I just read a story that a lot of businesses claiming to "recycle" old computers really just send them away to be burnt for the metals inside. How do I know if my computer is really being recycled?

This is a tough question to answer, and you certainly raise a very sad fact. It's true that 50 to 80% of all electronics waste that is collected for recycling here in the United States gets shipped off to countries where environmental regulations are much looser.

In places like India and China, migrant workers smash and burn old computers and pick through the toxic waste, often with bare hands, to collect the gold wiring and other valuable internal parts. The poisonous smoke and runoff not only hurt the workers themselves, they pollute the air and water supply, harming the health of entire communities.

This is clearly an environmental and human rights tragedy. The countries that house these hazardous operations need to be doing more to regulate them. We here in the United States should also be taking steps to make sure that this no longer occurs. When people send old electronics equipment off to be recycled, this is clearly not what they have in mind.

The US government could help to prevent scandals such as this by signing onto a treaty that helps regulate trade in hazardous waste, known as the Basel Convention. So far, the United States, Haiti and Afghanistan are the only countries that have failed to ratify the treaty. For more information on this common-sense solution, visit the Basel Action Network's website at: http://www.ban.org

Until the government gets involved in protecting people from problems like this, the only way to know if an electronics recycling company is really recycling your old computer is to ask them. If they don't know where the computer goes once they pass it on for you, that is a pretty clear warning flag that there could be a problem.

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