hardware recycling
computers and other hardware contain incredibly toxic compounds like mercury and chromium (yum yum). so you never want to put these things straight into a landfill. nyc had apparently a one-time-only series of computer recycling events last fall, so the options quickly became limited because the printer i'm trying to get rid of doesn't work (i'm assuming that if i can't fix it, some poor guy trying to sort through donations of computer equipment for useful ends isn't going to get it going either).an activist website (why not a government site? hmm) brought me to HP's recycling page which then proceeded to calmly state i would have to pay to get them to take back their product.
so not only do we, the taxpayer, pay for getting rid of the insane packaging in the first place (yum, styrofoam!) we also have to pay a company to get rid of something with toxic components. perhaps if they had to take it back at no cost to the consumer, would we then start to get more environmentally friendly components instead? i still think that companies should be taxed with their ratio of product to packaging - it might also be an effective incentive to have an ultimate disposal tax - based on the lifespan of the actual product.
posted by thixotropic @ 9:16 PM
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