Mandatory Hardware Recycling Coming To US?

BDPrime writes, "A U.S. congressional caucus has met twice to discuss proposing national legislation that would make hardware manufacturers responsible for taking back their own stuff, similar to what Europe implemented with WEEE (PDF). The story quotes David Douglas, one of Sun's eco-evangelists, reflecting on the alternative: 'If we were having to deal with local regulations and local disposition facilities in every state, to deal with every state's nuanced costs, that would clearly involve cost to our basic equipment.'" It's early days for this movement; the buzzword to watch here is "E-waste."

Comments

Huh?

[LordPhantom]

It's early days for this movement; the buzzword to watch here is "E-waste." But...but... I thought that was called "myspace"!

What does this have to do with EWM?

[chrismcdirty]

This is the second time that I've noticed kdawson misusing the Enlightenment icon. Are you guys just picking icons based on how pretty they look now?

Re:What does this have to do with EWM?

[Anonymous Coward]

no kidding.....my first thought when seeing the icon was that e17 was finally released....oh well, maybe next year ;)

Re:What does this have to do with EWM?

[celardore]

There is only one enlightened topic. This one.

Re:What does this have to do with EWM?

[Reverend528]

I'm more confused about how Kimya Dawson got to be a /. editor in the first place.

Re:What does this have to do with EWM?

[chrismcdirty]

And this one.

Re:What does this have to do with EWM?

[NaCh0]

This pic pretty much sums up /.'s editors.

Re:What does this have to do with EWM?

[vadim_t]

It sounds to me like kdawson doesn't know the enlightenment topic refers to a window manager, and instead uses it in the cultural (education, spread of knowledge) sense.

Re:What does this have to do with EWM?

[SmilinJoeFission]

I think you are correct. Unfortunately, every time I get excited that there is some great e17 breakthrough but then I read the byline. It seems that some of the "new" folk just don't know what the Enlightenment, Digital (another commonly misused symbol), etc icons mean. It's sad really...

Re:What does this have to do with EWM?

[crabpeople]

I don't know.. I feel kind of enlightened.
At least they arent using the same old boring icons all the time like they usually do.

Re:What does this have to do with EWM?

[cab15625]

Maybe /. needs some sort of metaediting (editing equivalent of metamoderating)
Grade the editing in terms of
awsome, fine, shitty with regards to the following categories: dupe, accuracy of summary, choice of link (is there a better article), clarity (grammar) of summary, choice of icon.
this is a joke ... mostly.

Re:What does this have to do with EWM?

[fatboy]

Not the first time it's happened either. :(

Re:What does this have to do with EWM?

[Eternauta3k]

there are lots of articles in that category. not 1 or 2.
more on topic, this will be more necessary as bigger drives show up, people throw away their old ones just so they can "store uncompressed 50fps 10000x7500 16-bits per channel video" whatever... seriously, people, if you're going to project into a wall you're not going to be close enough to care about those resolutions..

Re:What does this have to do with EWM?

[sootman]

Considering that the icon has been used once before this year (also by kdawson) and only 4 times in 2005, maybe they just want to use it some so it doesn't rust or something.

kdawson: this is what the big E means.

Re:What does this have to do with EWM?

[WilliamSChips]

No matter how bad the editors are they are still better than what goes on at Digg.

E-waste...

[__aaclcg7560]

I thought that term was used only during presidential election years when disposing of hanging/pregnant/whatever chads from ballots.

Why stop there?

[merreborn]

Why don't we place the same requirements on the appliance and automotive industries?

Oh, they probably have better lobyists, don't they?

Re:Why stop there?

[fructose]

You do realize that over 90% of the steel in cars and at least 25% of appliances (fridges, washers/dryers) comes from recycled steel? More info here: http://www.recycle-steel.org/

Re:Why stop there?

[mordors9]

You must be kidding. When did you ever see a car in the landfill. They go to junkyards, which after salvaging what they can in parts, they are smashed and then taken to be recycled. Not sure about appliances, but every time I have had a new one delivered, they have taken the old one away with them. As much as most metal prices are now, if you throw something that has much metal in it away someone is likely to take it out of your trash and to the scrap yard.

Re:Why stop there?

[PPH]

Or bullets. Some of them have an annoying habit of showing up in strange places.

Re:Why stop there?

[Hijacked Public]

There are already several regs regarding how appliances are treated when they become waste, same for automobiles. There are even regs to deal with many of the specific components of each.

How it makes sense to force the manufacturer to 'take it back' I don't quite get. For nearly everything charging the end user for disposing of it seems to work well.

Re:Why stop there?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Applicances would be interesting. I think a lot of companies (like Sun and HP) are advocating their recycling plans because it gives them an additional chance to "touch" their customers (and talk them into buying more stuff) when their customers are in a disposal (and therefore a "buying") mood.

Autos are largely covered by the concept of a "trade-in".

Of course, if Congress gets involved, you can also look forward to an inflated, but standard, recycling surcharge on your corporate box orders.

Re:Why stop there?

[kfg]

Because you, as the owner of a "cast off" car can already sell it to the established recycling industry.

Even individual parts are recycled. Have you ever bought a car part and gotten a discount for trading in a "core"? Well, the core becomes a rebuilt part or recycled steel.

Dealing with old cars is an established and highly functional business. Requiring the manufacturers to take back the cars would actually hurt a lot of people financially and reduce the efficacy with which we deal with them.

Appliances are a bit more of a problem, but there are people at the local level who manage to do a fair job of dealing with them.

Recycling electronics is specialized, doesn't return much in the way of reusables and is thus done at a loss.

KFG

Re:Why stop there?

[mattdm]

Well, size, for one thing. You can't just dump a car in the trashcan.

Re:Why stop there?

[mordors9]

Have you bought a car battery recently? You have to pay a deposit that you get back when you turn the old one in.

Re:Why stop there?

[BSOD DOC]

I saw one once. Back in the late 80's a friend of mine stripped a Honda CVCC (smaller than a Honda CRX) for parts, put it on a flatbed, took it to the county dump at night, and rolled it off into the big dumpsters there.

Re:Why stop there?

[TubeSteak]

Not sure about appliances, but every time I have had a new one delivered, they have taken the old one away with them.

Go around back, behind your local appliance store.

They'll most likely have a pile of old (but not necessarily broken) appliances that get picked up on a weekly basis. And they could care less if you went and grabbed any of it. In other words, if you ever need a compressor or misc washer/dryer parts, nobody is stopping you.

Re:Why stop there?

[Russ Nelson]

Because we're not running out of landfill space, nor the materials that go into automobiles and appliances?

Because recycling, when it's stupid, is STILL STUPID.

Because forcing stupid recycling on people is, well, stupid?

Re:Why stop there?

[dpilot]

The thing that scares me about this is that it creates a "bucket of money" out of those recycling fees. In some essence, the surcharge is supposed to go into the bucket when you buy the thing, STAY there while you use it, and be used for disposal when you're done with it. Buckets of money set aside for the future just don't seem to ever stay set aside, in Washington. Think Social Security.

Perhaps one might say that less government interference is better, but I think the basic idea is that the current situation is not acceptable. We never seem to know the real price of our actions until way later than we should have.

Re:Why stop there?

[drinkypoo]

As has been covered just a bit above this point, automobiles are already recycled because recycling them is lucrative. Damn near every part of them is recycled. Japan buys up an absolute crapload of our recycled steel because their freshly-mined stuff is crap. That's why they made folded swords - and the best of those were made with imported metals anyway. Recycled metal is a little harder than virgin ore, but modern manufacturing methods take this into account, and it's actually a desirable property because although the metal is harder to work, it's stamped out anyway, and the metal is actually harder which makes it more rigid, which means you can use lighter-gauge metal.

Re:Why stop there?

[arivanov]

Err... Apple and oranges your honour.

How much steel in the car comes from recycled is irrelevant.

How much of the car itself is recyclable is the relevant part. EU mandates that 95%+ of all newly manufactured cars must be from recyclable material and the manufacturer is obliged to take the car back for processing. I even got a leaflet stating in clear terms how to claim this. The returns are audited and disposal of more than 5% into landfill will bring a fine.

The reason why we do not hear about this that much is because it came in force around the same time as the electronic waste directive (at least in the UK) and the cars which are subject to this legislation are still on the roads. Compared to that the computers from that period are already recycling candidates.

Re:Why stop there?

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for an appliance store that dealt with both used and new appliances (I was responsible for loading and unloading them and so on, whee manual labor) and every time we made a delivery, we would always take back the old appliance and either strip it for parts, or refurbish it and resell it. The appliances that were so shot that there was no use for them would get hauled to a scrap yard where I assume they were further mashed up for parts and melted down or similar. Other than the public dumping their own stuff into a junk yard and it being missed (we made weekly trips to the junk yard where the guys working there would drag stuff out for us to take and poke at), I really don't think that there's much going to waste. Of course, this is just my story where I live, I can't say it's done like this everywhere.

Re:Why stop there?

[UbuntuDupe]

oh... you want to talk about legislative pull? All the cars around me don't noticeably pollute my air. You know what does? Woodburning in fireplaces, which happens every time it drops below 50 F (!). You ever hear about enforcement of restrictions on this?

You ever hear environmentalists moan about this kind of pollution?

Nope, because fireplaces, are like, cool. They pollute more than oil for the same heat output ... but at least it doesn't generate profit, goddamnit!

Re:Why stop there?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's illegal in many urban areas in the UK. Has been for a looong time.

Re:Why stop there?

[nurb432]

In a way we already do.

Re:Why stop there?

[Anonymous Coward]

Buckets of money set aside for the future just don't seem to ever stay set aside, in Washington. Think Social Security.

They don't stay set aside in the private sector either. Think pension plans at Enron, Worldcom, General Motors, every airline, etc.

Re:Why stop there?

[Anonymous Coward]

You ever hear about enforcement of restrictions on this?

Yes. Try getting a contractor to build you a new fireplace in most Colorado ski towns. If you can't show them a woodburning permit they won't do it, and the only way to get a permit is to convince somebody who had a woodburning fireplace before about 1985 to decomission their fireplace and sell you their permit.

The aging hippies with "split wood, not atoms" stickers on their smoky old VW vans might complain, but at least now you can see downtown Steamboat Springs from the top of the mountain every day.

Re:Why stop there?

[couchslug]

We don't need to place those requirements on the auto industries because recycling cars has been a profitable business for as long as there have been wrecked and worn cars! Making the manufacturers take them back would be silly.
The auto recycling industry employs tens of thousands, serves millions, and is a vital part of the transportation ecosystem. With the rising price of scrap metal, used parts, scrap catalytic converters, etc. I'm delighted to buy and scrap all the cars I can get. Modern cars are so expensive to repair that fixing used cars depends on having plenty of organ donors.
What I find interesting is that auto scrappers are adapted to shred cars and sort metal from plastic, rubber and glass. I toss my dead appliances and dead computers in the cars I send to the crusher, and the recycler has no problem at all with that. The amount of plastic, etc, in a car dwarfs that in computers and monitors, and the materials are similar.

