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."

It's not around me, so what happens?

[Overzeetop]

If I pay the tax, then drop the stuff in the trahscan to get picked up by the muni wate trucks, does that money vanish? Does it just line the pockets of the contractor that gets the disposal contract? Does it just end up the general fund?

Re:

[jimstapleton]

I guess it depends on the city.

There are some cities that hire people to sift through the trash and separate out recyclables.

Personally, the idea of doing that job seems rubbish to me.

Re:

[Intron]

They have a huge room where your $10 is attached with a clothespin to a copy of the receipt for your monitor. Then when it gets recycled they match it up by serial number and pay your $10 to a contractor. If you don't recycle it, eventually they have to build a bigger room.

Think of 5c on cans!

[EmbeddedJanitor]

The 5c (or whatever) can recycling "tax" on cans is an excellent example of how this can work. If there is an insentive, then a service will emerge.

You pay the tax up-front. You can hand the unit in to a recycling centre, they pay you some sort of refund (to say thanx for not dumping it, or -- like cans -- to promote dumpster diving homeless folk to bring them in) and they get paid to reprocess out of the rest of the tax.

Re:

[russotto]

No matter what, the money vanishes. The connection between an "earmarked" tax and the actual program it is supposed to sponsor is typically tenuous to nonexistent. This is just a way to get another tax in while sounding "green".

Agreed

[UbuntuDupe]

E-waste has been a big problem. I like what Microsoft did, with converting their e-trash bins into e-recycle bins. Thought it would be nice, *cough cough* if they made the "bright idea" lightbulb in MS Word a CFL.

You gotta think, we just use and use all these 1's and 0's, but no one realizes that their deletion increases the entropy of the universe.

'bout time

[Intron]

I'm all in favor of putting the real costs up front. It's almost impossible to enforce a fee at disposal time. People will just find some other way to hide these things in the trash or dump them.

Overpackaging goods with three layers of boxes and plastic should be taxed, too.

Re:

[ArsonSmith]

I'd rather see an eDeposit than an eFee. This would actually encourage people not to dumpster the parts.

Re:

[Assassin bug]

Overpackaging goods with three layers of boxes and plastic should be taxed, too.

Here here! I enjoy the visceral experience of pealing layers of plastic of some new Apple product as much as anyone would, but why they don't use corn-starch-based plastics for their super-wrapped bundles-o-joy is beyond me. It isn't like their products seem to sit around in storage long enough to actually need protection from the elements anyway! Also, the sicko that decided to package thumb-drives (which are often in locked

corn-starch-based plastics

[falconwolf]

I see you know it but many people don't know plastic was originally made from plants. I wonder how many remember or have heard of cellophane plastic wraps for sandwiches and such. The "cello" comes from "cellulose" which comes from trees and other plants. Eastman Kodak, the camera company, has a webpage on this: The Process of Making Trees into Plastic [mindfully.org] . Part of the reason people don't know is because of people and companies like Du Pont, in the 1930s Du Pont was awarded a patent on making plastic fro

Re:

[Intron]

A libertarian in favor of taxing himself? Odd. Centuries of evidence to support the tragedy of the commons is a real effect. Don't know why an economist would argue with it.

Thanks for the packet drivers. I used them back in the day.

Re:

[Russ Nelson]

In what way is waste disposal a commons? If you just throw your stuff on somebody else's property, that's trespass. If you pay someone to take your waste, that's a private property transfer between you and them. What makes "E-Waste" any concern of a third party?

Glad you enjoyed packet drivers. Doesn't make an E-Waste tax any less stupid, though.

Why bother?

[EveryNickIsTaken]

When I've got a PC that crashes and burns, I strip out any useful parts and put it by the curb. Some idiot will always take the thing home thinking it might work.

Don't lie to me, baby

[rubmytummy]

To say "Nationwide, that cost would amount to about $300 million per year," is disingenuous at best. The price is already being paid in the long-term destructive consequences of not recycling toxic electronic waste. Something like this fee (assuming it works) doesn't add cost, it makes the cost more visible and more constructive.

Now, now, don't forget . . .

