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Whose Burden is it to Recycle Computers?
bostons asks: "California places the financial burden of dealing with the electronic waste on consumers, charging a $6 to $10 disposal fee on every computer and television purchased. Maine puts the onus on manufacturers, demanding they pay the full cost of recycling their computers or televisions and pick up a share of the recycling tab for products of unknown origin. Starting next year, Maryland will require manufacturers to offer free computer take-back programs or pay the state a fee. Which do you think is the most effective and appropriate option?"
The ideal situation would be to place the burden on the market in such that there is an incentive to reduce costs.
Therefore, if manufacturers have the burden, they will have to charge customers indirectly by increasing purchase price (after all, customers pay for everything in the end).
And if manufacturers carry the direct burden, they will also have the desire to lower disposal costs. Instead of a flat $6 for disposal costs, the manufacturer will want to lower it as close to zero as possible.
This becomes a win-win. It costs the consumer in the end (as it always does), but manufacturers have a strong incentive to minimize the disposal costs.
At the end of the day, I'll speculate that this could be a profit center for the manufacturer - the resale of whole components and quality recycled raw materials could wind up making them money.
I live on one side of a shallow urban brook that has many good points: ducks, geese, carp, turtles and the occasional heron. Unfortunately, it has a tire in it about every 40 yards or less. 1/4 mile upstream on the other side is the municipal physical plant that accepts recycling. They charge to take tires.
The conclusion seems obvious. Hell, I don't even have incentive to volunteer my time to fish them out if I will suffer the insult of paying to deposit the fruits of my good citizenship.
You're confused because you believe something which is not true, namely:
In a perfect world where all costs are properly accounted, recycling would be profitable and end users would be turning in their goods to recoup the cost tied up in no longer useful items. However, one of the reasons we get our copper from Chile is so that we can avoid proper cost of mining it. We're essentially disintermediating the proper environmental, social and labor costs that copper mining in the US would incur. In this sense, we get the copper whithout the side effects of not paying those costs. The Chileans will, eventually. Some corporations and local governments stateside have actaully come to the conclusion that it's actually cheaper to do this stuff abroad than deal with these problems over the long term at home. The hard rock mining industry is a premier example of this and because computers require so many rare earth resources and energy to produce, they're essentially a huge black market of hidden costs that somebody somewhere is stuck with.
Item deposits are not a great way to deal with this problem, but they are one way of dealing with them. The great side effect is that you get the underprivilaged to tidy up the place as they scour your neighborhood for dumped deposit items.
Before you get all huffy at the last remark, please note that it was in the vein of The Onion's story about increasing the bottle deposit to aid the indigent.
Politicus