It was hard for me to pose the “Do You Recycle?” question of the week a few days ago on Gearlog, knowing full well I am a pretty big e-waste offender myself. Last year, after stripping all the valuable components, I left my old PC in the garbage room of my building, with just a minor concern about how it would be disposed of. Just the other day I made a co-worker throw away a coffee cup filled with batteries that she had been hoarding in her office for what looked like years. The batteries were actually leaking acid, but she was afraid to toss them. This is one problem with recycling electronics these days: The well-meaning turn their offices into private Superfund sites, while the uncaring just dump old electronics in the trash. There has to be a better way. I say, it starts with a Green Tax on consumer electronics.
Oh, yes: I am calling for higher taxes, even with a national election just a few weeks away, and a regressive one to boot! So much for my political instincts. I don't mean a big tax--maybe even as little 2 or 3 percent of the purchase price, to handle the cost of disposing of the gadget. Right now, manufacturers like HP and Apple charge anywhere from $13 to $30 to dispose of your old computer. Why not move the charge to the time of purchase?
The problem is that consumers feel disconnected from the environmental hazards that high-tech trash poses. Cancer rates are rising, aquifers are tainted, and rivers and oceans are filling with dioxin-laden fish, but the wonderful thing about landfills is that they are usually in someone else's backyard. These days, we're even exporting our tech trash to other countries, usually poor ones. How's that for NIMBY economics?
This brings me back to my idea of adding a disposal fee to the price of tech gadgets. Many states charge a 5- or 10-cent deposit on plastic and glass bottles, the result of a so-called Bottle Bill. Return the bottle, and you get your deposit back. Sure, many people just throw bottles away anyway, but interesting things happen when you place a value on something that used to have none. Infrastructures started to develop to support the recycling of these bottles—first at a few stores, then more. Then towns started splitting off recycling at the dump. And yes, the abject poor started collecting cans from trash bins and wheeling them around the city in grocery carts.
This may seem like small-time stuff compared to the enormity of the tech-trash problem. According to the EPA, only 10 percent of all electronics are recycled. And experts such as Elizabeth Grossman, author of "High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health," think we'll be better off if vendors assume greater stewardship for the products they create. (Reading her book is what got me thinking so much about e-recycling this week.)
In fact, just last week Dell announced a fantastic PC recycling program, which costs users nothing. Go to the Dell site, fill our a few forms, and Dell will send someone to your house to pick up your old, junky computer—for free. It doesn’t even have to be a Dell. Several vendors have tried programs like this in the past, but this is the first one I have seen that is so expansive and down-right foolproof. If more manufacturers step up to the plate, maybe a green tax on tech would seem unnecessary.
But think again. Charging a 5-cent deposit on bottles showed that they had value as well as potential consequences. It's time we started looking at our old cell phones, laptops, and televisions sets the same way.
Dan Costa is the Consumer Electronics Editor at PC Magazine and a cohost of Gearlog Radio; check back every Thursday for his take on the world of gadgets, gear and other tech stuff.
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October 5, 2006 2:14 PM
I work for a small business with a stack of old PCs in the basement. We've had a tough time finding anyone who will take them! The few recycling companies I've been able to find have been extremely difficult to work with. Several I have never heard from, one replied at first but has now dropped off the face of the earth. We're trying to do the environmentally responsible thing, and having a hell of a time doing it! Suggestions? Recommendations? It's like any other kind of recycling... until it's as easy as throwing it in a (specially marked) trash can, no one will bother...
October 5, 2006 9:55 PM
Dan, what have you done! Remember what happened last time politics got in here! :D Although personally I agree with you-everyone wants everything but no one wants to pay for it, no way no how. So you wind up having to hide fees like that so people don't get so riled up about them. For example, it'd be nice to press computer companies into creating recycling programs for their PCs, and then include said service in warranties or extended service plans, for example, reminding the customer via mail or email at the end of their service lifetime that they can return their computer to the manufacturer for proper disposal at any time, and by the way, here's the shipping label. But even that probably won't put much of a dent in it, even if people pay for it with incredibly slightly increased warranty or service plan costs. I would say do it this way so it's good and convoluted: Propose the tax you mentioned, but not to end customers but to computer manufacturers. Tax them on their sales and revenue (as opposed to an off-the-top profit tax), so it comes right off the balance sheet, and the companies-while I'm sure they'll gripe and moan, would happily write it into their corporate social responsibility statements (that every company posts on their website to make us think they give a crap about our social well being or the planet's health) and use it as a lucrative marketing tool as a way to protect the planet and continue their relationship with their customers long after computer purchases are made. (and potentially make repeat customers!) Once the gear manufacturers have swallowed the tax down, they'll probably pass it on to the consumer (I can hear the tax dodgers crying now: "higher prices?! That's unpossible! Blahblahgovernmentinmyfreemarketblahblah!") When in reality the average cost per consumer or computer purchased would probably wind up being a whole $10-15USD, for example-right back where we started. Okay, so now we have money, the government has it. Now they give that money in tax breaks to new small businesses that specialize in e-waste and recycling. I'm sure once the word gets out that there's a federal funding program for it, people will be chomping at the bit to mail in a business plan. They set up shop, they get some operating funds, recycle your waste at a minimal cost (hopefully) so they make a little profit, and it works out. Alternatively you can nix the federal idea and send the federal tax dollars to state governments to manage as a state funding program-after all, they'll be more likely to make sure businesses set up shop where they're needed and not just one per state. They'er in the communities, so they'll manage the money better. Alternatively, you can eliminate that tail end of the market entirely and have the federal tax revenue from the program go straight to states, and then divvied up between local sanitation companies and services so they have the funds to start picking up your computer from the curbside with the weekly trash and dispose of it properly over here while your week old coffee grinds go over here and that coffee mug full of batteries go over there. I like that idea best, but I know anytime you propose a program managed by the government, people will cry socialism, so using it to start small homegrown, grassroots businesses might be the way to go, even though in the end it'd cost the end consumer more and they'll pay for it on both ends. Interesting idea you have there, Dan!
October 6, 2006 4:01 PM
Heard of the EPA? They and New York State are supporting the Aurora Project which started in the late 90s. Those of us living in Broome and Tioga counties of New York (the birthplace of IBM) have one of the most aggressive recycling programs in the state, and not just electronics. The Broome county landfill accepts electronics twice monthly and the local IBM facility along with other area electronics producing companies accept computer equipment once a year. I think its great having not to store this stuff in my basement or try to figure out what to do with the carcasses!