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 Washington 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.

Conflict: A world of problems
It is a classic case of regulators vs. industry. But this time, computer makers must do battle with governments around the globe.

Disposal: Too hot to handle
All sides in the debate say recycling is a good idea. The question is how to treat highly toxic elements central to the products.

Solution: Redesigning the PC
The ultimate answer to the problem of high-tech pollution may send hardware engineers back to the drawing board--literally.

Conflict: A world of problems

Once a week, a truck stops at a facility run by the Public Service Enterprise Group, loaded with desktop computers, laptops, fax machines, photocopiers, television sets and video recorders.

Many of the computers will be fully refurbished, getting clean hard drives, repaired motherboards, and even some elbow grease to wipe away unsightly smudges. The remaining hardware that is deemed unsalvageable will be dismantled for parts: plastic will be smelted, lead and zinc reclaimed, gold and silver extracted.

"For all our waste, there is no waste," said Gary Wohler, investment recovery specialist of Public Service Enterprise. Last year, the energy services company recycled 766 computers, 814 monitors and 31 printers this way.

It is a telling sign that a truck loaded with expensive electronics is working for the sake of environmentalism in a place like New Jersey--home to the "Sopranos" and a state not widely known for its ecological sensitivities. But New Jersey is one of a handful of states with an activist bent, putting increasing pressure on electronics makers to address what some circles see as a worldwide environmental threat. And Wohler's company is one of many that has discovered recycling religion.

Two decades after becoming perhaps the most indispensable fixture of the modern workplace, the personal computer is confronting an ugly and unavoidable truth: As with all other electronic devices powering the Information Age, it will eventually end up like any other product--in the garbage heap. In fact, watchdog groups say PCs are going out of service faster than they are being produced.

"Most of these things are still sitting on shelves or in warehouses," said Jeffrey Tumarkin, team leader at the Environmental Protection Agency's WasteWise program, which has some 1,100 participants, from Anheuser Busch and Eastman Kodak to mom-and-pop stores, schools and state governments. "For companies that have thousands, it's a huge issue."

Regulators, corporations and environmental groups around the globe are struggling to decide how to dispose of a seemingly endless supply of PCs and who should be held responsible for keeping tons of hazardous waste out of the environment. Although concerns over discarded computers have been voiced for years, the debate is coming to a head with the threat--and increasing actuality--of government action worldwide.

State and national governments and environmental groups are pointing to PC makers to take responsibility. But companies argue that their counterparts in other industries, such as automakers, are not held similarly accountable for their junked products. Moreover, the issue could not come at a worse time for computer hardware manufacturers, which have been squeezed by eroding profit margins and an overall slowdown in the technology industry.

Legislation pending in the European Union, for instance, "would be very costly," said John Minter, environmental affairs representative at Dell Computer. "Somehow, manufacturers would be incurring that cost."

As the debate continues, the pile of old PCs keeps growing. The US National Safety Council estimates that, in 2002 alone, the number of PCs becoming obsolete will outrun the number of new PCs hitting the market by some 3.4 million. Overall, the EPA estimates, computers and other electronic equipment account for about 220 million tons of waste per year in the United States.

And volume is only the beginning of the ecological issues posed by decaying PCs. The machinery also contains elements like lead, mercury and arsenic that can be classified as hazardous waste.

"We're not talking Love Canal, but we are talking about some real potential problems," said H. Scott Matthews, research director in the Green Design Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University, referring to the Niagara Falls toxic waste scandal of the 1970s.

Given such important health issues, government agencies and environmental groups say their main concern is with proper disposal, an issue that defies easy solutions. Once the machines are past the point of being resold in corporate garage sales or donated to charitable groups, that means recycling--separating the raw materials to be processed for reuse--and containing hazardous materials.

A first step in a cooperative approach came last month when representatives of government, industry and environmental groups met to establish the National Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative. In a series of discussions over the course of the next year, the 45 participants aim to come to an agreement on a system for electronics disposal. Other issues, including hazardous materials and product design, remain highly contentious and will not be on the table.

The goal is to figure out "how to get from what some say is an 11 percent (rate of) recycling and reuse to a much higher number, and over what period of time," said Gary Davis, director of the Centre for Clean Products and Clean Technologies at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, who is serving as the moderator for the discussions. "Everyone agrees that it needs to increase, and so we're starting from here."

