British Columbia To Charge Recycling Fee

An anonymous reader writes "Next week the province of British Columbia will begin adding a recycling fee to new computers and TVs to pay for their free electronics recycling program. The list of what is acceptable for recycling is short, namely computers, printers, and TVs — you cannot recycle personal audio players or cell phones. What is unclear is whether the definition of 'desktop computer' includes self-built computers, and if so, their plans for adding fees for individual components such as motherboards, etc." The article notes that the recovered e-waste will not be sent to developing countries for processing. But one report says that the e-waste won't be recycled at all, but rather burned in a smelter.

Comments

Re:Huh?

[iknownuttin]

It's called Michael Moore logic. If the government provides it, it's by definition "free".

I don't know about Moore (I've only seen "Roger and Me" and "9/11"), but many people have that same logic. I hear it all the time and when you try to explain to them that you really do pay for it from your tax dollars, they give this look that I can only explain by an example:
Go to a dairy farm and start talking to a cow. That's the look you get.

They are also the same folks who think that when they get a Federal Tax refund that they didn't pay taxes for that year.
Really, there are people out there who believe that! I thought it was just rhetoric from pundits, but it's true.

Re:Huh?

[SnapShot]

Good point, calling the recycling program "free" is incorrect. In this case it would be better to call it a deposit on the proper disposal of your electronics. If that $2000 you just spent on your laptop doesn't include the cost to dispose of it then you're basically just assuming welfare from your fellow citizens and/or your descendants to cover the cost of its disposal and cleanup.

Just another "Fear Me!" article from the ignorant.

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

Everyone be scared! Everyone scream at the evil things portrayed in the article! ... Or, instead you can educate yourself.

Generally people have no clue what happens in the mining industry, how metals are actually extracted from the ground and refined. I LOVE it when I see people protesting the mining industry in general, while using their cell phones, full of metals, while wearing clothes that were made on metal machines, with their metal car or bike parked nearby. They have no clue. It's great fun showing them the irony of their actions.

This ignorant FUD article is no different.

If it wasn't for smelters, the computer parts being recycled would never have existed in the first place! but people read the headlines and just assume the worst.

What happens when you recycle a pop can? ... it gets melted down in a smelter.
What happens when your car is recycled? ... it gets melted down in a smelter.
What happens when to pretty much any metal product when it is no longer useful? ... it gets melted down in a smelter.

It's about time the same happened to computer parts.

The government of British Columbia used to sell surplus computers and monitors as scrap.

The news media here caused great embarassment to the BC government a few years ago when they exposed the fact that the scrap ended up in the shocking Chinese 'recycle' system we've all seen on TV ... where peasants smash and burn the parts in the open air of their villages and manually stir vats of acids filled with the metallic ashes to recover the metals, where they let all the chemicals run down the streets into the local soils and water sources.

So the BC government actually did something about it.

Smelting it here in BC in a controlled manner where emissions are regulated, where thousands of people will NOT have their lives greatly shortened by the process, where ground water, lakes, rivers, and soil will NOT be destroyed by the process, sounds like a much better system to me.