[StefanJ]

. . . if you can sweep a problem under a rug -- or, in this case, bury it under some trash bags in a dumpster -- it doesn't show up on the Accounts Payable.

Or, put another way, externalities are for the next generation to deal with. Or ignore and pass along.

Hey, I'm a civil servant!

[Rob T Firefly]

As a longtime dumpster-diver/rescuer of unwanted computer parts, I look forward to drawing a salary from the taxpayers.

Like many other environmental policy...

[Spazntwich]

It's well-intentioned and poorly conceived. Now we'll get a new tax for the government to "just increase a little bit" at a time, so we don't notice how our total tax burden increases at absurd intervals every year. Just like wage withholding and social security actually costing you 15% of your paycheck, but only having us ever see 7.5% taken.

Re:

[Coryoth]

You need to pay for costs of disposal/recycling somehow, and the logical way is to make the full cost of item (inc;uding the costs of disposing of the item) payable by consumers at purchase time. In practice there are two ways to do this: (1) levy the extra costs as a tax; (2) force companies to pay the costs of disposal of products they manufacture. Both have pros and cons. The difficulty with option (1), as you point out, is that money levied as taxes has a tendency to just get sloshed into the general fu

Re:

[zippthorne]

The quantity of dollars in the SS system is irrelevant. Those dollars are still chasing the work-units of the remaining working population. The only way to increase those work-units is to have many children (and encourage the children you do have to go into health care and services.)

Alberta, Canada already does this

[Anonymous Coward]

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 [gov.ab.ca]

Re:

[saskboy]

Both Alberta and Saskatchewan have recycling fees collected, and programs in place to collect old printers, monitors (TVs too) and computers. http://www.sweepit.ca/ [sweepit.ca] is one site with more information on the fee, which is paid by consumers, since industry started the program after being approached by the government.

I think industry should be picking up the tag, and including it in their delivery price, so that consumers still pay, but industry has an incentive to make products with a longer shelf, and durable

Windows

[electrosoccertux]

Considering how many of these e-waste PC's are perfectly functional computers with 1+ Ghz speed processors, which can be upgraded to 512MB-1GB of RAM and remain functional for another 5 years for Grandma Internets...yet they are thrown out because they are full of spyware and adware and molassesware, it would be fair to tax the source of the problem: poorly programmed operating systems, like Windows.

Re:Windows

[elrous0]

it would be fair to tax the source of the problem: poorly programmed operating systems, like Windows.

If we could put that tax revenue back into alternative fuels, find a way to tap the energy from Apple users' excess smugness, and achieve a 10% reduction in the energy needed to install Linux; we could go carbon neutral in no time!

-Eric

Rather than just recycle them...

[dyslexicbunny]

donate those machines to public schools and filter them throughout the school system and recycle the oldest machines. Work out a deal with Microsoft (or just use something else) and put whatever software needs to be on the machine for the school to use it properly.

So when I was in high school, we desperately needed better computers in various locations throughout the school. I imagine that both elementary and middle schools are in the same boat. Businesses are on what, a two or three year hardware upgrade cycle? Wouldn't this kill two birds with one stone?

Schools get new machines and their old (and likely least environmentally friendly) machines would be recycled. Keep the e-fee so that such a program would be funded but in theory it could work. But perhaps I'm just looking out the window of an ivory tower.

Maybe you don't define recycle the way I do

[LunaticTippy]

There are recycling places that sell and donate old equipment. Check this [mountainrecycling.com] one out.

I'd say that any recycling place will set aside anything with resale value.

Re:

[Applekid]

Actually, that's a big problem for schools and charities. People donate obsolete equipment that either simply cannot be upgraded or would be prohibitively expensive to upgrade.

"Imagine a Beowulf cluster" aside, then they get stuck with the costs of having to recycle them. Your average joe might be able to get away with just chucking them in a dumpster, but higher profile institutions have to do things by the book.

Get with the times...

[cianduffy]

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/ [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.

Re:

[LunaticTippy]

That sounds like a good program, but couldn't they come up with a better name than "weeeireland?" That's just plain ugly.

Re:

[Chris Mattern]

Took me awhile before I didn't read it as "weeeirdland".

