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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.
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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...
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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?
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