Although they support recycling efforts, computer makers say consumers must shoulder a large part of the burden for those initiatives to succeed. Companies such as IBM, Dell Computer and Sony Electronics have recently launched recycling and reuse programs aimed primarily at consumers, and the Electronic Industries Alliance trade group has drafted an initiative on the issue.

Their work is something of a pre-emptive strike. The industry, which has historically clamoured against any government supervision, wants to avoid having bureaucrats in Washington, Tokyo, Brussels or Boston tell it what to do on the issue.

"Either we solve the problem ourselves as an industry, or we'll have government try to solve the problem," said Mark Small, vice president of environmental affairs at Sony.

Many governments appear willing to do just that.

The International Association of Electronics Recyclers reports that nine countries already have corporate "take back" laws for discarded electronics--including computers in some cases--and that 22 more countries will join them within five years. In Japan, for example, a law went into effect last month requiring manufacturers to take back used TVs, refrigerators, washing machines and air conditioners. Computer equipment isn't covered in the law but could be in the future.

In the United States, 45 mercury-related and 21 electronics bills have been introduced at the state level, with bills in Oregon and Arkansas proposing fees on the purchase of PCs to pay for recycling, according to the association. April marked the first anniversary of a law in Massachusetts that bans CRT (cathode-ray tube) monitors from landfills, and other states are considering similar measures.

"In the next four years, the issue of computer pollution is going to increase and increase," said Jeremiah Baumann, environmental health advocate at the US Public Interest Research Group. "The computer industry is going to have to face this."

Looking to Europe for guidance

Perhaps the best road map for US recycling legislation can be found in Europe. A key stimulus there comes from the European Union, which through its parliamentary arm is working to pull various existing and proposed national programs into a united front through legislation known as the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Directive, which encompasses not just computers and related devices, but also video games, digital cameras, refrigerators, washing machines, toasters and hair dryers.

The European Parliament this month will have a key vote on legislation that would require electronics manufacturers to phase out elements such as lead and mercury and to take back used products.

"As the (legislation) moves in Europe, that's going to move the debate for the rest of the world," said Dell's Minter.

The WEEE Directive sets a target date of December 2005 to begin annual collection of, on average, at least 9 pounds per inhabitant from private households. A related directive sets January 2008 as the date by which manufacturers must find replacements for lead, mercury and cadmium, as well as for chemicals such as flame retardants that show up in circuit boards and plastic covers.

The EU adheres to what it calls the "polluter pays" principle, according to which electronics makers must be held accountable for treatment, recovery and disposal of their products when they become waste and that private households should be able to return the products free of charge.

This doctrine "means extending the legal, moral and financial responsibility of producers," said Ted Smith, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, an advocacy group focused on the high-tech sector. It is a government's way of telling manufacturers, "your responsibility goes beyond the initial sale and through the life cycle, including disposal," he added.

The costs of recycling

It's the issue of disposal that has drawn manufacturers' attention. They're worried about the logistics--and especially about how it will translate into dollars and cents.

"The recycling targets that were set are pretty high," Minter said. "It's not certain how achievable they are. It's never been done before on this scale."

The EU expects the net costs of its collection and recycling requirements for all household electronic equipment to total between US$450 million and $800 million per year in its 15 member states, with commercial equipment adding roughly 20 percent to those costs. For the individual consumer, the requirements would likely mean a premium of about 1 percent for most electronic goods, and as much as 3 percent for monitors, according to EU estimates. That could add some $10 to $50 to the typical price of a PC.

Or the cost could come when consumers get rid of their old equipment. In a recycling program IBM launched last November, the company is charging $29.99 for consumers and small businesses to ship it any brand of PC, monitor, printer or peripheral. Retailer Best Buy, which will be launching its own electronics recycling initiative later this year, charged between $10 and $25 per device in a pilot program last year, according to a spokesman.

"Economies of scale will play a big role," said Tony Hainault, a policy analyst with Minnesota's Office of Environmental Assistance, which worked with Sony to set up a recycling program for the consumer giant's products. "It will be important to collect a large volume of this material to make it cost-effective to recycle."

In the end, as with many environmental issues, the success of computer recycling may rest with the individual.

As the EPA's Tumarkin put it: "We say it's on everyone in the supply chain, from manufacturer to consumer."

Disposal: Too hot to handle

Old computers don't just fade away--and that's where the problem begins.

Just ask IBM, which handled 60,000 tons of computer equipment at the end of its useful life in 1999, coming just from equipment it leased and its own internal operations.