Chris Mattern

Re:

[Jeff DeMaagd]

On the downside, Amazon no longer sell electronics to Ireland as they're unwilling to collect the fees.

I suppose it's Amazon's decision, I'm curious how an overseas entity can be expected to handle that. I can understand it if it was collected by customs - that's how taxes are done. It is done this way rather than assuming it's the seller's responsibility to collect taxes for a government entity that has no jurisdiction to do so.

Deposit Fee?

[Radon360]

For something like this to have any sliver of a chance of doing any good, they'd need to set it up in some form of deposited cash refund, like soda/pop bottles in some states. For example, a retailer charges $15 up front, must accept hardware for recycling, and gives you $10 back for each computer turned in for recycling.

Without any incentive to get stuff recycled, most people would simply prefer to hide it in the trash somehow. Yeah, I realize that a deposit fee system would be a royal PITA to administrate, but without it, you'd never even see 10 percent of computers come back for recycling.

Re:

[evilviper]

For example, a retailer charges $15 up front, must accept hardware for recycling, and gives you $10 back for each computer turned in for recycling.

I agree completely, except I'd make it a smaller value. Even $5 for things like car batteries and a couple cents a piece for aluminum cans is more than enough to have the homeless/unemployed going around, collecting them for the money. No doubt somebody could make a good business out of digging them out of landfills, and recycling them as well.

If it's a federally-mandated tax

[artifex2004]

Will the revenue stay in the communities where the items are purchased, or go into a larger, federal pool? There are arguments for each.
And if I'm being taxed a recycling fee up front, then I shouldn't have to pay anyone when it comes time to dump my old hardware, right?
I think my city's homeowner hazardous waste recycling center already accepts, for free, consumer electronics/computers from individuals, as long as they have proof of residency, anyway.

Re:

[fullmetal55]

That's actually the idea. We have it here in Alberta, it's provincially run, so it's a little better than federal. The point is to get rid of the fees to dump old hardware. i'm a packrat so i've still got my 14" hercules monitor in my basement, so I really don't know if there's still a fee or not... it's been on for a few years now. It really doesn't add that much to the cost. i mean you're spending $200 whats another 10?

Why stop at e fees?

[Paulrothrock]

Why not force manufacturers and service providers to pay for the waste they generate from their items? If McDonald's had to tack on a fee for every napkin or every Big Mac box, you can bet that they'd cut down a lot on waste to keep people from not being able to afford eating there.

Re:

[schwit1]

Manufacturers won't pay, the consumer will. Any costs will get passed on in higher prices.

Re:

[nightsweat]

If you follow that logic, higher prices reduce demand which does make the manufacturer pay.

Re:

[Paulrothrock]

Yes, but the consumer would also not have to pay for garbage pickup, as the fee would pay for that.

Also, it will provide an incentive for companies to limit the amount of disposable parts in their products to lower their costs in order to better compete. If Burger King starts wrapping burgers in rapidly biodegrading materials, or using biodegradable plastics in their ketchup packets, they'll pay a lower disposal fee, which allows them to lower their prices, which gives them a competitive advantage.

This go

Re:

[hurfy]

ROFL, My pet peeve. They have too much $$$ to make it stick, we tried.

WA state has a litter tax on gross sales for many businesses.....Fast food joints are now exempt! Where the fuck do they think the litter comes from? Well they know but bought off my McD and friends. Obviously .015% of sales would surely bankrupt the poor clown. But we have to pay as a medical supply company. Ensure=nontaxable food=grocery store=tax :/

No doubt this would turn out the same.

And where are these laws they mention for WA? Last

Great! More gov't fees!

[AlHunt]

So, if/when the feds enact their fee, the states will repeal theirs, right?
No?
why aren't I surprised?
 
The answer to everything in the world is not having the federal government charge a fee and create more wasteful programs.

Re:

[Garrett Fox]

These days more regulations and taxes have been established as the answer to all problems, and the automatic first reaction of politicians to any situation regardless of party. It's not only oppressive, it's unimaginative.

Proposal

[kahrytan]

Or we can just gather up all our trash into giant garbage ball and shoot it into space. Then we let the people in the year 3000 worry about our trash.

