Coming clean: Who pays for PC recycling?
A growing movement to recycle computers and other electronics has governments looking into ways to keep machines from ending up in landfills and becoming pollution threats.
 |  | ||||||||||||
By Jonathan Skillings First, there was the cardboard box in the kitchenette for old cans and bottles. Then, the plastic bin under everyone's desk for old print jobs and newspapers. Will the next trend in office recycling be a Dumpster for old computers? A growing movement to recycle PCs and other electronics has governments from King County, Wash., to the European Parliament examining ways to keep those machines from ending up in landfills and posing pollution threats. Computer makers worry that government solutions focused on redesign, recycling and disposal will raise the expense of doing business--and the price tags of their products--at a time when they can ill afford such costly changes.
Regardless of how it gets done, some form of
wide-scale recycling appears inevitable. The
computer industry acknowledges that its products
are becoming obsolete faster than it is putting
new machines on the market--leading businessess and consumers to
store tons of aging equipment until agreement
can be reached on a way to dispose of them without
doing grave harm to the world's environment.
| |||||||||||||
