Results tagged “electronics recycling”

Whoo-hoo! The lower-case "eco," capitalized everything else trend is finally taking off!

This ecoATM takes your old cell and gives you store credit for your troubles. Simple! The first ecoATM went to a furniture store in Omaha and things appear to be going great so far. According to the Twitter stream of Eric Rosser (@ecoATM), the outfit's VP of Sales and Marketing, the machine bought back over $100 in phones on its second day, including a "perfect" BlackBerry Curve. Not so perfect to the previous owner, apparently...

This CrunchGear post has more info.

[via Gizmodo]

The EPA estimates that out of the 2.25 million tons of electronic waste generated by the U.S. each year, only 18 percent (405,000 tons) of it is collected for recycling. I discovered the statistic in this Treehugger story about e-waste, which paints a very troubling picture of what poor handling of e-waste is doing to developing nations (the 60 Minutes video helps).

But it's not all doom and gloom. Just by reading this post, you're going to at least think again before tossing that old cellphone into the trash, aren't you? Failing that, companies like WM Recycle America are taking steps to make sure that every bit of electronics they collect is responsibly recycled.

And it could pay off.  Although recycling electronics isn't cheap, there's $15,000 worth of metals in a metric ton of used cellphones waiting for enterprising folks that are willing to find economical and ecologically-friendly ways to extract it.

Shock and dismay.

iRobot, the company behind the geek- and cat-friendly Roomba family of robotic vacuum cleaners is dispensing some terribly outmoded waste disposal advice. After receiving a non-functioning refurbished Roomba Scooba, iRobot quickly mobilized to send Graham Hill of TreeHugger fame a new one.

+1 for customer service!

But things turned decidedly eco-unfriendly--bordering on eco-hostile--when iRobot instructed him to just toss out the old one and let the garbage men deal with it. ONE MILLION DKP MINUS!!!1!!!

Catch up on the saga over at Treehugger.

As a nation, we love our TVs. So much so that we're keeping nearly 100 million of old, likely CRT-based relics collecting dust. The New York Times reports:

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates 99.1 million televisions sit unused in closets and basements across the country. Consumer response to recycling has been enormous in states where the laws have taken effect. Collection points in Washington State, for example, have been swamped by people like Babs Smith, 55, who recently drove to RE-PC, a designated electronics collection and repurposing center on the southern edge of Seattle.

The good news is that some electronics recycling centers can barely keep up with the influx of old electronics. The bad news, as the Times piece points out, is that local governments, electronics makers, consumers and even inmates are getting caught in a sad patchwork of programs and state regulations that still don't completely address the safe disposal of electronics.

You've probably seen pictures or footage of people in emerging countries, many of them very young, mired in toxic compounds as they scavenge for useful materials from mountains of e-waste that's shipped from the U.S. and other wealthy nations. To help combat this, recycling programs have sprouted up and firms are participating in responsible disposal methods like reuse.

Giving your old PC new life sounds great, right? Gartner's Meike Escherich isn't convinced...

"Although reuse must be considered preferable to most other forms of waste management, without effective controls, exports for reuse can be an excuse for dumping, and, even in the best case, result in 'passing the toxic buck' to emerging economies, which are seldom equipped to deal with this problem in an environmentally and socially responsible way," said Meike Escherich, principal research analyst at Gartner.

The problem is that these refurbished PCs, which are very much in demand in these countries, will eventually fail or become obsolete. When that happens, the landfill-bound equipment ends up leeching toxins in a country or region that's ill-equipped to recycle electronics.

In short, our problem still becomes someone else's.

Source: SiliconRepublic.com

Now 18 states are covered! Heather Clancy of GreenTech Pastures reports:

Dell and Goodwill Industries have expanded the scope of their consumer technology recycling program (called Reconnect) to cover Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma and West Virginia.

Visit the Reconnect website to find the nearest recycling center near you.

If you're any kind of computer geek, there's a good chance that you've got tons of non-working spare parts occupying a couple of boxes in your closet or basement. Heck, you probably have whole PCs that can't crunch a single number.

Isn't it about time to recycle them?

Nathan Kirsch of Legit Reviews shows us how easy it is to seek out a local recycling facility that will accept your old electronics.

Still looking for a better solution here in St. Louis Missouri I ran across a site called e-cycle St. Louis that lists local recycling centers. The site listed 11 recycling centers in the St. Louis area that are said to accept most items at no charge. A couple of items, such as computer monitors and TVs, may include a $5 fee. This fee is said to be necessary to help cover the safe and appropriate method of breaking down these items for recycling. One of the recycling centers was fairly close to where I live, so recycling is not much more work than throwing something away.

You might have to part with a few bucks, but think of all the storage space you reclaim and the good you're doing the environment. Definitely worth it.

Did you know that Panasonic has a recycling program that lets customers drop off defunct, Panny-branded gear at no charge?

They do, and their program has just expanded to 310 locations by adding 30 more drop-off points in the Southeast, specifically "Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia." According to Yoshi Yamada, Chairman and CEO of Panasonic Corporation of North America, they plan to blanket the U.S. with 800 locations by 2011.

You can check for a Panasonic drop-off point (and other electronic makers, too) in your neck of the woods by visiting MRM's website. After all, that old, busted VCR in the closet isn't doing anyone any favors...

Source: Press Release