The electronics-recycling industry remains in an early phase, but it can be expected to become more efficient as it matures, perhaps with the help of new laws like the one in Rhode Island.
The soul of a new machine
Despite the lack of national e-waste legislation, computer manufacturers are beginning to come up with their own solutions. The combination of more stringent European regulations, pressure from environmental groups, and the state laws in place in California, Maine, Washington and Maryland are pushing computer producers to find solutions before solutions are imposed on them.
Hewlett-Packard has historically been the most active in supporting e-waste legislation, and operates its own recycling facilities in California and Tennessee. Dell and Apple recently unveiled programs in which old machines can be returned to them. (Dell, Hewlett, and Apple have programs in this area, although they don’t always make it easy or cheap for the consumer to dispose of a computer.)
Ultimately, legislation encouraging the design of longer lasting and less toxic machines seems vital. Not surprisingly, environmental advocates favor laws that put the onus on computer manufacturers to handle e-waste, since there is otherwise little incentive for them to build computers differently.
James Burgett, head of the Alameda County Computer Resource Center, a Berkeley, California-based nonprofit devoted to computer reuse and recycling, decries the prevailing “design to grind” mentality. He says the computer industry, as well as California’s recycling law, actively discourage computer reuse, instead encouraging the destruction of barely obsolete machines and the production of new ones.
Burgett advocates a system that would encourage producers, through taxation, to design upgradeable computers. Those making PCs with an easily upgradeable common standard would pay the least, while makers of machines that can only be discarded after a few years would pay the most. Such a system, Burgett contends, would be environmentally friendly, promote innovation, and stimulate employment in the computer industry. It would also make it easy to put revitalized computers in the hands of those who need them.
Such a system would be very contrary to the norm in a culture built on built-in obsolescence.
Then again, there’s something inherently elegant about the idea of extending the lives of computers, rather than just throwing them away.
As the UN-sponsored volume Computers and the Environment put it, “The simplest and most effective way to reduce environmental burden may be to ensure that users need fewer PCs in the first place.”
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Tim Lehnert: timlehnert@cox.net
