It's not so easy being green
Where is your old computer? Under the bed? In the garage? Maybe today is the day to donate or recycle it?
Follow @infoworldThe EPA's blog, Greenversations, recently asked readers, "After you buy a new computer, what do you do with the old one?" Great question. But even better were the answers it garnered. They ranged from the flummoxed ("They are under the bed!") to the utopian ("People need to quit thinking they need new stuff.") to the frustrated ("I drove 15 miles to take it to a recycler!") to (my favorite) the creative ("We turned them into bird houses. The Dell hosted a couple of families but the Gateway was unoccupied this year.")
But the message is loud and clear: Most of us have no idea what to do with the old one when we get a new computer. "I am constantly running into the responsible disposal issue in my office," Kathleen wrote to me recently. "I have tried many solutions, including paying someone else to come get them and do something good with them."
Computers are full of nasty stuff -- including cadmium, lead, and mercury -- that leach toxins into the water supply or atmosphere if dumped in the landfill or burned. Because we have fairly stringent laws about disposal here in the United States (compared to some parts of the world), much of our cast-off electronic equipment ends up in the landfill of poor countries, where it is burned or left to molder, and endangers the health of already impoverished people who didn't benefit from those electronics in the first place. It's clear from the EPA survey that we-the-people know all that, which is why we are hoarding computers under the bed. Even if our trash collector would take them, which he often won't, we don't want to throw them away. Who wants to be that person? So what to do?
Unfortunately recycling is not the perfect solution. Computers are difficult to recycle and much of our supposedly recycled electronic waste simply ends up poisoning someone else's backyard. "If the computer cannot be reused by another consumer, then the EPA recommends recycling the computer," an EPA spokesperson told me.
