| Staples Tries to Make Recycling Easier |
| Written by Nino Marchetti | ||
| Tuesday, 04 December 2007 | ||
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The survey seems to be tied to America Recycles Day, which was November 15. The National Recycling Coalition added to the information Staples provided by estimating that over 133,000 computers are discarded without thought daily here in the United States. This is in addition to information from the EPA, which reports we generate around two million tons of used electronics yearly. One other thing to contemplate, says Staples, is that between 2000 and 2007 an estimated 500 million computers have become obsolete here alone. Now the retailer, of course, wants you to come in-house to recycle, saying it's the first national chain to "launch an in-store, everyday computer and office technology recycling program," which lets you recycle any piece of tech for a small fee. Now we aren't saying you have to use Staples to recycle your old IBM PC, but perhaps you should find a better home for it than your garage or the city dump next time you clean out your stuff? Just a thought...
Comments
(5)
Sometimes the recycling is worse than th
written by Thomas Boutell , December 04, 2007
Do they recycle these in an environmentally sane fashion? Or do they get the gold out at any cost and dump the rest in the Yangtze?
50% of a story
written by weee , December 05, 2007
Thomas and I can't be the only ones who'd like to know what Staples are going to do with the stuff!
Are they going to: dump it in pristine rivers? send it to China for them to dump it in pristine rivers? send it to...? have they got a partner in this? are they making a large investment in it? what motivated them to do it? so many questions that we'd be interested in hearing answers to. Will you consider giving stories 450 words rather than 235, please...
Make recycling free
written by Andrew , December 05, 2007
The masses, who are generally apathetic about the environment, will only accept electronics recycling if it is cheaper to recycle computers than to throw them out. This means that either recycling old computers is free or throwing them out is heavily taxed. If it is cheaper to just chuck that old computer, few will bother to recycle it.
...
written by Mel Carroll , December 19, 2007
Illinois has an electronics recycling program that is pretty widely used - computers, phones, faxes, tv's. No river dumping as far as we know. We're just trying to keep our landfills less toxic by recycling metals.
Insider's viewpoint
written by Chris , January 21, 2008
Just from working for Staples as associate and as one of their EasyTechs, I can tell you only what they have told us. Staples is collecting the e-waste (the company has collected cell phones for years, just not the big stuff) and sending it back to their warehouses as appropriate. From their, its shipped to Amandi who is allegedly "nationally known" and very responsible. Amandi does make a point to completely wipe hard drives as that's part of the fee charged.
The small fee is $10 per monitor, computer, or printer. Small objects like mice, keyboards, speakers, et cetera are free to recycle. They do not take the very large office copiers though. On another note, Staples does firmly recycle ink cartridges. Now there's big money. As a note to that though: HP buys up all of the HP brand cartridges that Staples collects (and pays you for) and crushes them down to raw materials for recycling into new cartridges. Feel free to shoot me your questions if you want to know more about how Staples really operates. | ||
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Recycling electronics - good. Throwing away electronics - bad. How many gadget-happy Americans live by this standard? Not many, according to a new survey commissioned by retailer 
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