Re:Why stop there?

[toddestan]

If you have a flatbed, you can usually haul the hulk to a scrap metal place and get money for it. That is, unless all that was left was the seat and dash.

This has absolutely nothing to do

[Anonymous Coward]

with Enlightenment. Please don't misuse the icon, kdawson.

Re:This has absolutely nothing to do

[AKAImBatman]

No one has seen or heard of Enlightenment in so long, that he probably thought the icon was for "enlightening" topics. Either that, or he missed the button again.

PLEASE Scuttlemonkey, don't fire him again! He's just trying to keep up with Slashdot tradition. ;)

Reverse migration.

[Anonymous Coward]

"A U.S. congressional caucus has met twice to discuss proposing national legislation that would make hardware manufacturers responsible for taking back their own stuff, similar to what Europe implemented with WEEE.

First we adopt their copyright (Berne convention). And now we adopt their waste handling laws. Let's have a big hand for adopting their women?

Re:Reverse migration.

[Lord Kano]

Let's have a big hand for adopting their women?

Sure, but as a part of the deal they have to adopt our dentistry.

LK

Re:Reverse migration.

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a trip down to the Southern U.S. and try to count how many people have all their teeth, then tell me that dentistry in the U.S. is something to brag about. Most of them probably don't even brush the one or two they _do_ have left, and that's just the children.

Re:Reverse migration.

[LindseyJ]

Southern rednecks are now the benchmark for the state of dental care in the US?

Re:Reverse migration.

[BSOD DOC]

Dagnabit, I guess dem Yankees brush betir. Dat's why weez eatz grits, no chooin ricwired.

This will have horrible repercussions

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm thinking of the increased emergency room visits by homeless people forced to push shopping carts laden with all my old servers. My back aches in sympathy.

When old Nintendos are thrown away...

[OriginalArlen]

...will Wii become WEE?

Re:When old Nintendos are thrown away...

[drinkypoo]

It already is... it's the smallest console of the next generation.

Re:When old Nintendos are thrown away...

[Anonymous Coward]

Taking the piss, eh?

It's already here

[dave562]

One of my clients is in the waste management industry and they are already dealing with regulations from the State of California that prevents them from accepting televisions, CRTs or flat panel displays. The governator passed legislation that requires special disposal of the afforementioned products and of course, that disposal requires a fee that the consumer must pay.

Re:It's already here

[Rob T Firefly]

The governator passed legislation that requires special disposal of the afforementioned products and of course, that disposal requires a fee that the consumer must pay.

Unless of course you do what everyone else does, and chuck it in some business' Dumpster in the middle of the night, like a ninja janitor.

Re:It's already here

[mph]

The governator passed legislation that requires special disposal of the afforementioned products and of course, that disposal requires a fee that the consumer must pay.

I think you're misinformed. Last weekend, I took two CRTs and two UPSs to the e-Waste collection center at my city's landfill, and there was no fee whatsoever. There may be a fee where you live, but I don't think it's mandated by legislation.

Re:It's already here

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

Sounded pretty mandatory last time I read it...

http://www.boe.ca.gov/sptaxprog/ewaste.htm

Re:It's already here

[mph]

Sounded pretty mandatory last time I read it...

Ah, I see. The law requires a fee to be collected from the consumer at time of purchase. The post I was responding to made it sound like a fee was collected at time of disposal (I still read it that way).

Re:It's already here

[atarione]

hmm... were we live (Del Mar( they will take CRTs / TVs for free at the recycling center.

When we lived in Seattle I had to pay $25 each to get rid of 2 dead TVs.

Re:It's already here

[Anonymous Coward]

We've had E-recycling here in Alberta for a few years now. What happens is you pay the recycling surcharge when you buy a qualifying item, not when you dispose of it. A few people, myself included, offer free pickup of items within the city in exchange for first crack at parting them out. I've picked up almost new computer systems with nothing really major wrong with them other than the previous owner was too lazy/uninformed/whatever to have it fixed. Better than dumpster diving and more legal too. Any system I repair and resell comes with my business card so the buyer can contact me for service or even disposal. There really IS money in old computers.

Oh, and make friends with the guys at the disposal site. They have to sort through everything anyway and can set aside the odd thing. Worse comes to worse, someone gets a few more years use out of whatever it is and then it'll come straight back to be recycled.

Re:It's already here

[hurfy]

At least they appear to do something with them.

I actually called the waste disposal company for instructions.

"throw it in the trash" was offical answer.

I hope they dig thru the trash to recycle, cause the rest gets incinerated here! I don't see how burning electronics does anything good :(

I don't understand why prisons/prisoners aren't used for sorting and recycling, would it be done at a loss if you only pay pennies on the dollar for labor ;) Nowdays they have them picking up litter for nothing and drop at a facility for someone to process at like $15+/hour

Re:It's already here

[HTH NE1]

I have yet to give up any of my old hardware (oldest being my original beige Apple IIe). I even find myself adopting others' old computers.

Now I'm finding I'm running out of shelf space for them, apart from not having enough power to drive them all in the same room. I have four machines I use regularly at the moment: three Macs (G3+1, G4, Xeon), and one PC, with plans to set up the NeXT Cube for use again.

Re:It's already here

[acidrain69]

I don't understand why prisons/prisoners aren't used for sorting and recycling, would it be done at a loss if you only pay pennies on the dollar for labor ;) Nowdays they have them picking up litter for nothing and drop at a facility for someone to process at like $15+/hour

Oh sure, give them access to toxic materials and more sharp things. That might work for some community service or small-time stuff, but not a real prison.

First Sale

[XanC]

If I sell something, it then belongs to you: you are responsible for its maintenance, use, and disposal, unless otherwise specified in a contract.

When the law starts saying I'm responsible for anything happens to an object I've sold in the future, where does it end? How about people being responsible for their own property?

Re:First Sale

[pertelote]

Well, when I have the oil changed in my car, the shop charges me for the oil they put in. I bought it, and I use it. Then, when I return 3000 miles later, they take back the oil, charge me for the replacement new oil, and charge me "Environmental" fees to take back the old oil. They tell me that it is the law. So, what do you think?

Re:First Sale

[XanC]

That's different, I think in a subtle but significant way. The law says that oil must be disposed of properly. That's not at all the same as saying that (say) Penzoil is responsible for all the oil they sell.

Whether you're getting your oil changed at the same garage you bought it or a different one, the law applies to whoever is disposing of oil. If you changed it yourself, then you would have to dispose of it properly.

I'd say this is a much better law than one that makes producers responsible for their product after they've sold them.

Re:First Sale

[merreborn]

For that analogy to hold, they'd have to ship the oil back to penzoil/shell/chevron.

There's nothing wrong with regulating the disposal of hazardous wastes. But what the hell's up with this 'Make the manufacturer responsible' crap?

Re:First Sale

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Fine. But, the only way to naje this work would be to require people to be responsible for their own property. If you don't take your old computer to a proper waste recycling center (and pay the fee for them to take it off your hands), you go to jail.

Surely you would have no objection to this, after all you are responsible, right?

Re:First Sale

[pctainto]

You're looking at this wrong. When you buy the computer, you will be paying for the future disposal of the computer. So, the company is not responsible for disposing of your waste (as in, you can do whatever you want with it and the company won't be at fault if you throw it in a ravine), BUT if you bring the e-waste to them, they are required to dispose of it responsibly -- since you have already paid them to do so.

Currently, hardly anyway disposes of e-waste responsibly because it costs a lot of money to do this.

Re:First Sale

[XanC]

Actually yes, that is a much better law. You'll still have to prove that the environmental consequences are worth it.

Re:First Sale

[JohnDeckard]

It ends when everyone learns to responsibly dispose of hazardous wastes. There should me a mandatory, national recycling program for this but for those who love to privatize everything, I guess this is their solution- send it back to the source.

Re:First Sale

[XanC]

I'm really not seeing a difference. Either way, you're forcing the manufacturer to be responsible for the disposal of an item they sell, which will increase their prices.

Re:First Sale

[XanC]

The problem with the mandatory national recycling program is that it has the potential to start actual, rational debate and cost/benefit analysis, of which the "environmentalists" are deathly afraid.

Re:First Sale

[Anonymous Coward]

So let's all do the Libertarian thing, and come around after midnight and chuck into your back yard. As long as you've fallen asleep holding your gun guarding your yard, and as long as it's free of government interference, it MUST be ok - right?

Re:First Sale

[Anonymous Coward]

you are responsible for its maintenance, use, and disposal, unless otherwise specified in a contract.

The point is that the consumer very often is NOT responsible in the disposal of their toxin-laiden business equipment. What's to preven the consumer from: (1)Using their CRT for target practice, leaving bits of phosphorus and lead coated glass to leach into the soil. (2)Dumping old equipment in the ocean or other body of water because they don't want to pay the fee to properly dispose of the item.

It's nice to think that people are all warm and fuzzy abou the environment, but when it comes to putting in the extra 5 minutes of effort or $10 of expense, forget about it.

Shifting the disposal burden form the consumer to the producer is a wise decision that will force manufacturers to prodcue more envirnmentally-frienfly products in the first placce.

just my $.02

Re:First Sale

[hador_nyc]

"Environmental" fees to take back the old oil. They tell me that it is the law. So, what do you think?

I change my own oil in my car, and have to pay the same fee when I dispose of it. The only thing I save is over having the shop do it is the cost of the labor; well that and having my retired mechanic father teasing me if I ever paid someone else to do it! To me, those environmental fees are the same thing as the fees I pay the city for my sewer connection or my garbage pickup.

It might be a reasonable law to require manufacturers to build their products in such a way that it would be easier to recycle them. Maybe a once a month pickup for these trash items would be fair.

Re:First Sale

[drinkypoo]

Ostensibly the cost to the consumer should be pretty much the same whether the manufacturer is the one being charged, or the consumer is (at the time of purchase) so who cares? If you based the cost on the actual cost of recycling, then the manufacturer will be motivated to make easily-recyclable goods, for which they simply have no motivation today. Making them responsible for their packaging waste would be a good second step. HP sent me like 20 new caps for my trackpoint because the first cap was defective. (It had a different model number, too, so they obviously knew it needed work.) They were inside a ziploc. Inside a bubble wrap bag. Inside a cardboard box with a bunch of syrofoam peanuts. WTF? They could have slipped them into a manila bubble wrap-padded envelope of about 3x5" and mailed it to me. Jackholes.

