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Dude, Recycle Your Old Dell
Dan Simon
 Dell
Computers is joining a growing list of computer makers now offering
customers a recycling option for their old machines, a measure already
available to the company’s European and Japanese customers.
The Dell plan adds a recycling choice to its Dell
Exchange web site. Visitors can also consider trading their machine
in on a new one, auctioning it off through the company’s auction
site or donating the used computer to charity. Each category has specific
requirements regarding processor speed and other factors that help
determine how viable the used equipment is for a particular option.
The company joins IBM, Compaq, Hewlett Packard and Micron in offering
computer-recycling programs. Most of these, including the Dell plan,
require the consumer to bear some cost in the process. In Dell’s
case, it’s to ship the used computer to a recycling center.
Since desktop machines are generally fairly heavy, such shipping may
cost the consumer enough money to discourage them from participating
in the program, critics of plan argue.
Dell, the world’s number two computer seller behind the combined
Hewlett Packard/Compaq, had been under heavy criticism from groups
such as the Computer Take Back Campaign (their report “Dude,
why won’t they take back my Dell?” is available at http://www.grrn.org/e-scrap/Dell_TakeBack_Report.pdf),
even though the company had already offered its business clients a
similar program.
In fairness to the company, Dell maintains 80 percent of its customers
are businesses, and it was simply prioritizing its recycling efforts.
Since 1991, when it began its business recycling effort, the company
says it has recovered more than two million used computers worldwide.
Environmental advocates maintain the industry needs to come up with
a better way of dealing with the issue. Computers are made with a
variety of heavy metals and organic pollutants that can be difficult
to safely remove and recycle from the machines, but can also leach
out if the computers are deposited in landfills.
One suggested course is creating a producer responsibility system
where the manufacturer is responsible for the materials throughout
the entire life of the machine.
Advocates of this course maintain it would encourage computer makers
to design more environmentally benign machines that would be easier
and cheaper to recycle at the end of their brief lives. Proponents
say consumers would be more willing to pay a built-in recycling fee
at the beginning of their relationship with the computer, than they
are at the end when it has little or no value to them.
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