Vendors look to ease recycling costs on users
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Major vendors including Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Sony are working together to push through a legislative mandate in the U.S. that will make it easier for users to recycle their consumer electronics.The mandate calls for companies to cut&#160;consumer electronics recycling&#160;costs and to make their reuse and recycling the highest priority when manufacturing products, panelists said during a talk at the International Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas.The cost to consumers of recycling products, including things like collection fees, is high, the panelists said, and some manufacturers have taken advantage of weak recycling laws to manufacture products that cannot be effectively recycled or reused.Some companies have standards in place to manufacture products that are easy to recycle, but others hope to drive down their own costs by adopting lower production standards, the panelists said.A legislative mandate would create a level playing field for manufacturers, said Tod Arbogast, director of sustainable business at Dell. A common approach to designing for recycling will promote the production of products that can be recycled and drive down manufacturing costs through effective product design and distribution.As an example of what can be done, Sony&#39;s new OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TV is designed to be disassembled by common household tools, said Douglas Smith, Sony&#39;s director of corporate environmental affairs. It is a step toward making products that can be easily recycled, he said.To be effective, recycling processes will be needed to convert used components back to original raw material for other products, followed by reuse or resale. Production costs can be cut through recycling and reusing materials rather than extracting and processing raw materials, said Dell&#39;s Arbogast.&quot;There are significant economic benefits in doing so as well as significant environmental benefits, which I think are often forgotten,&quot; Arbogast said.HP is adopting standards to recycle printers with plastic that doesn&#39;t convert to raw material, said Renee St. Denis, director of recycling at HP. The end-of-life resale value of printers after seven to 10 years of usage is minimal, but the high cost of plastics versus other printer components has made the company come up with innovative reuses of those plastics, she said.Dell already follows a Texas state law that requires PC manufacturers to dispose of products as easily as they are placed in the market, Arbogast said. The company accepts used Dell PCs for free via mail, Arbogast said.Sony is taking full responsibility for the products its manufactures -- cell phones, TVs and other devices -- by offering the ability to recycle them at no cost, Smith said.In March, Sony will launch a program in the U.S. where consumers can recycle consumer electronics for free by dropping them off at locations within a 20-mile radius of any SonyStyle store. Though the company has only 55 SonyStyle stores in the U.S., the company hopes to expand the effort by involving its distributors and other companies.Sony takes full responsibility for products it manufactures and has already recycled a giant TV screen belonging to the city of Tampa Bay for free, and the company wants to deliver the same recycling ability to users, said Smith.
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By John Castellucci; Journal Staff Writer  PAWTUCKET - A City Council committee is recommending the elimination of fees for the pickup of bulky trash items.
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Making it easier than ever for Americans to spend their money, and creating new business for credit and debit card companies, three of the biggest snack and soda makers are rolling out more vending machines that take plastic.
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TechWeb - Wireless companies are helping consumers become greener by promoting the recycling of old phones, market researcher iSuppli said.
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By Rob Varnon, Connecticut Post, Bridgeport  Sep. 7--It's no longer just hemp-clad college students preaching the need  for humanity to recycle more and reduce consumption of raw materials.
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By Dave DeWitte, The Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa  Dec. 13--Cups, gift cards, utensils, and razor handles are just some of  the products that could soon be available in biodegradable plastic form,  compliments of a plant under construction in Clinton.