Re:First Sale

[drinkypoo]

actual, rational debate and cost/benefit analysis

Cost of disposing of a 20" monitor: $30.

Cost of replacing an extinct species: priceless.

For libertarian rhetoric, there's XanC. For everything else, there's reality.

Remember, ecosystems are complicated and we don't really understand all that great a percentage of what really makes them tick. A lost species is just one species... unless it's one that occupies a critical position in the food chain, or it's the one that would have produced a cure for cancer if we hadn't driven it to extinction, etc etc.

Those who would destroy what they do not understand... those are the fools.

Re:First Sale

[Strolls]

That's different, I think in a subtle but significant way. The law says that oil must be disposed of properly... If you changed it yourself, then you would have to dispose of it properly.

It's not really that different - electronics good contain some pretty nasty stuff, such as lead, zinc, cadmium and mercury. This law is just a way of ensuring that waste electronics goods are disposed of properly the same way as waste motor oil.

You can't require the end user to recycle these electronics materials responsibly because there's no way for them to extract the lead from the solder in the product, and if you start charging people when they deposit an old PC at the tip then they'll just take out the components and put a different PCI card in the bottom of their trash bag for a month - it'll end up in the landfill just like it was in the first place. A law to require the end-user to dispose of electronics goods wouldn't work because it's not enforceable, and because electronics goods contain multiple elements in a way that waste motor oil does not.

Another alternative would be to levy a tax on electronic goods and use it to fund recycling or responsible disposal of electronics goods at local refuse sites, but it would be difficult to tax different products commensurate with their environmental impact or the cost of their disposal. That would also provide no incentive to manufacturers to manufacture goods that are less environmentally harmful.

At the end of the day, it's going to cost money if we want to avoid poisoning the environment. In the case of electronics goods, at least, making manufacturers responsible for the disposal of the goods they produce is the fairest way to ensure that the cost is fair, representative and as low as possible (because it's in the manufacturers' interests to be efficient).

Stroller.

Re:First Sale

[regular_gonzalez]

This argument hasn't worked so well for Big Tobacco, Phen-Fen, Vioxx, and thalidomide.

Re:First Sale

[XanC]

Thank you for making my point: the enviro-types have NO interest in rational debate, just unsubstantiated fearmongering.

Re:First Sale

[bunions]

if a law is far so expensive and unweildy to enforce, it's not worth much. I think we can all agree that in an ideal world the law would leave it up to the owner to dispose of it properly. But then, in an ideal world, people would be dispose of their stuff properly anyway.

Re:First Sale

[XanC]

Not the same at all. Those were either defective or fradulently marketed products.

Re:First Sale

[XanC]

Um... okay, so how do you make the end users turn their machines in to Sun instead of putting them at the bottom of their trash bag? Same problem.

And if disposal is regulated, instead of manufacture (as I'm claiming is more fair), the market will place a higher value on less nasty manufacturing. I don't see a difference in the manufacturers' interest.

Re:First Sale

[regular_gonzalez]

I think that's a difficult claim to make against tobacco. Clearly it's not "defective", and hard to argue that it's fraudulently marketed when it has a warning on the package from the Surgeon General stating that it's probably going to kill you.

Re:First Sale

[drinkypoo]

No, you missed the point. That is a rational position. What's irrational is deciding that it's okay to do incalculable environmental damage in the course of economic pursuits. The real issue is that, except where mandated, corporations typically do nothing to protect the environment from their pursuit of money. So, you need regulation like this. The planet doesn't belong to any one person, it must be held in trust without allowing anyone to ruin it.

Another issue: how do you calculate the monetary value of life?

When you can answer that question, then you are ready for a debate - but if you can only answer it in terms of dollar signs, then you will find that people with a conscience are not ready to listen to you.

Economic production is not the measure of a man's worth.

Re:First Sale

[XanC]

Okay, does this non-ideal world include every single person taking his old machine to Dell instead of just throwing it away? Because that's what this proposal still requires.

Re:First Sale

[Strolls]

Either way, you're forcing the manufacturer to be responsible for the disposal of an item they sell, which will increase their prices.

So? If all manufacturers increase their prices then who loses? The consumer? This law ensures that the cost of disposal to the consumer is minimised, because it's in the vendor's interest to do so.

If, instead, one requires the consumer to dispose of the electronics responsibly then in 5 years time consumers will be bitching about the cost and surreptitiously fly-dumping. "It's not fair that I should have to pay $100 to dump this TV!! My neighbour only had to pay $50 to dump his - just because mine contains more cadmium! No fair!!" So making the manufacturer responsible for disposal in the initial legislation not only makes this easier to enforce, but it also saves the future hassle of state-by-state consumer-protection laws requiring manufacturers to publish at the time of purchase the cost of disposal for their products.

Stroller.

Re:First Sale

[XanC]

I think that, in fact, _was_ the argument against tobacco. The feds put those messages on, not the companies. They covered up their own studies that showed it was dangerous, before those messages appeared. My understanding of the argument of those who sued was that they became addicted back in the day when nobody knew it was dangerous _except the tobacco companies_.

Re:First Sale

[XanC]

Okay, so how much are you willing to spend, and how many freedoms are you willing to destroy, to prevent one drop of lead-based solder from spilling on the ground?

The answer is always "more", no matter where things stand. The enviros have lost all credibility.

Re:First Sale

[SydShamino]

So? You are forcing manufacturers to pay the true environmental cost for the product they produce, then allowing the market to sort out the winners and losers.

This is supposed to be a libertarian's wet dream for environmental legislation - don't ban stuff, just make the manufacturers pay its true environmental cost and let them decide what to continue marketing.

Re:First Sale

[drinkypoo]

The answer is always "more", no matter where things stand. The enviros have lost all credibility.

To people like you, they never had credibility. You're just saying that in an attempt to appear rational.

In reality most environmentalists are pretty moderate. There's a lunatic fringe to every group, and they're the ones you hear from the most often, because they talk the loudest and humans are attracted to noisy and/or shiny things.

There are numerous examples of excellent regulation - most of them are here in California, where we tend to lead most of the world's environmental initiatives. It's hard being such trend setters, but since we have some of the most beautiful land in the world, we're highly motivated.

One great example has to do with lacquer paints. Because of their very nature they are high in VOCs and high polluters. So now, in California it is not legal for body shops to spray the stuff in any kind of quantity. If you are going to paint more than a certain number of cars per year, you must have a shop, you must have a booth with filters. But if you just want to paint a car in your backyard, you can still use any kind of paint you want, including lacquer. This is ideal, because it keeps the mass use down, but allows private citizens to do as they please because they simply won't add up to much impact compared to even one shop that uses such materials.

On the other hand, we have some really stupid regulations here, such as those restrictions on automotive equipment. Who cares what modifications you've made to your engine? All that should matter is what comes out of the tailpipe, not what's going on under the hood. You can actually make your vehicle not pass smog by installing equipment that improves efficiency!

But the point is, you still can't put a price tag on life, so you can't possibly put a price tag on the value of (say) an acre of pristine forest land. Sure, you can assign it an arbitrary value based on what someone will pay you for it, but that's not what I'm talking about. Nature's system will perpetuate the existence of such locations, while our system does the opposite. We either clear-cut forests, or we prevent them from burning so long that when they finally do burn, there's a ton of crap piled up and the fire burns longer and hotter than it would naturally, and actually devastates the forest instead of what forest fires normally do - some areas are wiped out, some are virtually untouched, and some are someplace in between.

We all eventually wake up one day and say "holy shit, the planet is fucked!" The problem is that some people, like you, won't sit up and say that until the entire planet is one big desert. Or, maybe the glaciers will start rolling. In any case, it might actually already be too late, but we certainly can't solve our environmental problems by ignoring them.

Re:First Sale

[kabocox]

If I sell something, it then belongs to you: you are responsible for its maintenance, use, and disposal, unless otherwise specified in a contract.

When the law starts saying I'm responsible for anything happens to an object I've sold in the future, where does it end? How about people being responsible for their own property?

I think of this more along the lines of like HP toner cartridges. Every single HP toner cartiridge that we buy has a UPS sticker for return of the old cartiridge in the box of the new one. When we change toner, we just stick the old one in the box stick the label on it and let UPS pick it up when they drop by again. This works great for toner. For anything above $500 we have fixed assest tags and paperwork to fill out. I guess if I could ship off an old Dell in the box of a new Dell after I'm done with the paper work that it could work. We mainly put them into storage until we have about 20-30 really outdated computers and then we auction them off in alot so we have more storage space. I think that it could work for a variety of consumables/easily recycables by the manufacters, but some things like canned food we need to just throw in the the trash. Recycling and personal trash sorting is a religion for some people. We should do recycling and trash sorting on an industrial scale not just a personal one though. Some things like cans and paper it makes abit of sense to do some basic sorting, but do we really want to sort through our kitchen wastes on a personal level? We really should re-think the whole landfill idea. We should have companies that attempt to recycling everything that hits a landfill. It's been mentioned that cars are used for scrap metal and most metal is recycled somewhat. I'd think that over the past 15 years that we've made big improvements in glass, plastic and paper recycling. That's really just a start though. I and others don't want to have to personally sort through most our household wastes. I'd rather some else get the task of removing/reducing landfill wastes to zero. Ideally we should think of a landfill as temp. 1-3 month holding area for trash to be sorted and set off/recycling/used as raw materials for other companies. I'm slightly green minded, but I think when companies like Walmart start to see the economic benefits of near zero waste we would drastically improve our waste handling abilities. Right now it isn't profitable to recycle/sort through our landfills. Maybe that's a good thing in the long term. Maybe in 50-100 years when US labor is as cheap as current Chinese labor it will be profitable for the Chinese to hire US labor to properly sort/recycle all the "wastes" that have pilled up in our current landfills.

Re:First Sale

[Rorschach1]

Damn straight. Exceptions might be in order for things like smoke detectors with radioisotopes (they already take those back), but the only reason electronics are being singled out is that it's trendy right now to go after 'e-waste'. Probably because there's such a psychological impact in throwing away a now-worthless piece of high tech equipment that was state of the art a few years ago. People feel differently about throwing away computers and cell phones than they do about, say, car batteries. It's not how hazardous the materials are that gets people upset, it's the perceived value in the things being thrown away.

And people connect more with the waste they SEE - it's easy to ignore the waste generated in the manufacture of those devices, or in any of thousands of other products that people consume, because that waste is happening in some remote factory (or rather, in many places throughout the supply chain) and they never have to see it.

Then there's the impact on small businesses. Everyone hates the big corporations, but they're perfectly willing to pass all sorts of idiotic legistlation that ensures no company without a gigantic legal department can possibly survive.

Re:First Sale

[smoker2]

Why should you get carte blanche to create something using heavy metals and poisonous gases ?

Passing the cost of recycling in that case to the consumer is ass backwards.

