i suspect the barrier is that it's too expensive to break down a piece of electronic equipment into constituent parts that can then be recycled, but given the sheer quantity of the stuff floating about it's a serious shame that the economics work out that way.
sheer quantity: yes. And a fair amount of it is actively terrible to have just randomly in landfills. So the fact that it's far too difficult to recycle these things means that lots of it gets thrown away.
Europe has strong regulations about recycling. It doesn't seem to impact the buying and selling of such stuff very much.
Generally manufacturers are required to take back what they sell and there is a fee built into the selling price which covers the recycling cost.
If firms know that they are going to have to take back stuff they will start designing it so that it comes apart more easily. I've never understood, for example, why screw base compact fluorescents don't have replaceable bulbs, most of the tubular shaped ones do.
Baltimore has an "electronics" area in the recycling yards. You have to take the stuff down there, but there are multiple locations across the city. You drive to the yard, tell the attendant that you've got electronics, and he directs you to the aisle where you unload the stuff into big piles, and they take it from there. There was a great big pile of monitors & TVs, one for various consumer elctronics, one for printers, and so on. It would suck if you didn't have a car to haul things down there, but that's how most things in Baltimore are.
*nod* Good for Baltimore, even if you do have to go there. Although... how well publicized is it? For all I know there are such things here, too, and I just know nothing about them!
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wispfox
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Date: 2009-04-13 08:22 pm (UTC)i suspect the barrier is that it's too expensive to break down a piece of electronic equipment into constituent parts that can then be recycled, but given the sheer quantity of the stuff floating about it's a serious shame that the economics work out that way.
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Date: 2009-04-22 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 09:25 pm (UTC)Generally manufacturers are required to take back what they sell and there is a fee built into the selling price which covers the recycling cost.
If firms know that they are going to have to take back stuff they will start designing it so that it comes apart more easily. I've never understood, for example, why screw base compact fluorescents don't have replaceable bulbs, most of the tubular shaped ones do.
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Date: 2009-04-22 07:14 pm (UTC)Making manufacturers take back their stuff when it stops working sounds like a wonderful plan, though!
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Date: 2009-04-13 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-22 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-14 04:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-22 07:15 pm (UTC)