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(InfoWorld) - As customers line up toÂ buy new PCs capable of running Microsoft's new Windows Vista OS, vendors like Dell and Hewlett-PackardÂ (HP) are preparing to process a surge of discarded, outmoded computers. Dell advises its customers running Vista Premium to use a PC loaded with a dual-core processor and 2GB of memory. As customers upgrade to meet the new standard, they face a question of how to dispose of their outmoded machines without dumping toxic lead, mercury, cadmium, and chromium into local landfills. "As enterprises deploy Vista, they may increase their rate of replacing, refreshing, or updating PCs, and we're certainly happy to work with our customers on the disposal of machines they take out of service," said Michael Cuno, a spokesman for HP. Vendors like Apple and DellÂ offer free recyclingÂ for anyone returning those companies' old PCs. Dell also runs a network that donates working computers to local nonprofit groups. HP directs consumers to drop-off points at retail stores but advises its business customers to lease their hardware instead of owning it. Dell said it was too early to tell if Vista adoptions would be fast enough to drive a surge in consumer recycling, but the company did say it had recorded an increase from 22.7 million pounds of equipment collected from customers in 2004 to 39 million in 2005. The challenge in predicting future rates is that individuals don't always dispose of their old hardware immediately, said Dell spokesman Bryant Hilton. "We often see, at least anecdotally, consumers who purchase a new computer 'pass down' the old system within the household," Hilton said. "If you have the latest and greatest running your home entertainment center, maybe the system that still works just fine but is no longer cutting edge is good for other household uses. What we of course do not want is the old computer to end up in a closet or storage for the next several years, and that's where the challenge of consumer education comes in." Corporate IT managers who discard outmoded PCs face more complex challenges than consumers because they must also worry about protecting valuable trade secrets and employees' personal data saved on hard drives and because environmental safety regulations vary widely between states or countries, said Jim O'Grady, managing director of technology value solutions for HP Financial Services Americas. O'Grady's division treats that stream of discarded computers as a business opportunity, finding new users to buy 94 percent of the 600,000 computers and parts delivered annually to HP's facility in Andover, Massachusetts. The factory sends only six percent to its recycling plants in Roseville, California and Nashville, Tennessee. Worldwide, HP handles over 1 million PCs returned at the end of their leases each year. That number could jump in 2007Â because customers scramble to upgrade their hardware after each jump in technology -- such as the launch of multicore processors, the advent of flat-panel monitors over CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors, or the sale of Windows Vista. "That's what we saw with dual-core [processors]; it made a big difference. The adjustment had been fairly steady before then," he said. HP accepts hardware from all vendors, often receiving servers built by competitors two decades ago. In the Andover warehouse, workers peel shrink-wrap off pallets loaded with CRT monitors, stacks of Toshiba Satellite and T3100 notebooks, EMC Symmetrix and Clarion storage arrays, and servers like the Appro, Digital Vax and Compaq Alpha. Dell Latitude notebooks and Compaq Deskpro desktops are piled on shelves with their peripherals sorted into nearby crates. The technicians clean dust and rust off the frames and decide whether they can resell the entire machine or just its most valuable parts, such as the processor or optical drive. They prepare hard drives for resale by wiping personal data clean with either powerful magnets, software overwrites, or physical destruction. Most PCs never reach recycling stations. HP says that owners turned in only 7 million of the 70 million computers that became obsolete in 2003, delivering the rest to municipal solid waste handlers, many in developing nations overseas that lack the environmental regulations or technology to process such toxic "e-waste." Â
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By Julie Ann Grimm, The Santa Fe New Mexican  Feb. 11--One serious hurdle to an effective recycling program in Santa Fe is the absence of viable commercial pickup.   The commercial rates are so high that few businesses can afford to participate.
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A City Council bill would compel supermarkets to collect, transport and recycle plastic bags. Supermarkets would also be required to place "easily accessible" bins for customers to drop off their bags and would also be required to sell reusable bags that customers can use in lieu of plastic and paper bags.
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Major vendors including Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Sony are working together to push through a legislative mandate in the U.S. that will make it easier for users to recycle their consumer electronics.
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When Office Depot, Inc. stores ran an electronics recycling drive last summer that accepted everything from cell phones to televisions, some stores were overwhelmed by the amount of e-trash they received.
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The good news about recent proposals from the Justice Dept. [DOJ], regarding the enforcement of intellectual property protection, is that they show the DOJ is committed to recycling.
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If storage remains free to corporate users, then there is little inclination to economize or improve utilization. Any company's goal should be not only to provide a cross-charging mechanism for recouping costs, but also to incent more efficient usage of storage.
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Retailers are increasingly offering ways for consumers to shop online but pick up their goods in stores, letting customers avoid shipping costs.
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Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) has launched free recycling in several additional  markets worldwide, meeting a timetable set in June to provide free  recycling of any Dell-branded product for consumers worldwide as part of  its global recycling policy.
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Plan to have domestic rubbish weighed by microchips in bins in order to encourage recycling.
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The fine holiday tradition of returns goes high tech. Here's how to unload unwanted plastic.