Fine, but keep an eye on manufacturers then.

[shoolz]

There's no doubt that the growing amount of ewaste is a huge problem, but if we're going to charge the consumer for the fee, then there should be stiff penalties for companies like Epson and HP that put kill-switches into their printers to cause them to fail prematurely.

HP killswitch. [consumerist.com]
Epson killswitch. [google.ca]

Strange as it may seem, it works

[Mutatis Mutandis]

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 [recupel.be].

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.

Re:

[dunkelfalke]

It is an EU-wide regulation called WEEE [wikipedia.org]
I definitely like it.

Re:

[j-beda]

But does it scale? Does it "work" in the sense that a significant fraction of the "waste" is being reprocessed? I suspect that much of the waste in your region is in fact not getting back into the "recycling" loop. Adding a financial incentive to the person with the waste is in my opinion a good idea.

Recycling is now a waste of time and money

[Wise Dragon]

Just put it all in a dump. WAY cheaper than conventional recycling, and when Plasma Gasification [google.com] gets to be ubiquitous, someone can make a profit turning it all back into its component elements.

FYI In California

[JoeCommodore]

In California we get charged $8.00 (not applicible to sales tax) for every monitor or laptop we buy here. But it's nice when we go to the dump they just take it.

Though if you run a retail business they charge you for dumping monitors (This usually means thrit stores may not have those useful $5 Commodore 1702 monitors on the shelf anymore, only some huge 22" PC beheamoth monitor.)

Other waste-tax?

[LoudMusic]

I'm sure that discarded computers are pretty low on the list of things filling our dumps. Are there taxes on other things like cars or home appliances to cover the cost of disposing of them?

Pffff

[Rorschach1]

REAL geeks don't need e-waste recycling - they just hold on to their stuff until the Computer History Museum offers to haul it away.

(Ok, so I'd still be holding on to the VAX, but with my girlfriend moving in there just wasn't room for both. It was a tough choice.)

Re:

[Rorschach1]

Maybe, but you can't get patches for VMS 5 anymore. Zoloft, on the other hand, is thankfully still readily available.

Not another stupid law

[boyfaceddog]

It sounds good on the news. Money chages hands. No one can vote against it with being smeared as "anti-environment". And yet it will do absolutly nothing.

Its the perfect law!

Just to clear things up, I like the environment and want recycling, but guys, this is just stupid.

Curbside pickup

[nightsweat]

Just leave your PC's by the curb in a busy urban area, and they WILL be picked up. We used that technique to get rid of two EXTREMELY heavy 286 servers in London. We were about a block from the British Museum, wiped the servers, left them by the curb and ten minutes later, they were gone.

Lack of dispsoal

[nurb432]

What about those of us that dont throw our old hardware out? I still have my first apple II in the garage.. so i get screwed like when i buy a new tire but ask to keep the old one for the spare?

eRecycle?

[Kenja]

So where do I send my used jpgs, gifs and mpgs to for recycling?

E waste

[KevinColyer]

My goodness, does this mean I will have to pay for all the E-mail I delete now???????

SP1

[StikyPad]

The tax is reportedly supported in Service Pack 1 for Vista.

"To empty the Recycle Bin, please enter your E-Tax confirmation code: ______ [C]ontinue, [C]ancel"

"Windows could not determine if your confirmation code is authentic. Operation aborted. [C]ontinue, [C]ancel"

"Warning, Low Disk Space! You are running very low on disk space on C: To free space on this drive by deleting old or unnecessary files, please click here."

How about a carrot?

[istartedi]

Meh. This is a problem; but please, not another tax. How about a deposit instead? Then, instead of old computers being left with "free" stickers on them out on the street, which happens all the time here in DC, they would be returned for the deposit. This will take time to work though. The sweet spot of the curve might be passed. I don't see any compelling reason to replace my current system. It's powerful enough to do just about anything. It seems like there was a lot more turnover as we moved from

Sure, I could pay a few dollars a year

[roystgnr]

But the real tragic cost of this program would be the resulting mercury-deficiency and lead-deficiency in our ecosystem. Let's face it: stupid people are hilarious. And although the USA has backup plans for creating new generations of stupid people, even "reality shows" on our televisions and "intelligent design" supporters on our schoolboards just can't compete with the degenerative effects of heavy-metal poisoning in our bloodstreams.

