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?

[chrismcdirty]

And this one.

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...

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.

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.

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

[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

[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

[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.

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.

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

[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".

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 :-)

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?

... 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.

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.

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

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)

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: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.

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: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."

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: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.

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.