The idea is to make manufacturers more responsible about not only the type of materials used, but also how easy it is to recycle them at the end of their useful life.

In Germany, the manufacturers are responsible for all the packaging that their products come delivered in. Under your rules, they could use massive boxes and fill them with any old shit, chemical waste, and broken glass. Under the German rules, they (the manufacturers) realised it was in their own best interest to use as little packaging as possible. That also happens to be in the environments best interests. Now apply the same principle to the design of refrigerators, TVs and other electrical goods. If the manufacturer knows that come the end, they will have to re-use or responsibly dispose of their old products, they are going to make damn sure that it costs them at little as possible.

The ironic thing is, as much as the manufacturers whine now, when they actually start getting with the program, their costs actually go down !

Re:First Sale

[Strolls]

so how do you make the end users turn their machines in to Sun instead of putting them at the bottom of their trash bag?

Education. When it's not costing them anything the consumer isn't going to mind phoning 1-800-SUN-CYCLE and asking where their local Sun recycling depot is. There'll probably be one in each town. The customer only has incentive to bury the electronics in the trash if doing so is (immediately) cheaper than being responsible.

And if disposal is regulated, instead of manufacture, the market will place a higher value on less nasty manufacturing. I don't see a difference in the manufacturers' interest.

Ummm... no the market won't put any value on less-nasty manufacturing, because the consumer won't be aware of the cost of disposal when they buy the product. Even if one product has a "Nasty1" rating against the "Nasty5" consumer-rating of the other, the consumer may well decide to save $50 now and buy the nastier TV, because he's not concerned about the environment and not forward-thinking enough to consider saving $150 in 5-years time. And when you buy 2nd-hand goods, how do you know how nasty the manufacturer is or how much the cost of disposal might be?

Placing the cost on the manufacturer is the cheapest way to do this, because the manufacturer can make reasonably educated guesses about the cost of disposal. If they make a nastier product then they'll have to charge more for it in order to cover the future cost of disposal and consequently they'll be less competitive against a company that uses lead-free solder.

Stroller.

Re:First Sale

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Um... okay, so how do you make the end users turn their machines in to Sun instead of putting them at the bottom of their trash bag?

Pretty simple. You get a cash deposit back when you turn the machine in. If you don't turn it in, the cash goes towards cleaning up whatever place you dumped the toxic waste.

Re:First Sale

[uradu]

> When the law starts saying I'm responsible for anything happens to an object I've sold in the future, where does it end?

You mean like warranty service? There are already strict regulations on warranty, I'm sure you have no objections to those, right? After all, if the item was delivered to you in working condition, if it breaks three days down the road, that's your own personal responsibility.

Making manufacturers responsible for recycling is a little bit like the Catholic Church and condoms for AIDS prevention: while in an ideal world people would simply abstain and AIDS wouldn't exist (and the Catholic Church would dearly love to be able to will this into reality), in our universe people are weak and their flesh even more so, and a more pragmatic approach is required to stem the spread of AIDS. Similarly, while the onus of disposing of products in an environmentally friendly way could be put on the end user, in reality an awful lot of punishment of transgressors would occur without much benefit to recycling.

There is another aspect to why it makes sense for manufacturers to be involved in this: in many industries in can lead to more optimized recycling and reuse, and also to potentially different and more reusable product ingredients that keep more of the product in the recycling loop, something the manufacturers would be less inclined to care about if they didn't have any recycling responsibilities. This can already be observed in some industries, such as the automobile industry: VW for example opened at least one disassembly plant that methodically deconstructs their vehicles for reuse, and in some instances has led to components that are more reusable.

Re:First Sale

[bunions]

I have no opinion and little knowledge of the new law. I was just pointing out that simply requiring end-users to dispose of things properly isn't much of a law at all, because it'll never be enforced.

Re:First Sale

[JohnnyComeLately]

Yep, you're looking at it from my perspective. I'm a tech support and warranty/repair manager for a large manufacturer of consumer and commercial electronic products. This will be a huge pain in the butt. When we manufacture stuff, we already meet a slew of regulations and other legal hurdles. The warranty itself is an issue. Got a marketing genius who likes to write "Lifetime Warranty"...boy will that haunt you forever. Guy gets hit by lightning, or hooks his DC power supply backwards? You're on the hook everytime...even if you say "Limited"...you'll still have people argue for hours.

Now...add to it regulations. There's already RoHS (reduction of hazardous substances) and other european initiatives. We do already scrap our own materials by sending to a recycler, but it's really more of a volume issue. It's a huge logistical nightmare to plan for handling how all that product will come in. Anyone who has managed a warehouse with thousands of products moving a day/week will grimace at the implications of this legislation (assuming the manufacturer is resposible for disposal). The "hazardous" issue is really moot as no one is really nasty with their products and disposal get's cheaper as volume goes up...no matter WHAT it is. To be honest, I think this will mostly increase the gap between prices for imports and domestic companies. If they don't govern foreign businesses the same way, the DAEWOO unit will be much cheaper than the Domestic brand (which might even be made on the same assembly line in S. Korea) because the domestic has to now cost the product with end-of-life disposal in mind.

Re:First Sale

[Dasher42]

The argument for manufacturers for the recycling or disposal costs is rather better than that. Working individuals don't have a lot of time to figure out recycling options, and there's no incentive. This option provides incentive for the manufacturer to make goods and packaging that produce less waste. The idea is to make the free market take environmental factors into account, something that just isn't readily done on an individual basis.

Re:First Sale

[jabuzz]

But DAWEOO also have to cost the product to the end-of-life disposal if they want to sell it in the US. Hence the brands are all on an equal footing.

The best bet to stop outsorcing to China, is to introduce import taxes on the basis of how much CO2 is produced in the manufacture of the product. If we take Japan as the benchmark, we use about 5 times as much energy here in the EU, for the USA it is about 8 times and for China it is a staggering 11 times. Save the enviroment and stop manufacturing being outsourced. It should pass the WTO as it is non discrimitory. There is nothing stopping China becoming more energy efficient.

Re:First Sale

[paeanblack]

Cost of replacing an extinct species: priceless.

Would you sacrifice a species to extend the average human lifespan by 20 years?

everything has a price if you are haggling with the right currency.

Re:First Sale

[drinkypoo]

No, but I might sacrifice one if I extended my lifespan by 20 years :D

Okay, only if it's mosquitoes.

Re:First Sale

[JohnnyComeLately]

That's why I said..."If"..they govern imports the same way. How does the US Gov ensure a Korean company is properly recycling? We produce our goods over in Hong Kong and ship it stateside cheaper than if we made them here. Our disposal and regulatory compliance is verifyable. Would we make them destroy it where consumed? Meaning, stateside consumption means stateside destruction. Otherwise, once a boat leaves a dock for Korea...you have NO idea what happens or measures to check compliance.

Again, I'm talking strictly logistics which is probably a greater amount of $$ you spend than you think...(meaning the cost passed along to you, the consumer).

Most US companies have production overseas. Overall,the usage of energy is dramatically lower than it's ever been. The Chinese consumption of energy you're thinking of is from more than just the consumer electronics manufacturing industry. We design in the US many of the factories they build over there.

Re:First Sale

[Anonymous Coward]

That's unenforcible. Without an eyewitness, it would cost the state orders of magnitude more to prosecute a criminal case against an illegal computer dumper that it would to just send a sanitation worker out to pick it up and haul it to a recycler. (what we see on "CSI" notwithstanding, criminalists time isn't cheap and identifying fingerprints isn't easy) Nobody pays a littering fine for tossing paper cups and gum wrappers unless they're caught in the act. Given that littering fines are fairly rare and the average person throws away a gum wrapper or a paper cup approximately eleventy hojillion times more often than they throw away a computer it's unlikely that a cop will ever catch a computer dumper in the act.

www.e-waste.com

[Zabu]

If you would like to know more about e-waste check www.e-waste.com

Old News

[obender]

Mandatory Hardware Recycling Coming To US?

But we've had this for years!

Oh wait, it's the United States not us.

A Different Approach

[RumGunner]

Instead of creating huge new regulations, why not simply force manufacturers to stop making machines that contain toxic chemicals? Is it really not possible to make a computer that doesn't contain lead, mercury, or cadmium?

Re:A Different Approach

[zippthorne]

How would that not be new regulation?

Re:A Different Approach

[compro01]

they're working on that (ROHS, Reduction Of Hazardous Substances or something), but it takes time. lead-based solder is being phased out, mercury is still necessary for some things, such as fluorescent tubes (which are used in most LCDs), though those are being replaced by other technologies (LED back-lights, OLED displays, etc.)

nothing is instant.

Re:A Different Approach

[witte]

There already *are* regulations for that.... like WEEE and ROHS.
Did you RTFA ?
These regulations provides exceptions for appliances that need parts that can only be built with toxic material for which there is no functional substitute; but there is a clear incentive to use non-toxic materials whenever possible.

Re:A Different Approach

[Name Anonymous]

Already being done in a major way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROHS

However, even the non-hazardous stuff needs recycling. We already have steel, so why have to mine more raw materials in order to make more steel. And plastic is not hazardous really, but is made from limited resources.

And of course there is landfill space to worry about.

Recycling is not just about hazardous material, it's also about nature resource conservation and management.

Re:A Different Approach

[Rob T Firefly]

These regulations provides exceptions for appliances that need parts that can only be built with toxic material for which there is no functional substitute; but there is a clear incentive to use non-toxic materials whenever possible.

That's a relief. I was worried I'd have to stock the shelves of my 24-hour Poison-Mart with nothing but non-toxic poisons from now on.

Re:A Different Approach

[the eric conspiracy]

Just exactly who decides what is toxic, and how much is meaningful anyway? For example, car batteries dump way more lead into the ecosystem than lead from electrical solder, and the alternatives to lead solder that are in use in Europe are shown to have reliability problems. If your PC has a shorter life due to use on non-lead solder do you really reduce the environmental impact?

Ditto mercury - for example mercury is used in compact flourescent lamps - but using these lamps actually leads to less mercury in the environment because the energy saved reduces coal buring which is the primary source of mercury in the environment. And LEDs are far less efficient than flourescent so their use doesn't reduce electrical consumption as much.

And what about the environmental impact of waste from recycling? It may turn out this is more harmful than the relatively stable computer in the leandfill.

I spent some time studying paper recycling and paper life cycles, and it sure looked to me like for most types of paper the overall impact of just throwing it away was less than trying to recycle paper. Collection costs, transportation, reprocessing (and waste from reprocessing/chemical use in reprocessing) etc. didn't present a very pretty picture.