Why, if we ever run out of the national supply of stupid people, future Slashdot readers might never get to enjoy comments like these:

Creepy Crawler: That would mean that we can just leave them anywhere, right?

No, it would mean that you can just leave them at any recycling center, knowing that the cost of recycling them has already been paid for.

Overzeetop: If I pay the tax, then drop the stuff in the trahscan to get picked up by the muni wate trucks, does that money vanish?

No - like the "trahs" those "wate" trucks will be taking to the landfills, the money would be out of your hands but wouldn't have vanished entirely. Because no recycling center would be able to redeem your old electronics, the money would remain in government hands. Ironically, instead of keeping heavy metals out of US groundwater supplies it might just end up putting heavy metals into Middle Eastern groundwater instead.

Needs Food Badly: Of all the things that they can and do tax, now they want to put a tax on recycling?

No, they want to put a tax on buying things that will have to be recycled, then pay that tax back when the recycling actually happens. The goal here is to make it cheaper to reclaim toxic chemicals than to send them to landfills.

And this is what I get just browsing at Score: 3. I can only shudder to imagine what's getting modded *down*.

All in the implementation...

[nick_davison]

Nationwide the cost could amount to $300 million per year.

And, with ~300m people in the nation that works out to a staggering dollar each.

Even if you're only taxing working adults, that's maybe $3 to $4 a year.

What do you think the odds are that we'll actually pay that little? What are the odds there'll be a $30/PC tax or $15/household increase in garbage collection rates to cover the staggering burden that's barely a fraction of what they then charge?

I've no problem with paying what's reasonable. I find it interesting that the real number quoted works out roughl

A better system

[sunderland56]

Make the manufacturer of any consumer item responsible for collecting and recycling old equipment.

Two big advantages:

• The manufacturer will make their goods easier and cheaper to recycle, since they will be the ones paying for it;
• It keeps the government out of it.

Yes, of course, the manufacturer will up their prices a little. But, that makes the fee proportional to the actual cost, instead of a flat government fee.

Ideally you could apply this to ALL consumer goods - including televisions, monitors, and automobiles.

Re:And that....

[bigtomrodney]

Actually we have already implemented that here in Ireland [weeeireland.ie] and I have to say as a consumer it's something I'm happy with. I pay an extra couple of cent or maybe a couple of euro on the big electric/electronic items and I get to have my old items disposed of correctly in a manner that is better for the environment.
It's pretty similar to the plastic bag tax. Many resisted it at first but it really did put it into perspective for shoppers. Everyone here reuses their bag-for-life, and when you really do have to buy a plastic bag you make sure it's used a few times. I don't usually welcome new taxes - and why would I - but it's nice to see something being done for the greater good.

Re:

[Creepy Crawler]

Well, part of my post might be a bit foreign to the way your citizens act.. Quite a few people in rural places just dump their trash over a ridge or down a stream, hoping for it to go "out of sight". Recently, we had some assholes do the "fill truck with garbage, open tailgate, hit the accelerator" gag near our land and spread probably about 100 lbs of garbage.

Also, I'm extremely skeptical of any new taxes, knowing how much wasting our government can do. Perhaps you didnt hear of it, but when Bill Clinton w

Re:

[jcgf]

Perhaps you didnt hear of it, but when Bill Clinton was in office, there was a national story of a toilet seat that cost 5000$

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.

Re:And that....

[arminw]

....Also, I'm extremely skeptical of any new taxes.....

So am I! Let there be a law that says that the commerce system has to close the circle. That means anybody can take the device or item back to a seller and that seller would have to send it back to the maker. Yes it would add to the cost to close the goods distribution system, which is presently an open loop. Finally the gadget would get back to the manufacturer who could then decide what to do with it. Rebuild, re-use or recycle it. Every item sold after a certain date would be stamped with a return tag, making eligible to be returned, eventually to the maker thereof. No government involvement needed save for the passing of a well written set of laws closing the distribution system loop.

