National PC Recycling Plan Proposed, Again 323
ThinSkin writes "Two U.S. Representatives have proposed a bill to resuscitate a national recycling program for electronic waste, following the successful launch of two state-run programs. The bill would create the National Computer Recycling Act, and if approved by Congress and signed into law, would tack on a $10 administrative fee to the sale price of computers and monitors to fund recycling efforts."
Already here (Score:5, Interesting)
Where's this extra charge come in?
Funny this comes up (Score:5, Interesting)
Some enterprising young man or woman... (Score:4, Interesting)
Archimede's principle dictates that an object will displace its weight in water, which leads to the conclusion that the heavier something is, the lower it will sink in relation to other material surrounding it.
Computers are made up of meltable parts. By melting the computers down, would it not be possible to skim off various useful elements and compounds at certain depths? This is how they separate kerosene jet fuel from high octane gasoline. It's all together in a vat, but sucked out from different depths.
Such a system could be set up in someone's back yard (given a large enough back yard). It's well known that some manufacturers use gold to conduct electricity, and silicon is resaleable. So is copper and a host of other really common elements in computers.
I'm surprised no one's done this yet.
Prepaid recycle voucher (Score:5, Interesting)
If i paid the recycling fee up front, and was then able to drop off the only stuff at a recycling center at no cost, i would do it much more often. Though without oversight the stuff could still end up in china.
I guess im still paying the cost reguardless, but I much better about paying when i purchase the item than when I get rid of it.
Re:Yeah... (Score:2, Interesting)
Require manufacturers of computers to take back any of their stuff to recycle it (also make sure it doesn't end up in China). They can charge as little or as much for this in the purchase cost.
As a further incentive treat the "bad" parts like any other hazmat to make sure people do recycle them.
I am pro big government, but I just don't see them efficiantly using the 10.00 (or even using it for it's intended purpose).
Also a much better cost/use recycling program would be universal curb side federaly funded for all counties with population density greater then X (where X is determined by someoen smarter than me).
Re:Some enterprising young man or woman... (Score:2, Interesting)
We are. My wife is a safety technician for an industrial recycling plant here in middle Tennessee called Noranda Recycling. They extract precious metals from electronics, and re-process all the HP ink cartidges (you do send those back in the postage-paid envelope, don't you?)
Re:Some enterprising young man or woman... (Score:2, Interesting)
At this point you should have separated the raw material into metals, ceramics (including the glass from the fibreglass from the PCBs) and plastics. You need to process these individually as appropriately.
With the metals you end up with a metalic sludge, suitable application of various industrial chemicals (oxidise the mess to start with, start with ammonia disolved in water, this will rip out Ag, Co, Cr, Cu, Ni & Zn [gently heat liquor to drop out each metal in turn], next use conc H2SO4 to pull out the base metals into solution and use solvent extraction, finally a dash of NaCN for the precious metals left behind).
The process is well known but far too many steps for a low tonnage process (economical in the 1,000,000+ tonnes/annum for a single plant, that is a lot of computers).
ZombieEngineer
Re:Yeah... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Interesting)
Second, there are pretty good reasons why your Pentium 1 motherboard cannot be a Pentium 5 motherboard that have nothing to do with the electrical engineer who designed it "not being creative enough" or "the government trying to scam you". The fact is that you would not be happy if the P5 were on the P1 mother board because you would not gain much extra speed from having the P5 on there as the bus would be far too slow. The bus speed is only one of many similar problems you would have with such a scheme.
Third, electronics companies are in fact moving to more environmentally friendly manufacturing techniques. At my company, we are currently making a transition between normal type electronics and moving to "lead free" electronics for our circuit boards. One of the electrical engineers on my team was pissed recently when he had to redesign a circuit board to be lead free for this initiative. (He wasn't pissed because of the redesign. He was pissed because he originally started to design it as lead free and was told by his boss to design it "leaded" and then after doing all the work over again to create the regular design, had to re-do it again to make it lead free.)
BTW. Lead free electronics manufacturing requires higher temperatures for the board to be "baked" because it takes more heat to melt lead free solder. Also, I learned recently (I'm a software guy and knew nothing about hardware before I came to this particular company) that newer type circuit boards typically can have circuits at several levels within the board and have parts on both sides of the board. Its pretty interesting.
Re:Yeah... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I agree with you in principle that the program is an imposition, there are a lot of other scams that put this one to shame. Example? [g2mil.com] And that's a drop in the ocean.
The major problem with electronics is the heavy metals that go into their manufacture and disposal, polluting the soil and groundwater for generations. I can foresee a day when people file environmental lawsuits against the electronics manufacturers, in a manner analagous to what they've done, rather unjustly, I add, with the tobacco and handgun industries. Hopefully, the manufacturers see the writing on the wall and clean up their own industry both as a defense against future litigation, and more advantageously, as a marketing gimmick.
Personally, I see the consumer as bearing the full weight of responsibility for the heaps of digital crap getting dumped into landfills. Nobody is making anyone buy that stuff, nor are consumers exactly burying the electronics companies in demands for greener manufacturing. And companies do respond to customer feedback, some more than others, but being profit-oriented entities, they will recognize an emerging market in green electronics, and the smart ones will capitalize. Yuppies will, as always, be the early adopters and pay a premium. Prices will drop, and the masses will follow suit.
Another regressive tax! Tax the rich, instead.... (Score:2, Interesting)
And let's be honest: they aint gonna use much of any revenue from such a pc recycling tax to actually recycle PCs: they are gonna instead use it for the war machine, or for corporate welfare, or for Congressional pay raises.....
Re:Why the Feds? (Score:4, Interesting)
And I would not accept at face value that the Federal government is more inept than the state government at running programs. Show some proof on this.