Upside to paying rent

[nickheart]

Not that this effects apartment dwellers. I see TVs, radio, computers, computer monitors, used engine oil... all sorts of stuff in our apartment complexes dumpster. I can't imagine how Rhos is going to effect the end-users (corps have to follow the law, peeps just hide) unless we the consumer can dispose properly of our parts for less effort than it takes to walk down to the dumpster at 11pm. The only reason i recycle my HP ink cartridges is because they include than handy prepaid envelope to send it back - less effort to just put it in the outgoing mail bin, then take it down to the trash.

Re:Upside to paying rent

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason why companies include that handy pre-paid envelope to "recycle" the ink carts is that they make a lot of money from it. If you took the empties to a local refiller, you'd get a decent amount for them. Even more if you refilled them yourself.

If someone is willing to "help" you dispose of your property, you should stop and think about it for a minute.

Re:Upside to paying rent

[fithmo]

I can't imagine how Rhos is going to effect the end-users (corps have to follow the law, peeps just hide) unless we the consumer can dispose properly of our parts for less effort than it takes to walk down to the dumpster at 11pm.

Oh, I don't know.... environmental morality?

Kind of the same reason I'm willing to wait until I can find a bathroom before I go poop, except on a much larger, longer-term scale.

It certainly takes less effort/time to just poop on the sidewalk, or in a drainage ditch, but we've made strides as a society to condemn this action as unsanitary and uncivilized. We could make similar strides to condemn "e-waste".

Re:Upside to paying rent

[glhturbo]

I can't imagine how Rhos is going to effect the end-users ... unless we the consumer can dispose properly of our parts for less effort than it takes to walk down to the dumpster at 11pm.

Does the world really mean that little to you???

Re:Upside to paying rent

[evilviper]

The only reason i recycle my HP ink cartridges is because they include than handy prepaid envelope to send it back - less effort to just put it in the outgoing mail bin, then take it down to the trash.

This is why bottles and cans have a deposit/redemption value.

People care a lot more about recycling when they get a few bucks for doing it... Even if you're the ultra-lazy type, the guy walking past your dumpster probably isn't, and has an easy way to make $5...

For example, you'll notice that you almost never see old car batteries lying around.

Re:Upside to paying rent

[CoderDog]

It's scarier in the outback.

I live in a mountainous area. You want curb-side 500-2000 foot pitches, we got 'em.

I can drive 35 miles to pay $25.00 to get rid of an old server or CRT, or I can drive it to the landfill a mile away, and they'll take it at $9.00 per pickup truck load. Less than a half bed of "regular consumer trash"? $4.50. "Yup, one Hefty bag of shit? That's what I got!" Or, I could drive it less than a mile away and toss it in a ditch.

The ditch is a micro-brew cheaper. They almost beg you to throw shit in ditchs out here. This would bother me, if the ground didn't already have lethal amounts of lead, cadmium, and arsenic. Mercury, too.

The public water supply already has worryin levels of lead, arsenic, mercury and other heavy metals. Aggressive chimps roam the streets, too. ... What? I'm going to worry about weasliing an old CRT into the dump with the beer cans?

Not a f*cking chance.

Re:Upside to paying rent

[3seas]

I'll probably never make a major computer purchase again, thanks to the apartment complex dumpster and the dwellers that know that if something still has value, set it off to the side of the dumpster. If no one grabs it in a day of two, then maintaince will dump it in.

My last find (off to the side of the dumpster - I don't dive) was two working compaq 600Mhz desktops with 10 gig hard drives and 128 and 256 megs ram (one I put ubuntu on, the other has windows 98 I think). And now my fastest machine--- one 933Mhz intel board based offbrand that has a scsi interface w/18 gig hard-drive and a matrox millinium graphics boad and 512Megs of ram. Loaded with Windows XP. I decided to spend $42 on a sony dvd DL R/W drive for it. And that is about as major as my hardware purchases get now a days.

Auto junk yards?? Computer Junk houses/shops are also a place to check out though I haven't found a need to vist one in years, perhaps they will come back into public view.

On the manufacture side, seems they would have a motive to take back old stuff rather then let the public do what I do.... not make as many major computer purchases any more.

Alot of this older hardware is still plenty good but perhaps just needing a smaller faster os like AROS http://www.aros.org/ to up its performanc.

I did also recently spend $15 on a monitor adaptor so I could check out 5 of the 6 MAC PPCs I've saved from dumpster death. They all work fine, just can't run OSX on them, but Apple makes everything up to OS8.1 freely available via their web site.

OS software is not an issue, as there is plenty of free one.

Also there are organizations that recycle systems so to provide non-profit groups, hanicaped, etc. with free computers. Check your local area if you are going to toss something tha still works. especially dialup modems if you upgrade to dsl or such. As working dialup modems are small and easy to toss but needed by these recyclers.

Of course there is the stuff that is broken and not gutable and who better then such recycle shops and computer junk houses to sort it out. They should receive some credit for this task, perhaps buy either or both, the manufacture and government.

It makes sense

[Trailer Trash]

This is one of the constitutional enumerated powers of the federal government, right?

Re:It makes sense

[MightyYar]

I'm sure that you are familiar with the Commerce Clause, and how it has traditionally given congress the power to do things like this, so I won't bore you with that. I will say that it makes sense to invoke the commerce clause whenever there is a decent one-size-fits-all solution to a problem in the country - especially in economic matters. It simply does not make sense to rely on every state (or God forbid, local) government to enact thousands of laws concerning hazardous waste. It becomes very expensive for any company to navigate all of these laws, and provides little or no benefit to the population. A national waste disposal policy does make sense, as long as it is well thought out and provides exceptions where needed.

Re:It makes sense

[Sloppy]

Yep, it's right there in Article 1 Section 8:

Congref shall have the right to .. regulate the materials used in modern high speed electronic digital computers and to require users of such computers to recycle them when no longer is use...

It was bitterly fought by the anti-federalists, with Patrick Henry once threating to poke Madison in the eye with mercury-coated printed circuit board (which was known to the state of California to be hazardous), but managed to get included.

Re:Console manufacturers?

[mamer-retrogamer]

Okay, so that was a piss-poor joke. I won't let it happen again.

Does This Apply To Foreign Manufacturers?

[cmholm]

The article doesn't make this clear. If it only applies to domestically produced electronics, watch how fast the remainder of non-defence production gets moved overseas.

Re:Does This Apply To Foreign Manufacturers?

[witte]

If foreign manufacturers want to sell it on the EU market, they have to accept the EU rules of business.
(You can substitute "EU" with "US" or "South Africa" or any other nation.)
They could always choose to not do business... but that's unlikely :-)

Re:Does This Apply To Foreign Manufacturers?

[Strolls]

If it only applies to domestically produced electronics, watch how fast the remainder of non-defence production gets moved overseas.

If you can consider this contingency only an hour after the article was posted to Slashdot, then it's probably occurred to legislators, too. In the EU the importers of such products now have to register their interest in the goods and accept the responsibility of disposal before the goods are allowed to clear customs.

IE: Microsoft are not at a cost disadvantage by having to responsibly dispose of good old made-in-the-USA American Xboxes, because Nintendo America have to do the same for Japanese-made Wiis.

Stroller.

Re:Does This Apply To Foreign Manufacturers?

[cmholm]

If you can consider this contingency only an hour after the article was posted to Slashdot, then it's probably occurred to legislators, too.

Probably, but it's not apparent to me that they, in fact, have. Many have been the Acts of Congress that seemed to assume the economic situation mirrored that immediately after WWII, when just about all domestic (or world) demand for manufactured goods was met by US factories.

Do you live on Gilligan's Island?

[krell]

"Instead of creating huge new regulations, why not simply force manufacturers to stop making machines that contain toxic chemicals? Is it really not possible to make a computer that doesn't contain lead, mercury, or cadmium?"

Tell me, Professor, how fast is the connection on your coconut-and-bamboo computer?

Re:Do you live on Gilligan's Island?

[RumGunner]

Still faster than AOL dial-up.

Sony...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony is screwed if this passes.

if it costs money or is a pain in the ass

[Tweekster]

I will do what i do normally, bury it in the regular trash and be done with it.

Re:if it costs money or is a pain in the ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you are an asshole.

Re:if it costs money or is a pain in the ass

[BSOD DOC]

Amen.

Re:if it costs money or is a pain in the ass

[bcattwoo]

No doubt it will cost you money, but you will have to pay it up front when you buy the hardware.

Re:if it costs money or is a pain in the ass

[Strolls]

This is exactly why this is excellent legislation.

Stroller.

Re:if it costs money or is a pain in the ass

[R3d M3rcury]

Actually, I do this too. But I get to do it without a guilty conscience.

The people who collect my trash haul it off to a big warehouse where my trash gets picked through. Anything that is recyclable is picked out and recycled by the trash company.

Of course, this also means I had to buy a shredder to make sure people picking through my trash don't get old credit card statements, etc. But I end up with two trash cans in the house--"Confidential" and "Other." Not the maze that the environmentalists would have me run through--clear bottles, colored bottles, cans, etc.

Re:if it costs money or is a pain in the ass

[crabpeople]

"The people who collect my trash haul it off to a big warehouse where my trash gets picked through."

Sure if that works for you, but not everyone wants to fake being a child molester just so the fbi will dispose of their batteries.

Re:if it costs money or is a pain in the ass

[R3d M3rcury]

[...] not everyone wants to fake being a child molester just so the fbi will dispose of their batteries.

Well, there are other benefits, too. The neighborhood parents make sure their kids stay the hell off my lawn! I can back my car out of the driveway without having to worry about running over some rugrat on a tricycle, though the FBI chase car sometimes gets in my way. Also, I get to eat all the hallowe'en candy I buy. :^)

Seriously, though, this is part of the trash service where I live. I actually live relatively close to where they take all the trash (sometimes uncomfortably close when the weather is warm, the breeze is right, and one of they conveyor belts is broken) and a few of my neighbors work at the place. I know they sort out glass, plastic, aluminum, and batteries.

Look at the upside...

[Cctoide]

For some reason I'm starting to picture companies giving employees old hardware to get rid of it.

Beowulf cluster, here I come!

Mfrs. "taking back their stuff?"

[MollyB]

I don't know who thinks up these kinds of ideas--idealists, I suppose. But practically speaking, many hardware manufacturers no longer exist. This is likely to corelate highly with the percentage of obsolete equipment. Orphaned into a bureaucratic cul-de-sac...

Guaranteed $25.00 to Dell?

[Ruvim]

Does it mean that I will now be REQUIRED to pay a $25.00 recycling fee whenever I purchase a new PC from Dell?

Re:Guaranteed $25.00 to Dell?

[B_un1t]

why are you buying from Dell??

Re:Guaranteed $25.00 to Dell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Weird. The option was always free when I went through configurations. It only cost money when its for like 8 PCs.

Re:Guaranteed $25.00 to Dell?