Re:

[Creepy Crawler]

Heh, the more things change, the more they stay the same ;)

Well, if it works for you, it probably will work for us.. Though, the only worry is that I keep equipment a long time.

I wonder if the deposit will be linked to inflation? Im guessing not.

Re:

[cheater512]

Just give me all your unneeded computer equipment. I wouldnt mind having some old Pentiums around.

Instead of throwing them away the government should find a way to recycle them.

Re:

[Ucklak]

I think you're missing the point of the parent post.

If we have the cost of disposal built into the purchase price, what is to stop a corporation or university just dumping old electronics in the middle of the highway? It's effectively what the cost is going toward.

I wonder how consumers will dispose of the current flock of big screen plasma displays, and projection TVs without just taking it to the dump anyway.

The only e-recycle/disposal program I know of takes old eletronics and ships them to India for di

Re:

[DAtkins]

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 [cobbcountyga.gov]... 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

e-waste and recycling

[falconwolf]

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 yo

Re:

[Ucklak]

I noticed that PROJECTION TV'S are not accepted.

I was given a Hitachi 43FDX10B because the digital convergence was off. I fixed it for $30 in parts and 2 hours of my time to replace 2 ICs and a handfull of resistors.
It's great as a free TV but I have no idea how to get rid of it other than sell it cheap while it's still working and somewhat still marketable.

Re:

[Tackhead]

> That would mean that we can just leave them anywhere, right?
>
> We already pay for removal when it works.... Well, I'll just open my truckbed with all these computer junk parts and gun it. Thats what road crews are for, right?

Naw. Y'see, the last time someone figured he'd rather than make two little piles of garbage...

Sing it with me the next time it comes 'round on the guitar. [slashdot.org]

Already the law in Belgium

[Potor]

We already pay a recycling tax on electronic equipment here in Belgium. As far as I understand it, you can just return electronic equipment to stores selling such, and they dispose of it.

Make it (partially) refundable

[mi]

If the fee is high enough (say, $10 or even $50), you will want to bring the dead equipment for (partial) refund to a place, which will gladly process it (paid for by the rest of the fee).

Kind of like cans and bottles, except their meager 5c fee is not enough to encourage anyone to clean them up, not even the "poor" homeless...

Re:

[jcorno]

If the fee is high enough (say, $10 or even $50), you will want to bring the dead equipment for (partial) refund to a place, which will gladly process it (paid for by the rest of the fee).

Recycling should MAKE money. Maybe if they base the amount you get back on the ease of reclaiming the materials, it would encourage more responsible manufacturing. They could set up a rating system, like a 1-10 scale for a 10-100% rebate, or something similar. It might even encourage people to get rid of old equipment

Re:Make it (partially) refundable

[inviolet]

Recycling should MAKE money.

Yes, it SHOULD. But right now, for most materials, it doesn't. It requires a government-imposed extra fee in order to show a 'profit'. But that profit is just a bookkeeping game to cover up what is actually and obviously a waste of resources.

Maybe if they base the amount you get back on the ease of reclaiming the materials, it would encourage more responsible manufacturing. They could set up a rating system, like a 1-10 scale for a 10-100% rebate, or something similar. It might even encourage people to get rid of old equipment sooner (I know I keep a lot of old crap laying around just in case I need it), so it should be easy to get the manufacturers involved.

The core meaning of 'unprofitable' means: consumes more energy than it produces. So when a thing fails to make money, that's the market's way of telling you that you are wasting your natural resources... your time foremost among them.

Until such time as recycling processes are actually profitable, it's better to bury the junk in a landfill. There it will stay until an engineered bacteria or nanobot or digester robot or whatever gets invented to reprocess it cheaply.

Re:

[rucs_hack]

no way I'd be keen on having the stuff in landfill digested.

After decades of metals and plastics being buried, can you conceive just how much money is locked up in landfill sites? The mind salivates, or would if it had the glands.

I'd want to mine them, not mush them.

garbage dumps

[falconwolf]

Until such time as recycling processes are actually profitable, it's better to bury the junk in a landfill. There it will stay until an engineered bacteria or nanobot or digester robot or whatever gets invented to reprocess it cheaply.

