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

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Huh?

[XanC]

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

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.

Re:Huh?

[mrbcs]

Here in Alberta, we call it Advance Disposal Surcharge. When you buy a new computer, tv etc, you get charged a fee to dispose of it later. This is brilliant. The stations will accept any electronics for free right now. This keeps all the old shit that hadn't had a surcharge charged, from the landfills. (payment of surcharge is not a pre-requisite to dispose of old equipment)

The collection stations then ship all this electronics to Calgary or Edmonton to be processed. (sometimes, if you work there or know someone there they will let you scavenge)Machines that are still viable are resold to computer dealers like me to be re-used.

Machines that are too old are stripped and the components are sent to the proper place to be recycled. Plastics get melted down, metals get smelted out etc. No, the system is not perfect, but it keeps the old tv's and computers out of our land fills.

Hopefully B.C. isn't re-inventing the wheel and they will have a similar system.

not news

[ardiesr]

This fee is already charged in Alberta for the last couple of years. It was also introduced in Saskatchewan in February.

It could also soon be charged in Ontario:
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2007/06/12/425 4704-cp.html

Not New

[pipingguy]

Alberta already has something similar for monitors and televisions.

How did they think it would be recycled?

[Mspangler]

"But one report says that the e-waste won't be recycled at all, but rather burned in a smelter."

But dropping it in a smelter is recycling. Junk goes in, refined metal comes out. Smelters do not run on solid fuel anymore, they can't grind up the circuit boards and feed them to the burners.

The organics will burn in the charge, the fiberglass will melt into the slag, the metals will dissolve into the melt.

I forgot how to separate the lead from the copper. (pyrometallurgy class was in 1988, and I went the hydrometallurgy route instead)

Now I'll have to look it up.

The pyro class took a field trip to Trail, neat place if you are into displays of brute power. Sometimes I miss mining. Phys met is so boring; did it corrode .005 in/yr, or 0.010? zzzzzz But it's what pays the bills.

California Has Done This

[DavidD_CA]

Since Jan 2005, California has been charging an E-Waste Recovery Fee for some time now. Whenever you sell something to a California resident that has a display (CRT/LCD/etc), you have to charge this fee and give it to the state:

    4-15 inches : $6
    15-35 inches: $8
    35+ inches : $10

The fee is not a deposit either, like you have on soda cans. If you take your CRT to the dump later, even if you can prove you paid that E-Waste fee, you still have to pay the dump to take your trash.

More Info: http://www.erecycle.org/

Re:Why do they call it recycling....

[EraseEraseMe]

How do you think metal are recycled exactly? Does Superman come in and bend broken motherboards into brand new steel?

No, they're melted down and leeched into seperate metals.

Nightmare for vendors

[mauriceh]

Yes, we are a computer integrator/reseller in Alberta, and have had to charge these fees for a couple of years now.
Then Sask jumped on, now BC, and soon all the rest of the provinces.
But, and it is a BIG "BUTT":
We now have to collect separately for each province we sell into, report each month to each province, remit to each province
The paperwork for this equals one person-day per month for all the reporting and filing.
This is a classic example of what should have been done at the federal level, and now is more of a burden than a benefit.

Mod Parent Down

[p0tat03]

This is nothing but FUD. BC is 357,216 square miles and contains 4.3 million people (note: I did not verify the parent's numbers, but they seem reasonably correct from memory). On the other hand, California, Nevada, and Oregon put together contains 39 million people. That's almost a 10x difference.

Also remember, the population of Vancouver, Victoria, and the next 3 largest cities in BC total 2.8 million. That's 65% of the entire population of the province, with Vancouver comprising 2.1 million of the total alone. I'm pretty sure the recycling program exists THERE.

Given how dense Victoria, Vancouver, and its outlying areas is (after all, the whole region is walled in by mountains), 70 locations is not outrageous, and can in fact cover a LOT of people's recycling needs.

So take the "blatant thievery" and shove it, unless you have some real proof of a conspiracy to steal taxpayer dollars.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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.