Re:Some enterprising young man or woman... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not even remotely feasible on even a neighbourhood scale. It's like trying to extract gold from a graveyard -- sure, it's there (in the corpses' teeth), but getting it out is going to be a lot more trouble than it's really worth.
You have to grind up the boards with a giant grinder, then you need either
1) a good way to separate out most of the metal, or
2) a really good fume hood and scrubber to get rid of the toxic gases given off by heating the PCBs to iron-smelter temperatures
Once you've recovered the metal, you then need to separate out the good stuff from the crap. Unfortunately, gold makes great alloys with silver, tin, and other components common in computers. Not real easy to separate it.
Economy of scale plays a HUGE factor here. If you can treat it like a large mining operation, you can make it work, but otherwise, forget about it.
p
How it works in Japan (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all, the gov't does NOT pocket $10. Unlike automobiles (which have had an approx. $250 recycle tax tacked onto all new vehicle sales as of this year I believe), computers are still sold at the same cost as before. However, the city will not accept them as garbage. No one (legally) will. You need to call the manufacturer, which has a recycling fee list for each device. On receipt of the call, they'll give you a tracking number, and you pay your fees. Usually about $15 for a computer, $15 for a monitor, and so on so forth. In return, the post office will deliver a special computer transportation box, which you pack your computer in. It is then shipped off to the manufacturer, which is legally required to recycle. Recycle rates are actually pretty impressive.
This was actually an extension to the household appliances recycle laws that passed a few years ago. TVs, air conditioners, washing machines, dryers and refrigerators all need to be sent back to the manufacturer for recycling. Unlike computers, however, your local electrical appliance shops are required to do the pickup. (They'll come to your house with a truck.)
In both computer and appliances, if the manufacturer is bankrupt, or you built it yourself in the first place, you call the local municipal gov't which will pick it up (same rough cost) and recycle it for you.
Some people probably think this will just lead to people taking apart their junk computers, amd trashing them piece by piece to avoid the recycle cost. This doesn't quite work that well though. The case will likely exceed standard garbage size limits (yes, we have such a thing), so you'll still need to pay something like $5 to $15 to have the city dispose your case. That considered, there's not much of a savings associated, and certainly not a clean conscience. Sure, you could dump it in the river, but this doesn't seem to be a big issue with normal citizens, only organized illegal garbage collecting companies which do it large scale.
All in all, it works quite well. Truth is, now that the laws are in place, with very easy to understand requirements for the manufacturer to take back what they sold, it is much much easier to get things recycled, and the cost is not that big of a deal. And I don't really need to worry about the gov't pocketing the cost.
Re:What's a computer?... According to the bill... (Score:5, Interesting)
So, how would this apply to people who build their own computers? If I buy by the part, would I only be taxed on the monitor?
Switzerland has been doing this for over a decade (Score:4, Interesting)
The fees [swico.ch] are very moderate, I never paid more than 7 francs (5 EUR) for a computer, perhaps 15 francs for a rather big dishwasher. With computing equipment, the fee is calculated by the price of the item. Household machinery goes by weight.
Many companies, especially IT, still try to make a very small amount of money by selling off their inventory once it gets replaced, so it's not like we all just dump trucks full of laptops at Mom & Dad's Electric Toothbrush Wonderland. But once the thing refuses to boot, it's good to know I can take it back to any store.
This even covers items sold before 1994 (when recycling became The Law). We've had a few years of experience with this system, and I don't know of anyone who's unhappy with it so far. So: yay for mandatory electronics recycling.
Does nothing to promote local business. (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see how this law is effective.
Re:What's a computer? (Score:5, Interesting)
When we get rid of the broken stuff, we strip out the non-toxic pieces, and then we pay a secondary company by the pound to dispose of the bad stuff. They rip out what is useful and still worth something, and then pay to dispose the rest of it.
This system works perfectly fine without any extra levels of existing government bureaucracy. This just seems to be another example of needing to enforce current codes and regulations, instead of creating new codes and regulations.
Re:What's a computer? (Score:5, Interesting)
First of all 10$ are barely enough to transport a large monitor to a landfill site. Definitely not enough for recycling it.
The correct solution is the EU and Japanese one - the companies are made legally obliged to take care of recycling their goods (they sometimes manage to offload it to the reseller, but legally they are responsible for it). As a result if a company makes a product easier and cheaper for recycling it improves its margin.
With computers it is less evident, as the consumer electronics goods (recycling of) directive is relatively new and few companies have made design decisions based on it. However, it is possible to see where it is going when looking at cars where the legislation has been around for longer. As a result of the similar car legislation recent Japanese cars that are strictly for the European/Japanese market have less then 5% of the car made from non-recyclable materials (IIRC highest are Daihatsu at 98, followed by Toyota and Honda at 97%). Europeans are not far behind.
Computers are going down a similar path. This in fact is the reason why some companies have gone back to making separate US and EU models. This is also the reason (besides VAT) for the mystic difference between prices for some products in the EU and the US. The Mac mini price in the EU includes VAT and what it will cost Apple to take it back once its lifetime has expired and take care of it.
There are other aspects to this as well. Introducing such laws causes serious changes to the recycled material market. Recycling has a limited demand and capacity, so filling it with "newer" goods makes recycling old goods economically pointless. You can no longer scrap an old car and get money for it. You have to pay now. The situation with computers is likely to become the same.
Rather than a fixed fee, how about an impact fee? (Score:3, Interesting)
A Linux-wristwatch is probably safe to landfill from a toxic-waste standpoint, once the batteries are removed. The batteries themselves though might be subject to such a fee.
An "low-toxin" PC or monitor should have a lower recycling fee than a less-clean one.
As for programs to encourage general recycling of non-toxic items, that should be part of our overall tax base, rather than a dedicated user fee.