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Growth of E-Waste May Lead to National 'E-Fee'
jcatcw writes "A bill in Congress would add a recycling charge to the cost of laptop PCs, computer monitors, televisions and some other electronic devices, according to a story at Computerworld. The effort to control what's called e-waste could lead to a national 'e-fee' that would be paid just like a sales tax. Nationwide the cost could amount to $300 million per year. Already, California, Washington, Maryland and Maine have approved electronics recycling laws, and another 21 states plus Puerto Rico, are considering them."
And it seems to be working... we've got a pretty good eRecycling program going here.
http://www3.gov.ab.ca/env/waste/ewaste/faq.html
Had these fees for around a year in Ireland now - and its great. I dump all my broken shit back on shops telling them I bought the same type of item off them in the previous month. They usually don't ask for a receipt, and even if they do... well, I got rid of three years of broken or just poor quality headphones (I DJ, they wear out...) with one receipt.
http://www.weeeireland.ie/ is the manufacturers/sellers grouping that manages it all. On the downside, Amazon no longer sell electronics to Ireland as they're unwilling to collect the fees.
That's pretty standard pricing for aircraft toilet equipment. Remember the mythbusters where they did a myth about being sucked into the toilet when it flushes? They had to buy one for the myth test and it was thousands of dollars.
We already have this system "over here" in Belgium, and it seems to work. For example, I would pay 60 eurocents at the purchase of a new PC, and 3 euros for the purchase of a new screen. And 18.50 euros for a freezer. On the total pricing, it is not a large contribution. Tariffs can be found on recupel's site.
In return, any supplier is obliged to accept the return of an old appliance, even if he did not sell it. If you buy a new device, the supplier has to accept the old one, free of charge. As far as I know, you are not even obliged to make a purchase if you just want to drop off your old junk at a store, although I am pretty sure that it will be appreciated if you would bring the gear to a recycling center instead.
Typical for us Belgians, I presume, is that our 'recupel' is not a tax, strictly speaking, as it is not paid to the government. It is a obligatory contribution to the coffers of a collection of non-profit organizations. These more or less coincide with the professional organization of the major suppliers of consumer electronics, who do have a legal obligation to take back old equipment. Everything is organized by law, but its day-to-day running is not in the hands of the government. Probably this is more efficient, and besides, it encourages the suppliers to design their devices for easy end-of-life processing.
Actually, my municipality has electronics recycling, and they are really good about it. Just bring it over to the landfill, pay them $7.00, and they'll throw it away for you!
I'm not kidding... somehow you can throw it away for free (well, it's considered part of your waste removal fee), but if you want to recycle it you either have to pay for it, or hold-on to it for the free recycle day event that happens every 6 months. They're so good at advertizing these events too, signs up all over the place, if you consider all over the place to mean less than 2 miles from the landfill.
So I just leave all of it sitting in my yard. (joke)