Dell & HP Talk Up E-Waste Programs
HP and Dell Inc., which together sell more than half the country’s PCs, are earning praise from environmentalists for using more eco-friendly components and recycling their products when consumers discard them. They have a program that shreds old components into tiny pieces and mechanically sorts the fragments into piles of steel, aluminum, plastic and precious metals. Those scraps are sent to smelting plants, mostly in the Sacramento area, where they are melted down for reuse. It’s good to see that programs like this are starting to take off!
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says American consumers generated nearly 2 million tons of electronic waste in 2005. Gartner estimates that 133,000 PCs are discarded by U.S. homes and businesses each day. Only 10 to 15 percent of electronics are currently recycled, industry analysts say. The rest collects dust in people’s homes or gets dumped into municipal landfills, where environmentalists worry toxic chemicals can leak out.
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