[AusIV]

I think its more likely this means dell won't get to charge that $25 recycling fee anymore. And nobody can make you recycle an old computer just because you buy a new one. They might make you recycle it to throw it away, but every time I've gotten a new computer for the past 13 years (I think that's when I got my second computer), I either gave/sold my old computer to someone who had something even older than the system I was getting rid of, or kept it myself for whatever use I can think to put it to.

Ramifications of manufacturing must be controlled

[openright]

The waste that consumer items must produce must be controlled. Placing that burdon on the consumer is not realistic and the burdon will fall back to the government.

If consumer items are costing the government money to clean up, then the government should logically and fairly demand that the manufacturer pay for clean up or change correct the product.

Example:
(Cause): I start making and selling disposible Widget-MP3 players, that contain plastic, lead, are preprogrammed with play only music and designed to stop functioning after six weeks.
I sell them for $2 each, and they are a huge success.
(Effect): People are throwing them in the trash, the trash complains that you cannot throw them in the trash. People litter them or just leave them places after they expire. The government has to step in and clean up the mess.

For me to claim that it's not my problem, and consumers are responsible for the waste is not logical. The consumer did not create this disposible item.

Every manufactured can have an affect.
For another example, Coke decides to change from recycled glass bottles to plastic, then the long effect is that the ditches in poor countries (mexico) fill up with the bottles.

City of Minneapolis (MN, USA) already recycles

[kcbnac]

Electronics

This item collected on recycling week only. Limit of two (2) large items per recycling week. Place next to the garbage cart on the recycling day. Please post a sign or write on the item "Please Take". Item will be picked up on next business day after recycling day.

http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/solid-waste/what-t o-do-E.asp#P29_687

We keep a pile by one door (along with all our other recycling) of things pre-tagged with "Please Take" - recycling week comes, I haul two out along with everything else before I leave for work in the morning.

Re:Console manufacturers?

[Anonymous Coward]

*crickets*

... and beer companies too!

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Agreed. If you have to eat the waste, you'll think a bit more about what you put into a product. Sure this adds a bit of cost, but if a product is designed for recycling then it will cost less to recycle. The sooner the producers get the bill, the sooner they'll think more about it.

What makes the e-industry e-worse is that there is no practical use for many junked items. Sure, you can reuse the aluminium etc, but there's so little for the amount of work involved in stripping it. Car bodies can be recycled quite easily because there's lots of metal for relatively little effort.

Positive incentives work better

[Harmonious Botch]

Why charge a person for doing the right thing? Then, as parent notes, they have an incentive to dump on someone else.

Pay them to do the right thing.

A good model is the recycling of aluminum cans here in California. The manufacturer pays a small tax when selling in the state, and then most or all of that tax is retuned to the person who brings it to a recycling center. I've seen people who apparently make a living just recycling other people's trash.

Re:Positive incentives work better

[jandrese]

Up in Calgary when I lived there the Boy Scouts would get their yearly operating funds by collecting everyones cans and bringing them to the recycling center for the deposit. People really liked it because the city didn't have regular recycling pickup and most people don't like making the special trip out to the recycling center. They just had to leave their cans out on the front stoop in a bag on a particular Saturday and the scouts would drive around and pick them up. I thought it was a fantastic fundraiser becaues everybody won. The people got a service, the scouts got some funds, and the environment was saved just a bit more.

Re:Positive incentives work better

[drinkypoo]

A good model is the recycling of aluminum cans here in California. The manufacturer pays a small tax when selling in the state

Uh, the consumer pays the California Redemption Value of 2.5 cents per can at the time of purchase.

There are two reasonable models for recycling electronics. This is one of them; charge them the actual cost of disposal plus some additional money, and when you take them back you give them back the deposit minus the disposal fee. Alternatively, you charge the manufacturer (who passes the cost on to the customer) and then the customer has no reason to pitch their monitor into a ravine. They've already paid the fee.

Re:Positive incentives work better

[bigpat]

Pay them to do the right thing.

I could support a "deposit" like they have on cans and bottles here in the Northeast. Unfortunately, with the growth of the bottled beverage market and inflation it seems that $.05 per bottle isn't quite enough anymore to keep all of our streets and parks clean. But those $10-20 fees on tv monitor disposal are causing a lot of monitors to get left by the side of the road or in public parks here in Massachusetts. Any disposal fees at all cause litter and environmental problems, but the higher ones cause even more problems.

Re:Positive incentives work better

[Firehed]

Is that unusual where you live? Around here, it's SOP for the Scouts and school fundraisers and whatnot. Of course, *we* had to knock on doors, but that's only because people around here actually recycle their recyclables to get their deposit back (they're just happy to give up a few bucks for the sake of convenience, especially when the money goes towards a deemed worthwhile cause). Heck, back when I was about six or seven, I used to take a couple bagfuls of cans to the corner store that accepted them and then bought a couple candy bars. Obviously good for me, and my mom was happy to not need to do it herself (though she's hardly the candy afficianado that most six-year-olds are).

Re:Positive incentives work better

[Rob T Firefly]

Good idea. But despite my cheap joke above, if it's really that much of a "right thing" you generally don't even need to pay people to do it. Just make it simple.

While aluminum cans are ubiquitous enough to warrant small-scale bribery (anyone who remembers when that started can probably tell you how ridiculously huge a portion of the public litter was drink cans and bottles beforehand,) other recycling programs have generally worked well without charging the public. In many areas of the US including mine, people separate recyclables from their normal trash. It took a while to catch on, but once the standard suburban "butbutbut my routines!" grumbling died down, it became standard procedure, and where I live we even get the recycling bins from the town at no charge. It's now been something like 15-20 years, and nobody even takes notice of it anymore, we just do it.

If there were, say, one day a month set aside for the garbage trucks to collect old electronics, I'm sure people would appreciate it. I know I would, and so would the owners of my local Dumpsters.

Re:Positive incentives work better

[dave562]

In many areas of the US including mine, people separate recyclables from their normal trash. It took a while to catch on, but once the standard suburban "butbutbut my routines!" grumbling died down, it became standard procedure, and where I live we even get the recycling bins from the town at no charge. It's now been something like 15-20 years, and nobody even takes notice of it anymore, we just do it.

Going back to the example of my client, they seperate the recyclables from the waste stream. The state mandates that cities meet certain recycleable guidelines, so my client steps in and helps them make those guidelines. Most "trash" these days is recycled in some way or another. Whether it's cans, bottles and paper, or green waste.

Re:Positive incentives work better

[CrabbMan]

Uh, the consumer pays the California Redemption Value of 2.5 cents per can at the time of purchase. In practice, I get charged a full nickel for each can; and I think this has been the case in all the CA counties I have lived in. And further, I bought a TV last year (cheap CRT) and paid an additional $10 to the $90 cost for a pre-recycling fee. I swear to god I'm going to punch somebody if I have to pay that fee for a second time when the TV breaks next year.

Re:Positive incentives work better

[jandrese]

Where I live now it's not viable because the town picks up the recycling with the garbage. Plus, I don't live in a state with a deposit so it's basically impossible to make money off of recycling.

Maybe it's not a mistake? ;)

[Kadin2048]

Humm, an article about "e-waste" filed under Enlightenment.

Well, that's not exactly complimentary. Guess kdawson really likes Metacity.

CRT's

[Ponga]

I think the biggest thing in the coming years (if not already) will be what to do with CRT monitors that are being replaced with LCD and other tech. Seems only this past week I've had several people ask me if want some 17" CRT's cuz they just upgraded to flat panals.

Re:CRT's

[SlashMaster]

Good observation!

The general public should be informed about this new economic market segment.

A local control automation panel manufacturer here in Cedar Falls, IA who works with regional recycling centers nationwide described to me that many of the systems have a conveyor that in the case of computer monitors feeds the monitors into a 'crusher' which breaks it into small pieces.

These pieces are then mechanically and automatically separated into plastic, glass, and electronics bins each of which are then sold. The state of California has a good general information website about recycling plastic here .

The Control Panel Manufacturer also described how recycling centers alternatively have people take the plastic off first before it gets fed into the conveyor depending on their respective equipment and capabilities.

Regarding the electronics:
With gold ~$600/ounce, silver at ~$13.00/ounce, and copper at ~3.40/pound it's more economical to recycle these metals than to mine new.

Some additional recycled plastics prices:
12-27 cents per pound on the west coast.
Market prices for recycled plastic are currently $200 to $1000/ton from local recycling centers based on recent surveys in selected regions...

What about ....

[gstoddart]

What about smaller computer shops? Surely to god a three person shop which assembles the computers themselves won't be able to implement a recycling program.

At which point, are they exempt due to some threshold? Or does this get extended to the component manufacturers?

It's good in principal, but there could be quite a few which fall through the cracks. (Not that we should abandon an attempt to prevent most of the computers from going into the landfill because a few smaller players won't be able to do it.)

Cheers

Re:What about ....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in a four person shop and we give all of our old crap to a recyling company that takes it all for free. They have a few contracts with larger businesses to haul away various technology junk from computers to floresent lights AND they make money selling the scrap.

Waste Management...

[Anonymous Coward]

..right..im in "waste management" too

What about frankinmachine

[thorkyl]

I have a machine with a Proliant Main and back plane
It has IBM SCSII Hard Drives
Its RAM is from who knows where
Its Nic's... 3-COM, Intel, Winbond
It's Fans... Who knows

Who do I send it back to?
Or do I have to break it into its pieces and send it all back where it came from.

What If I want to keep it forever?
I still have my Northstar (and yes it still works)
I have 4 meg sims (actually sold 3 today to a client for the printer)

Re:What about frankinmachine

[Anonymous Coward]

proliant->compaq->hp:

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/globalcitizenship/environ ment/recycle/index.html

Re:What about frankinmachine

[theskipper]

If the concern is simply how to dispose of it, see if your city has an electronics recycling program. Don't know where it goes from there so there may be unseen environmental consequences.

Btw, when I brought a bunch of monitors in a while ago I saw an old HP plotter in the corner and "tipped" the guy $20 to let me take it. Ended up saving $300 by using parts out of that one to fix my current plotter.

Re:What about frankinmachine

[hellopolly]

It's not so difficult. Over here in the Netherlands, all this means for me as a consumer is that my old TV, computer or white goods will be accepted by whatever shop I'm buying my new stuff. I payed in advance for the cost for good recycling.

Recycled bullets

[Kadin2048]

You joke, but much of the lead in bullets used recreationally is sold as scrap and reused.

I used to clean out the bullet trap in the back of the range I used to go to (and without any sort of safety gear -- OSHA would have a field day with that) and it got sold to a local guy who used to melt and cast new bullets out of it. You just put it in a crucible and heat it, and most of the other metals (mostly copper, from jacketed bullets) either floats or sinks, and you get your lead back. There are all sorts of "recipes" on how much virgin lead/antimony/rose-petals/etc. you need to add back in, to get good quality bullet casting material.