But that volume is nothing compared with the avalanche of old machines that could soon bury Big Blue and other computer makers if pending legislation in Europe and elsewhere requires them to take back their products. The EPA estimates that 75 percent of obsolete electronics are still gathering dust in storerooms and attics.

The reason behind such warehousing of useless products is simple: No one agrees on the best way to dispose of them.

"There's still not an infrastructure for recycling electronics as there is for newspapers," said Renee St. Denis, manager of product recycling solutions for Hewlett-Packard. It is, she said, "an industry that's still evolving."

The major obstacle impeding progress of electronics recycling is the uniquely hazardous nature of the material. Those on all sides of the issue are focused on two primary concerns: the sheer number of devices involved and the environmental risks posed by certain components if they are improperly discarded.

Of most concern are heavy metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium, as well as chlorofluorocarbons and brominated flame retardants, which can seep from landfills into water supplies or waft from incinerators into the atmosphere.

"The immediate problem is a solid waste problem," said the US Public Interest Research Group's Jeremiah Baumann. "The more fundamental problem is the use of toxic metals, heavy metals, in computers."

The potential for harm from many of those elements has been well established and has forced changes in consumer products. Lead, for instance, has been banned from gasoline and household paints, and high mercury levels have kept certain fish off restaurant menus for years.

The exact extent of the threat from those elements in PCs and related devices, however, has not yet been established.

"What is known is that PCs will leach, can leach and do leach," said Ted Smith of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, which estimates that 40 percent of the lead in landfills comes from consumer electronics. Smith acknowledged the need for more testing but said, "What is known is that if you burn this stuff, the metals don't burn and get back out into the environment."

The European Union says the hazardous content of electrical and electronic equipment will cause "major environmental problems" if obsolete machines are not suitably treated--and that lack of proper treatment is the norm, with more than 90 percent of electronic waste dumped in landfills, incinerated or recovered without proper precautions.

Those companies that do follow careful cleanup procedures face yet another daunting challenge: the financial cost of doing things right.

Last year, the Public Service Enterprise Group--a partner of the EPA's WasteWise program--resold 128 computer systems and 150 monitors and donated just over 400 computer systems to community organisations such as the Boys and Girls Clubs, on top of several hundred that it sent off for recycling. The cost was $130,000, but the equipment that was sold raised only about $43,000.

"This operation runs in the red," said Gary Wohler of the enterprise group. "Our impression is that the market for this stuff is somewhat limited--it's becoming somewhat saturated now."

HP has had costly experiences as well. The company runs its own recycling operation, which deals with some 1,500 to 1,700 tons of obsolete systems per month. The program is run jointly with Canadian mining company Noranda, which sees an opportunity to mine for materials from PCs that it otherwise would dig out of the ground.

The returns hardly constitute a moneymaking operation. "We pay Noranda to process this material," HP's St. Denis said. "It's definitely a cost business for us, but one that we feel is important to participate in."

Not all companies have had such expensive experiences. Sony's Mark Small said his company's costs were just "pennies per pound" in a 1999 pilot recycling program with the state of Minnesota. Sony believes that in a five-year, national program it would be possible to "get recycling costs down to zero, or at least below landfill costs," he added.

The manageable costs were particularly surprising because the project focused on the removal of residential products, in part because their relative lack of uniformity makes them more expensive to process. The program collected nearly 700 tons of used electronic products--about 10 percent of them PCs and monitors--at a cost of just under $300 per ton.

"One thing we learned in our project is that it actually costs a lot less than people thought," said Tony Hainault of Minnesota's Office of Environmental Assistance. Although Sony's experience appears to be the exception, he is hopeful that a solution for wide-scale recycling may not be far off.

"The fundamentals of the infrastructure are all in place," Hainault said. "It's just a matter of will, to decide now is the time to do this."

Solution: Redesigning the PC

All parties involved in the recycling debate agree there is only one way to achieve environmental safety in computer disposal: Redesign the hardware from scratch.

The agreement ends quickly, however, when it comes to the speed at which careful design should happen.

Critics say the computer industry, for all its vaunted innovation, is as guilty of stonewalling as other businesses that have resisted calls for safer, cleaner products. PC makers counter that they are light years ahead of other industries with far more obvious pollution problems, even though they operate under harrowing deadlines and competitive pressures.

Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition's Ted Smith says those tight time constraints are a big part of the problem.

"The electronics industry is so oriented to today," said Smith, whose organisation monitors the environmental practices of computer makers. "To get them to look into the future is the real challenge."

