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 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. This will inevitably lead to an increase in 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 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.

Trackback from your own site.