Not sure what the industry is like now, but you used to be able to go to the backs of most of the shooting rags (e.g. Shotgun News) and find people selling blocks of recycled lead that they had obtained by melting down stuff like this. Wheel weights were also a source of raw material, although I've heard that they're considered very "dirty."

The brass cartridge cases have an even more direct recycling path -- most of them (centerfire ones, anyway) are just reused. Leave a bag of spent .45 ACP brass around a range and see how long it lasts -- not long.

The point here is that stuff gets recycled without any deposits or laws, because it's economically advantageous to do so. Reusing bullet lead and brass cartridge cases makes for cheaper ammunition than buying new stuff, and that means that the scrap has a fairly high residual value. It also helps that the remanufacturing necessary to make usable product out of either is fairly simple and low-tech (you can do both in your basement or garage).

Re:Recycled bullets

[Harmonious Botch]

Bucky Fuller said: "Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value."

Re:Recycled bullets

[Dun Malg]

Bucky Fuller said: "Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value."

Bucky Fuller was being a smartass at the expense of being truthful. We don't let the resources in pollution go unrecovered out of ignorance of their value. They go unrecovered because the cost of recovery exceeds their value.

I hope it doesn't become mandatory...

[Anonymous Coward]

Where will I get my extra computers? :-(

Re:Ramifications of manufacturing must be controll

[drinkypoo]

For another example, Coke decides to change from recycled glass bottles to plastic, then the long effect is that the ditches in poor countries (mexico) fill up with the bottles.

First of all, that's refillable glass bottles, and last I checked they still used them in Mexico, but it's been a while since I was there. A LONG while actually; it was 3,000 messican pesos to the dollar when I went. But the point is that a soda was, IIRC, 300 pesos with a 600 peso bottle deposit.

Second, assuming they did switch to plastic down there, the reason isn't that they switched to plastic. It's that the government didn't keep up with the times and institute a fat redemption value.

Great...

[mtrupe]

So what do we think is going to happen here? Do we think businesses will just eat the cost of having to recycle all this old crap?

Of course not.

Hardware prices will simply increase for consumers. Fun.

Sedentary lifestyle

[joeslugg]

Every day I sit and read Slashdot, my E-waist is growing and growing...

Oh, E- waste . That's different.
I use the bathroom for that.

Outsourcing the trash

[Anonymous Coward]

If this even gets the green light, you'll be starting to see huge loads of equipment being shipped out to africa, china, canada or other third world country and being written off as donations, while joe user will get taxed on yet another thing.

Ok, ok, canada is not a third world country. But they wouldn't refuse out of politeness.

Re:Ramifications of manufacturing must be controll

[Hoi Polloi]

I was down near Puebla about 4 years ago and they still refilled old glass soda bottles (washed I assume). You could tell because they were all scuffed and scratched up.

Even with the prices being higher than when you went there it was still a bargin being there compared to the US.

Unless it is a Mac,

[Slithe]

then it would be iWaste.

"We pretty much use them until we burn them up"

[CagedBear]

From the article: "We pretty much use them until we burn them up"

I don't see how this helps anything? It reduces the amount of waste, but increases power usage and cooling costs because you need many old servers to do the same amount of work as one new server. What am I missing here?

Speaking of Icons

[SydShamino]

Can the US pretty pretty pretty please use the WEEE logo to indicate that the product can be returned for recycling? Please?

I'm a hardware designer. Squeezing space on a product for yet another logo (alongside RoHS, WEEE, CE, C-Tick, Symbol 14, and sometimes MIC, FCC) will be really, really hard; for most of our products we have to put these on the PCB silkscreen around and between components.

The WEEE symbol is a trashcan with an 'X' over it. Surely that'll work in the US, too?
http://www.linak.com/corporate/imagelibrary/news/W EEE-symbol.gif

Re:Speaking of Icons

[Orange Crush]

I always wondered what that meant! My cell phone charger has one on it and I always just figured it meant: "Please don't throw away your charger, or you can't charge your phone anymore."

Re:Speaking of Icons

[Sloppy]

Squeezing space on a product for yet another logo .. will be really, really hard

What you need is a meta-logo which implies the applicability of 10 other logos.

Of course, it will be several years before end-users learn what the meta-logo means, so for a transition period of 10 years I recommend you put the new metalogo on it, and all the old logos, and a '=' sign in between.

Re:Speaking of Icons

[Odin_Tiger]

Actually, that trash can looks like the kind that are usually used for recycling in my area (and that's about the -only- place they're used).

Re:Speaking of Icons

[springbox]

I've been seeing more of these recently: Trash cans floating over what appears to be a flat surface with a X through the trash can. Talk about a confusing icon. I just assumed that it meant "floating trash cans are not allowed" or that the hardware should be kept away from floating trash cans at all times.

Re:Speaking of Icons

[cayenne8]

I never looked for or saw any kind of icon.

I just toss whatever into the trash, and they haul it away....well, unless people come by and night and take it out of the trash. I notice most computers I throw out are gone long before the trashmen make it to my curb.

What manufacturer? Which manufacturer?

[idontgno]

I don't buy PCs off the shelf. So, if I decide to chuck an obsolete machine, who do I send it back to? I bought the parts from half a dozen manufacturers. Am I supposed to disassemble the thing and scatter the parts to the far corners of the world like the limbs of a traitor? Hell, I have no idea who manufactured the case, and they're in Taiwan or India or something. How do I solve this dilemma, Batman?

Re:What manufacturer? Which manufacturer?

[Sloppy]

How do I solve this dilemma, Batman?

You should have thought of that before you built a computer instead of buying one from a campaign-contributing corporation, <insinuating slurr>hacker.</insinuating slurr>

Re:What manufacturer? Which manufacturer?

[RexRhino]

You pay to have the recycling done.

licensed, not purchased?

[Aranel Alasse]

Heh. I can see this going terribly wrong, if we're forced to return the hardware to wherever we bought it.

I agree that this hardware is licensed, not purchased.
X_________________ (sign here)

*oh wait! I mean, "license it", rather than buy it...

Transport and Pick-Up

[Bones3D_mac]

I'd personally love to see something like this go into effect, so long as the "recycling" doesn't involve shipping the toxic parts to 3rd world countries. However, there are a lot of us here in the US that can't really "lift" some of the older generation hardware (such as CRT displays). So why not impliment a system where you can schedule a pick-up of old hardware to be taken to one of these recycling facilities? (Maybe even for a small fee to be paid at the time of pick-up.)

If people had the option to have their useless electronic hardware hauled away instead of trying to transport it all themselves, I think hardware recycling could really take off here in the U.S. It's really just a matter of making it accessible to those of us who don't have the physical strength to move such items, or simply making it more appealing to the lazier parts of the population.

Re:Transport and Pick-Up

[Anonymous Coward]

If they can't carry the object to their car how are they carrying it outside and placing it into the garbage?

And Ford should pay my toll bridge fares

[retroworks]

And we should send our sewage back to the supermarkets. And barbers should make us take our clippings home with us. What the proposed "solution" neglects to do is show any value added, vs. the current system (in place for tires, auto batteries, fridges, mattresses) which is the consumer pays a $5 recycling fee at the end of life. California's "solution" costs 68 cents per pound, about 3 times the fees charged directly to residents.

Re:And Ford should pay my toll bridge fares

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's hard to convince people to pay $5 and recycle rather than simply toss it in the garbage?

Too late to matter

[Isaac-1]

Even if there were not issues about cost shifting, and excess paperwork/processing overhead. When it comes to home electronics, there is one big arguement against this. Namely they keep getting smaller and lighter all on their own, go compare that 20 year old 40+ pound IBM AT against a modern Dell in its case weighing in around 10-15 pounds most of which is the cheap sheet metal case. Or that 10 year old 20 inch CRT weighing in at a hefty 100 pounds vs. the 20 inch LCD flat panel you are using that likely weighs in around 15-20 pounds with half the weight being a counter weight in the base to keep it upright. Combine this with the ever increasing effective service life and you will find that we are talking about an ever decreasing volume of waste, with an ever decreasing initial purchase price.

Re:Too late to matter

[Anonymous Coward]

go compare that 20 year old 40+ pound IBM AT against a modern Dell in its case weighing in around 10-15 pounds most of which is the cheap sheet metal case

You forgot to include in your comparison the number of 20-year old IBM ATs vs. the number of modern Dells. I'd bet there are probably at least 3 times as many Dells around to make up for the lower unit weight.

Key qoute

[plopez]

If we were having to deal with local regulations and local disposition facilities in every state, to deal with every state's nuanced costs, that would clearly involve cost to our basic equipment.'

Translation: it's easier and cheaper to bribe, er... ummmm... I mean give campaing contributions and junkets to a few key congressmen than it is to bribe every city, state, county, solid waste district or other such official across the country. Look for lobbyists to converge trying to get loop holes for certain grops or companies....

3333

[Anonymous Coward]

Because kDawson loves you. Besides how many other women editors are there?

Let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have to recycle your next-generation Nintendo console in Europe, you are WEEE'ing your Wii?

Typical Slashdot "logic".

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't we place the same requirements on the appliance and automotive industries?

Why stop there? Let's just let the consumer "own" the IP we buy, but merely "license" the disc it comes on. All the utility, none of the responsibility.

I saw this coming...

[Anonymous Coward]

They had to wait on pushing recycling for computers until they saw an angle in it to attack Linux, open source, and free file sharing. "So you got Debian running on it and figured out how to watch a DVD movie on it, huh? Well, we have to confiscate your computer now, it's MANDATORY that it be recycled."

"their own stuff"

[Anonymous Coward]

hardware manufacturers responsible for taking back their own stuff

Their own stuff? I thought when I bought it, I own it -- and "ownership" means the right of use and disposal.

Apparently, if Slashdot has its way, we will "own" the content we buy, but only "license" the physical devices and media it comes on.

How pretzellian can this "thinking" get?

This is bad news...

[Anonymous Coward]

I manage the manufacturing floor for a small electronics company. We have been dealing with the European WEEE directive for some time now, and it is fairly innocuous. In fact, the only change we needed to make was to put a sticker of a garbage can with an X over it on the product. It was the responsibility of the distributor to handle the WEEE stuff.