That's short sighted. By dumping toxic stuff in the dump all you're doing is passing the cost of cleanup onto others, either those who don't produce or use it or to future generations. And that's discounting the risk of drinking water being contaminated along with other s

Re:

[m0rph3us0]

Yes, but it doesn't because its cheaper to get new stuff. Once resources cost enough to reprocess them, we will do that, which is why I advocate putting all our precious resources in the same place so that they are easy to retrieve in the future. I call this place a "garbage dump".

Recycling should MAKE money.

[falconwolf]

Exactly!!! A person should be able to collect some money recycling. Growing up I used to go around collecting glasses and cans which I'd then take to a recycling station and get a little extra spending money. The way things are now though, is if your area collects recyclables you have to pay extra. At least I know of no place that collects recyclables curbside that don't include a recycle fee in property or other tax.

Falcon

Re:

[Eccles]

One reasonable scheme is to impose a fee, which you can recover at least part of when you dispose of the machine at a recycling facility. The rest of the fee would cover the recycling costs. Would dumping be worth the loss of your deposits?

Re:And that....

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

That would mean that we can just leave them anywhere, right?

We already pay for removal when it works.... Well, Ill just open my truckbed with all these computer junk parts and gun it. Thats what road crews are for, right?

- Well isn't that the point of these changes? Right now it costs you to choose to recycle it. Now you'll have to pay recycling fees up front so it's no longer financially beneficial to not recycle it.

financially responsibility and recycling

[falconwolf]

- Well isn't that the point of these changes? Right now it costs you to choose to recycle it. Now you'll have to pay recycling fees up front so it's no longer financially beneficial to not recycle it.

Short term it doesn't cost you anything to just trash it either, unless where you live has a law outlawing it and you get catch. Better would be to pay a deposit when you buy then when you turn it in for recycling you get at least some of the deposit back. Maybe it can be made so that if when you buy you

Re:

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

Well unfortunately the idea of paying us to recycle just isn't economically viable, especially when we're talking about hazardous materials like those found in electronics. The issue of course is that expecting people to do the right right thing simply for the sake of doing it is a stretch at best, expecting them to pay extra to do the right thing is bordering on the insane. The only clear solution to that is to force people to pay the recycling fees upfront so that at the very least there's a reasonable ch

Re:And that....

[dmacleod808]

I do what every self respecting geek does. Fill my basement with hardware going back 20 years... never know what you might need.

Re:

[rolfwind]

Used to do that. But then new harddrives kept getting new cables standards - so while the old cable worked, it wouldn't allow for the highest speed. Flat screens made the 3-4 CRT monitors laying around obsolete (and much less attractive on a desk). Some of the older ethernet cable from a few years back isn't good enough for gigabyte ethernet that is coming out. Some of the cable isn't good enough. No one uses floppy anymore. PCI video cards are way obsolete. Extra internal modem is laughable. Old so

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[shawn(at)fsu]

That would mean that we can just leave them anywhere, right?...Well, Ill just open my truckbed with all these computer junk parts and gun it.

No thats either littering or dumping and that means your a slob who has no home training. Just one of my pet peeves, people who don't want their trash on their property but are more than will to go through all the trouble to dump it one someone else's property.

Re:

[CriX]

e-gads! Man, that is so Web 1.0 of them.

Re:And that....

[PFI_Optix]

When you buy a car battery, you pay a core fee. You get that fee back by returning your old battery (or avoid it by bringing it in) for recycling or proper disposal.

Why not do the same with electronics? Whenever you buy new electronics, if you bring in old ones for recycling you don't have to pay the fee.

Re:

[sumdumass]

The batery contains toxic materials. Most likley large amounts of lead. The acid would likly fix itself if it didn't kill anything in the process. And then there are sulfates in the battery too.

I'm not aware that these dangers are present in a modern day PC or electronic device. If there are dangers like this,I could see a core charge for it. If there isn't, I see this as just one more encroachment the government is masquerading on order to lay a tax on us. We have spoken pretty loud about not wanting more

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[MrNougat]

[blockquote]That would mean that we can just leave them anywhere, right?[/blockquote]

No, it would be the same way as they already do for tires I imagine. You're not paying for the freedom to do anything you like with the refuse; you're paying to defray the cost of proper disposal.

