt with stuff from the gomi, i.e. trash on the curb. We're talking fully functional stereo equipment - simply because the old owners had no room to keep old stuff around.
There is no off postion on the genius switch. - David Letterman
just have to see how it works out.
actually NHK had a lil program this morning (morning in JP) showing one of the recycling plants and how they recycle - basically smash everything with little hammers and separate (to a degree) the metal from the plastic from the PCB from the rubber sheets (keyboard) etc.
they also smash the ICs for some reason, probably because when it melts in the pot the molten silicon would trickle through (pure and absolute speculation)...
This creates jobs (though mundane), and helps with waste - japan is not known for having a lot of area for landfills; so as long as things get recycled (instead of, say, shipped to china), I am cool with it.
Though it would change the recycle shops (read: used stuff shops) business model on old computers... maybe it becomes cheaper to sell your old PC to a recycle shop? Would the recycle shops be totally fscked because they have a collection of junk PC sitting around?
Heck, my company has an array of junk PCs (actually, Pentium II class, which I am amazed that they are tossing out) sitting around. Maybe they will be sitting around a lot longer now that it costs money to dispose... hmm...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
If Japan is so upset about people tossing computers away instead of recycling them, why not charge customers more for hauling away the computer as trash instead of mandating them to send them back to manufacturers? These companies ought to be paying the consumers for their (recyclable) merchandise anyway since parts can be stripped from a few obselete comps and used to rebuild a less obselete one. Personally I think it would be better all around: computers would be recycled instead of tossed, consumers could get paid for recycling the parts, and companies could turn over a profit by reselling the parts as rebuilt comps. Anyone have any other ideas/thoughts on this?
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
A subject that really hits close to home for me right now since I am about to move back to the states from Tokyo. I'll tell you what getting rid of old stuff here is very expensive undertaking.
Its hard to sell stuff because since most of us here don't own cars transportation to would be buyers is a difficult proposition. I have a perfectly good 27" TV, washer/dryer, fridge, stereo, air conditioning unit (air conditioning is almost always wall mounted in Japan and generally speaking even if one is included with the apartment it isn't stong enough to cool/heat the whole place), 5 computers, and various shelving. It will cost me about $500 per cubic meter to ship stuff back so I'm obviously not going to ship the older/bigger stuff back. Unfortunately unless I can sell it to someone who is willing to pick it up, I am going to have to pay a fair amount of money to throw it away.
I figure everything said, and done it will cost me about $300-$500 to throw out the stuff I can't ship. This situation leads to a lot of illegal dumping, and I really think this built in recycle tax is the way to go.
--wyn
If you live in Hawaii in the United States, you're subject to quite similar problems. Everything costs more because things have to be imported. Land is at a premium, so you can't just go buy a plot of empty land and build your new house on it - like you could at a reasonable price, say, in the Midwestern continental U.S.
Recycling is sort of a pet-peeve of mine, though. It's not that I'm against recycling. I think it's very sensible. The problem is, the end user/customer usually gets saddled with its costs, and doesn't see a direct benefit from it.
EG. Take the hype about "the energy used to create a single aluminum soda can being enough power to run your home for 30 minutes". Yeah, that's an impressive figure and all - but if I recycle (at my time and expense), do you really think the energy I save Pepsi or Coca-Cola will come back to me, the consumer, in the form of price cuts on soda? Much more likely, any savings goes into the owner's pockets.
If a manufacturer chooses to build products that can cause problems if they aren't recycled, it seems like it should be part of THEIR responsibility to cover the costs. As it stands now, they can crank out products (like CRTs with lead in the glass) without a care in the world. The customer ends up suffering if he/she needs to dispose of it a few years later, and finds out the local trash people designated it as "hazardous waste" and won't take it.