Now, while the WEEE is innocuous, it was just the tip of the iceburg. What followed it is not. If you haven't heard about RoHS, then look it up on Wikipedia. It mandates that we cannot use a number of chemicals including lead and cadmium. Ok, you're thinking to yourself, this is a good thing, right? Well my friend, you are sadly mistaken. Cadmium is the only metal that is effective in plating relay contacts. If you use any other metal, the contacts will fuse in a few cycles, rendering the relay unusable, as well as the equipment using it. Now what about lead? For those of you not "in the know", for the past 80 years or so, all electrical connections have been made with a solder made from 60% tin, and 40% lead. This solder is used because it is a great conductor, has a low melting point, is stable, and is ductile. The replacement for leaded solder is also a good conductor, has a very high melting point, is prone to spontaneous growths of "tin whiskers", and is quite brittle. Let's take each thing one-at-a-time.
1. Good conductivity. This is absolutely necessary when forming an electrical connection. In order to make a good connection, the surfaces to be soldered need to be free of contaminates, and the joint must be shielded from oxygen while the joint is formed. This is what flux is used for. Because of the higher melting temperature of lead-free solder, the flux we use must be much stronger. This has caused 2 lost-time health concerns at my company alone.
2. Melting point. When you have a high melting point for the solder, all of the components on the PCB are subjected to much higher temperatures during the flow-soldering process. About 400c. This adds great stress to the components, and negatively effects their lifespan. Also, the environmental impact of running thousands of flow ovens, and millions of irons at double the temperature cannot be overlooked.
3. Stability in the compound is obviously necessary. The lead-free options are prone to formation of tin crystals that take the form of a filament, or "whisker". These whiskers can grow out, and make contact with an adjacent component, trace, or lead, thereby creating a short circuit. This has already caused many reliability concerns, and was implicated in a nuclear reactor mishap at a civilian reactor.
4. Having a ductile nature is also important. As heat causes components to expand, and operation creates vibration, you need to have a joint that can flex a little bit. Lead free solders are not ductile, and as a result, it is estimated that you will only get about a 5 year life out of any product made with the lead-free solder.

Now for the ecological impact. The EPA did a large study on the impact of switching to lead-free solders. It was determined that there would be a huge negative impact by switching. For example, the non-renewable resource (NNR) load on making a pound of lead-free solder is about 400 pounds greater than when making a pound of leaded solder.

So, as you're sitting at your computer somewhere in the US, you're thinking "I'm glad I don't need to use the unleaded stuff..." well, you're wrong. Most of the new electronic gizmos you are buying are made from lead-free solder. It is simply impractical to run dual lines for manufacturing. So this bit of legislation that the EU enacted in isolation is going to screw you big time.

Welcome to the future of electronics.

yes, reusable, not recycled

[openright]

yes, I did mean to say reusable glass bottles, not recyled glass. That was the point. Recycle usually usually implies a less efficient process to use the waste in some lesser form.

Yes, the glass bottles are valuable as they can immediately be re-used. But plastic bottles are not practically re-used (though you may see corncob corks in some questionably reused plastic bottle drinks).

Mostly the plastic bottles end up in the ditch without a government rich enough to pay for cleanup, garbage or enforcement.

Re:yes, reusable, not recycled

[drinkypoo]

If they simply levied a high deposit on the bottles in the first place, as coca-cola did with their glass bottles, then people would be returning them. They weren't returning them because they were glass, they were returning them because they were worth money. By the same token, we ought to quadruple (or multiply by even a larger factor) the redemption value for recyclables in the US. It would stop a lot more people from throwing away their recyclables. I realize it's a per-state thing, but my statement stands.

Just like tires

[nurb432]

You are forced to recyle them, and pay a fee for the 'privilege'. Even if you want to use the old tire as a flower pot you still pay the fee.

Yet another tax scam is all this is.

Does that mean we will start seeing old PC's dumped on the side of the road ?

Forced Trade-ins next?

[nurb432]

Will they be forcing you to trade in your old PC before you can get a new one? That way they can insure you have the latest and greatest embedded DRM and have no way to bypass it.

Let them try to take my AtariST away !

We have already BEEN there

[WebCowboy]

Why don't we place the same requirements on the appliance and automotive industries?

Wehere I live, we ALREADY have mandatory recycling for refrigerators and freezers (by law they MUST be taken to an approved disposal facility--and all of those facilities recover the refrigerant and have the rest of the appliance recycled). As for other large appliances, recycling is not mandatory but they are virtually all recycled at the end of their useful lives already so it makes no sense to waste time legislating it.

Automotive industry recycling is the same here as well--used oil must be disposed of at apporved facilities by law, and those facilities almost universally recycle this oil. When we purchase new tires here we have to pay a "recycling fee" similar to paying a deposit on softdrink containers (though the consumer never gets that fee back....hmmm). There are few laws mandating automotive recycling however it is almost universally practised already. When you go to a parts store you always get credit for "core exchange" when you turn in the old/broken part. Nearly 100 percent of some parts are now recycled (starters, alternators, water pumps and so on).

So I don't know what box you've been hiding in but the appliance and automotive industries (ESPECIALLY the latter) are pioneers in recycling. In fact automobiles are one of (if not the most) extensively recycled items in the world. There is not only an automotive industry, but a very large AUTOMOTIVE RECYCLING industry. And guess what? They have very good lobbyists too! In fact, the automotive recycling lobbyists have managed to successfully out-lobby the automobile manufacturers lobbyists on a few occasions! I recall a case where one of the big 3 carmakers (can't remember if it was Ford, GM or Chrysler) was lobbying for regulations that would make it tougher to recycle or provide aftermarket parts (kinda like Lexmark trying to shut down ink cartridge refillers). Of course, this would hurt auto wreckers and aftermarket parts makers so their lobbyists fought back. The recyclers one that battle.

Do they do it for me? and it's free (tax-paid)?

[Tatsh]

If so, I'm all for it.

Expand this beyond computing equipment...

[mnemotronic]

This makes sense. The gov't itself sets a fine example - the Dept of Treasure takes back old, worn-out currency (money) and disposes of it. Come to think of it, the entire US government is dedicated to disposing of money....
In any case, let's see if our legislators have the yarbles to require that these rules also apply to:

• Nuclear reactor fuel
• Landmines
• Depleted uranium ordnance
• Automobiles
• Tom Cruise
• Prophylactics
• Beer

Probably not. Legislative gonads are reserved for the pages...

All that waste...

[Mantrid42]

Does anyone know if us local nerds can contact these companies and their recycling centers, and offer to take that old hardware off their hands? I mean, even if there was a small fee, thats a whole lot of goodies going to waste.

Don't recycle your cartridges!

[mosb1000]

"the reason why companies include that handy pre-paid envelope to "recycle" the ink carts is that they make a lot of money from it."

No they don't. Strictly speaking, recycling the cartridges costs them money. So why do they pay to take them back, and more importantly why are other people willing to give you money for the cartridges? Because HP (or whoever else) has patented the cartridge's print heads, or pin configuration's and they are the only ones legally allowed to manufacture them. But, other people can take the used cartridges and "re-manufacture" them. HP (and all other printer manufactures, for that matter) sell the cartridges at a huge profit as a way to make money on their zero-margin printers. Did you ever think it was strange that it costs almost as much to refill a printer as is does to buy it? That's no coincidence, they price the cartridges just enough lower than the printers that you will chose to refill it rather than buy a new one. The irony is that it is probably more harmful to the environment when a company remanufactures a cartridge, than it be would be if they just made a new one (it's also 3-4 times as expensive as making a new cartridge, and produces a vastly inferior product). Of course, remanufacturing cartridges is more profitable than manufacturing them because remanufactures don't have to develop, sell, and service printers.

Here's the best advice for the environmentally aware, don't buy remanufactured cartridges. They are bad for the environment (as stated above) and they are much lower quality (it's not worth the savings if you have to deal with bringing back defective cartridges, or live with streaking or other problems you will encounter). Don't send your cartridge back to them. Just throw it away and buy a new one, there's nothing in it bad for the environment, but giving it back to them hurts the environment. Definitely don't give it to a re-manufacturer, that is even worse for the environment.

When you're buying a printer, look at the cost per page and the print quality (and the print speed in laser printers). The ticket price, the cartridge price, and the print speed (for ink-jets) are made up numbers and shouldn't factor into your decision. When they realize that people are looking at cost per page, they will start selling low volume printers that are more expensive out the door, but have lower cost per page. Maybe then we can put this horrible cartridge recycling thing behind us.

I'm sure you can soak the 5c charge

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you use a LOT of flowerpots...

Re:I'm sure you can soak the 5c charge

[nurb432]

Its not 5 cents here.

Its more like 10 bucks per tire. Sure not a *lot*, its just the principle of it. And over a life time, it does add up.

Hazardous waste will increase if dumping not free

[Anonymous Coward]

As one who has been in the solid waste management industry for years, I must tell you that effective
control of any hazardous waste through a fee system is a costly fantasy. The generators of much such
waste often are operating on shoestring budgets or are in the sole business of unlawful disposal by
any means necessary. Pursuing them usually results in corporate bankruptcy. Very seldom is the 'corporate veil' pierced to legally hold responsible any individuals. The computer industry is well populated with discount operators buying rebranded foreign goods usually made in China. How may divisions of marines will be sent to die in
China to fail to force them to take these goods back. Example: one such outfit was 'DTK'. They were from
Taiwan but the parts were made in the PRC. They made no name clones and only rarely had their name on the front of the computers they sold. Whare are they now. Where is Hayes, at least an American manufacturer of modems over twenty years ago. Catching these manufacturers and holding them to pick up this stuff will be like trying to arrest smoke! We cannot even catch polluters in other industries. They employ well heeled mouthpieces to tie up prosecution for years while they illegally dump thousands of tons of waste in public places with no accountability at all. When finally tried, there is often only an empty shell, an abandoned office littered with trash, or empty factories reeking in the ground with pollution no one or no local government can afford to remove. Local governments 'deal' with the problem like they do in Michigan. Michigan makes buyers of land correct all the environmental problems thereon. This stung many unsuspecting entrepeneurs into bankruptcy for years. Years ago. Now the sites are usually investigated before the purchase, if not by the would be victim then certainly by the loan entity providing the capital for the would be fiasco. This has led to large tracts of land in this state lying empty. As a fitting tribute to the folly of fools, the abandoned lands become themselves 'unlicensed hazardous waste dumps. Waste disposal ultimately is a public responsibility. Under all capitalist systems, preservation of environments, all environments, is a luxury that sooner or later business systems operating in capitalist environments cannot afford.

Re:CRT's ... recycling links

[SlashMaster]

...more links...

Circuit Boards:
Integrated Circuit Recycling from Finished Product Printed Circuit Boards
PCs Don't Die--They Become Road Fill
What to do with your printed circuit boards?
USNavy: PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARD RECYCLING
Printed Circuit Board Recycling Equipment

CRT Glass:
Cascade's CRT Glass-to-Glass Recycling Program
EPA: Glass-to-Glass Recycling
WRAP identifies four potential markets for television glass (26.01.04)
Cathode ray tube glass recycling: an example of clean technology, mostly in Italian usage in ceramic tiles.