Re:

[hey!]

No, no, no. You want to put a deposit on the computer that you get back when you return it to the recycling center. You may not get 100% of the costs back if you recycle right away, because there's a fee the recycler gets -- just enough to make it economically feasible.

So you pay your deposit, which is the fee plus just enough to make sure you don't just dump it in the trash if you happen to break it tommorow. The deposit goes into an interest bearing account, and the longer you hang on to the computer, t

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[cayenne8]

"We just got something similar here. (http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2006/12/04/ew a ste.html). I can now drop off any of the equipment at our local SARCAN staions (same place we take bottles, cans, milk jugs, etc). Personally, I'm all for it. The extra $10 or so on a computer is worth it to me knowing that the old equipment will be properly disposed of."

Everywhere I've lived...it is treated as normal old garbage. You put it out with all the other garbage twice a week...the trashman picks it up, and h

Re:

[rtb61]

Adding to the cost of the PC will not help to bridge the digital divide, you honestly think adding 10% to the cost of the $100 notebook project is going to help anybody.

From latest accounts that notebook is likely to make an appearance in most first world schools as a cheap uniformly distributed educational computer, it will be far cheaper than the text books it will replace.

Does that mean second and third world children will be disadvantaged, no, they will just make more and the more you make the cheap

Re:

[Creepy Crawler]

Dont forget the E-Chair. We use that invention a lot.

How do the poor pay for computers now?

[grahamsz]

It costs me in the region of $25 to dispose of an old computer & monitor now. Charging up front would surely make the cost drop.

Sure it's moving to an up-front cost instead of an end of life cost- but it's still there.

It would seem that if you've got $500 to spend on a computer, then having to pay $515 is unlikely to deter you.

The much more likely result is that computers will be $15-slower so that they can maintain the same price points.

Re:

[CosmicLaxative]

I'm not saying paying up front is any better or worse than paying later. Either way it charges people, granted people are much less likely to think of an after affect so that wouldn't decrease sales as much.

Adding $15 to the price of a $500 dollar computer may not deter you or most people, but for a lot of people spending that extra $15 will make a difference.

Re:Absolute Silliness

[Coryoth]

I don't care if the tax is no more than 10$ like the article says, it's an additional grievance that I certainly don't want to deal with. Either they have the means to recycle the sorts of material that are in electronics, in which case the fees I already pay for recycling can cover that, or they don't have the means to recycle this stuff.

Recycling electronics is more difficult than other recycling, thus it costs more, and isn't generally done. Therefore to pay for recycling of electronics more money is required. If you like this money could be levied by raising the fees you already pay for recycling, or by putting a tax directly on electronics. That is, the means to recycle electronics exist in theory, but aren't running in practice because there isn't enough money to pay to run them. Right now electronics waste is a negative externality that we happily sweep under the carpet by shipping it to towns [flickr.com] in China [flickr.com] and India [bbc.co.uk], where it degrades or is broken down in an unsafe manner [flickr.com], and the toxic materials leach into the water table. All the resulting suffering and human cost is in the back-blocks of China, however, which the Chinese government certainly doesn't care about and you can safely ignore. One way or another, however, those costs have to be paid. All this proposal is doing is making you pay the costs (or at least some of them) up front. So take your choice - higher recycling fees, a tax on electronics, or misery and suffering in far away countries. The easy option is clear; the right option on the other hand...

Shipbreaking

[Garrett Fox]

There's a parallel here with the "shipbreaking" industry (photo essay) [foreignpolicy.com] in Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest countries. It's dirty, dangerous work, and people willingly do it because it pays and it's one of the country's main sources of metal. What Greenpeace and others are lobbying for is to forbid those people from being able to volunteer for the job, awful as it is.

Re:

[Jerry Rivers]

Exactly. I probably shouldn't be so cynical but I suspect that most of these fees just go into a general revenue fund, which makes them just another cash-grab by greedy governments. What they should be doing is offering tax rebates for those who can verify that they delivered their e-trash to a sanctioned recycling center.