Smith compares the computer industry today to the US automobile industry in the 1970s, when it was confronted with Japanese cars that were more fuel efficient and thus had less of an impact on the environment. "Prevention is always not only better but cheaper than cleanup. You can pay now or you can pay later," he said.

Dell's John Minter also uses the auto industry for comparison but has a different perspective.

"By no means do I think the industry has had its head in the sand," he said. "We really are probably a lot farther ahead than the auto industry was."

Why the design is so difficult
The obstacles to pollutant-free computing centre on the raw elements that make these machines tick. A primary offender is lead, which is used routinely on circuit boards and is an essential component of CRTs that blocks radiation.

The densest of elements used in computers, lead is also one of the most resistant to change. Even highly toxic materials like mercury and arsenic take a back seat to this heavy metal.

"Right now, the main concern is with lead," said Gordon Hui, an analyst in the EPA's Extended Product Responsibility program. "It's hard to assess what might be the toxicity of other electronics components."

But replacements for lead are slow in coming. Although the element has been virtually eliminated from the front panel of glass, the industry has been less successful in finding alternatives to lead in other parts of the monitor. (To enhance the degree to which desktop monitors are recyclable, US manufacturers standardised funnel glass in the early 1990s.) Progress on alternatives to lead in solder also has been slow.

The amount of lead varies depending on the monitor and on who's doing the measuring. The EPA says the average is about 4 pounds, while California's Department of Toxic Substances and Control says 5 to 7 pounds. IBM estimates that its 17-inch monitor has 1.1 pounds, according to Wayne Balta, director of corporate environmental affairs at Big Blue.

The difficulty of finding a technically feasible substitute for lead has prompted the European Community to revise its proposed legislation targeting hazardous materials in electronics equipment. As the proposal now stands, lead in computer monitors is exempt from general regulations aimed at phasing out elements.

The move toward more environmentally friendly PCs and peripherals seems fraught with trade-offs. The increasing popularity of flat-panel screens as a replacement for CRT monitors, for instance, could reduce the risks posed by lead but would probably introduce a greater amount of mercury into the equation.

Companies are quick to point out that cleanup programs may pose problems of their own. The Electronic Industries Alliance urges consumers to write to elected officials to oppose "misguided" attempts to ban mercury from electronics or to mandate electronics recycling.

Bans on mercury--and thus energy-efficient mercury lamps--"may actually have an adverse effect on the environment" because they would lead to greater release of mercury from coal-fired electric power plants and would "impose large costs on the industry and, in turn, on consumers," according to a posting on the industry alliance's Web site.

It is important, IBM's Balta says, "to make sure the cure isn't worse than the disease."

"Design for environment"

If the heavy metals in computers make for rather intractable challenges, PC makers have found greater success in making it easier to upgrade aging but still functional machines and to take apart obsolete ones. It's an approach the industry refers to as "design for environment."

The EIA, for example, points to Apple's use of an access door and modular design in its Power Mac line to allow easy installation, upgrading and servicing of expansion cards, memory and storage devices. In that same vein, IBM says it has reduced the variety of screws, bolts, plastics and glues in its products, changes that make it easier for recyclers to disassemble and process old computers.

But other design impulses may get in the way. "The problem is the whole faster, cheaper, smaller push," said Gary Davis of the Centre for Clean Products and Clean Technologies at the University of Tennessee. "When things get cheaper, they tend to lose their value for recycling and reuse."

Indeed, the demand for recycled products remains modest at best.

The European Union, which has put a great deal of pressure on electronics makers to take responsibility for obsolete products, acknowledges that producers have "hardly any economic incentive" to factor waste management into the design stage. But it believes its doctrine of extended producer responsibility and mandates for product take-back and recycling will provide that incentive.

The EU's parliamentary arm also is examining a proposal to improve waste management at the product design and manufacture stage. That sort of effort is particularly offensive to an industry that prides itself on its voluntary achievements and independence.

"It's inevitable that design will play a role," said Holly Evans of the Electronic Industries Alliance. "But industry is opposed to government suddenly telling them how to design their products, so that's sort of a touchy area."

Given such vastly different political perspectives, on top of already-complicated engineering issues, many believe that some form of pollution is probably inevitable if computing technology continues to play an important role in society.

The Green Design Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University is apparently bracing for that reality in this posting on its Web site: "Generally speaking, it will be impossible to remove all toxics from the design of computers."

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