PC Makers, Critics Join EBay Recycle Push
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Online auction company eBay Inc.  EBAY.O on Thursday unveiled an initiative to join personal  computer makers and their environmental critics in an effort to  recycle more of the up to 400 million electronic products that  are thrown out every year.
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SACRAMENTO, Calif.  - Thousands of bargain hunters  flocked to a California state garage sale on Saturday, snapping  up unwanted property from confiscated penknives to cut-price  laptop computers.
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(InfoWorld) - Electronics manufacturers will have to collect and recycle outdated PCs -- but not TVs -- from consumers in Texas, according to a bill working its way through the state legislature that could become a model for other states. According to the legislation, called House Bill 2714, manufacturers would have to place a sticker on any computer or monitor they wanted to sell in the state, informing consumers that they may return the equipment to the vendor for recycling or reuse without paying an additional fee. Each manufacturer would then have to file an annual report to state regulators listing the weight of computer equipment they have recycled or reused. PCs and computer peripherals put out in curbside trash end up in landfills, where they can leach lead, mercury, and other toxins into the environment. "Texans generate a massive amount of 'e-waste' every year -- enough to threaten to overwhelm our landfills, let alone poison our air or water. But I believe that if we partner with manufacturers who are increasingly concerned about the issue, we can find a better home for our aging computers and iPods," said the bill's sponsor, Texas state Senator Kirk Watson, in a statement on his Web site. The bill passed votes in the state Senate and House of Representatives in May and awaits a signature from Texas Governor Rick Perry. A spokeswoman for the governor's office confirmed on Friday that Perry had received the bill but said he had not yet announced whether he would sign it by the June 17 deadline. Despite the bill's smooth progress through the Texas statehouse, some recycling experts warn that it is incomplete. The bill has a good fiscal structure as it assigns environmental responsibility to the PC manufacturer instead of the consumer, the state, or the landfill operator, said Ted Smith, senior strategist for the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. But the bill is flawed because it focuses only on PCs and their peripherals instead of covering a wider array of electronic equipment. "We prefer the 'producer responsibility' approach rather than the consumer fee approach, so that part we like," Smith said. "However, the Texas bill only applies to computers and not to TVs -- this is a major weakness and is as a result of Dell's lobbying position. TVs are just as toxic and problematic as computers, and we favor a comprehensive approach that covers both." Dell has a major corporate presence in the state as the world's second-largest PC vendor has headquarters in Round Rock, just outside of the state capital of Austin. On Friday, Dell denied opposing the inclusion of television sets in the law, but said that TVs do not fit easily into standard PC recycling streams because they include different components than computers and have a far longer lifecycle. "Our focus was, 'Let's make sure that IT and consumer electronics get in there, and if legislators want to put other electronics in the mix, that would be fine with us.' But what we didn't want to do was to slow or stall the process of the legislation," said Dell spokeswoman Colleen Ryan. In fact, if the law passes in its current form, it would have no impact on Dell's current recycling policies because the company already offers worldwide free recycling of used Dell equipment, she said. "Our take is that the marketplace is best positioned to address recycling and that the legislature shouldn't collect fees or create new government infrastructure for recycling. We think Texas is an opportunity to set an example for the rest of the nation." Dell is now working with policymakers in several other states to create the same type of "market-driven" approach to recycling, including electronics recycling bills now pending in North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Tennessee, she said. Those bills have a different model than existing laws in California, Maine, Maryland, and Washington, which impose taxes on consumers or fees on vendors in order to fund government programs that administer the recycling programs, she said. Despite the criticism of its lobbying efforts, Dell has announced a handful of recycling and power-efficiency iniatives in recent days. On Friday, Dell said that the EPEAT government procurement Web site awarded its highest rating to Dell's Latitude D630 notebook PC as well as the OptiPlex 740 and 745 desktops. Dell also announced a plan on Tuesday to reduce the carbon intensity of its global operations by 15 percent by 2012, helping reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. "We ultimately think this [state bill] is the simplest, most effective way to recycle outdated electronics, and we hope the governor sees it the same way," Ryan said.
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While overall sales may not be all that impressive, there is still a rabid enthusiast community looking to snag some 100 special edition pink-colored Microsoft Zunes, which have begun appearing on eBay.
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Major vendors including Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Sony are working together to push through a legislative mandate in the U.S. that will make it easier for users to recycle their consumer electronics.
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As businesses and consumers upgrade to meet Vista's demands, old hardware needs to be dealt with.
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Dell says it is ahead of schedule in its efforts to recycle computer equipment.
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LONDON -- PC World, Britain's largest chain of computer superstores, will say goodbye to floppy disks once the current stash is gone.
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Top TV makers have formed a recycling company to handle tech waste and comply with changing state laws.
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(InfoWorld) - A massive computing grid helps eBayÂ make changes to its auction Web site on the fly while maintaining a 99.94 percent up time, said Paul Strong, a distinguished research scientist there. While eBay designed most of its grid infrastructure, the company also wants to participate in standards-setting communities to bring more improvements to computer grid technology, Strong said Tuesday during the GridWorld conference in Washington, D.C. EBay's core business is hosting Web-based auctions, not in creating new grid technologies, he said. "We don't see ourselves as an IT development shop for development tools," he said. By working together on grid standards, participants can help "transitions be less painful," he added. On Monday, the Open Grid Forum standards body officially opened for business, delivering on its commitment made in June to detail its goals during GridWorld. EBay has made great strides in its back-end technology since the late '90s, but the company still wants more improvements, including the ability to change the site's code nearly instantaneously, Strong said. Right now, the company, with more than 15,000 servers in its production environment, distributes new application code to its Web site every two weeks, he said. EBay developers write about 100,000 lines of code each week, and using a traditional grid made up of about 350 Windows, Linux and Solaris computers, the site takes about 20 minutes to update with the new features, Strong said. With 104 million items listed for auction on eBay every day, the company needs to keep the site running while those changes are happening, he added. "We can't afford to take the site down," he said. "It's like changing the engines on a jumbo jet mid-flight." About $1,608 worth of merchandise sells on eBay every second, and a vehicle sells every two minutes on average, Strong said. A trading card sells every six seconds, and a pound of the Korean food kimchi sells every minute. The site has seen huge growth since the late '90s, he noted. Ebay.com has gone from 54 million page views a day in June 1999 to 874 million in December 2005, Strong said. The site sent out 35 million e-mail messages a day in December, compared to 1 million a day in June '99. And the site's up time went from about 97 percent to 99.94 percent in that time period. Still, the company would like more grid functionality, Strong said. EBay would like to get closer to that mythical 99.999 percent up time, he said. "We break almost anything we use," he said. "We're pretty much at the extreme limit of what you can do with off-the-shelf technology." And eBay doesn't want to wait to update the site every two weeks, he added. "We want to be faster; we want to be more agile," he said. "If someone comes up with a cool change that's not that big, I'd like to be able to roll it tomorrow." Improvements in grid computing is where community standards can help, he said. "We believe everyone has something to contribute," he said to the GridWorld audience. "We'd like to share ... with the community." GridWorld is organized by IDG, the parent company of IDG News Service.
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This is the first e-waste plan supported by a consensus of TV and IT hardware manufacturers, according to the Electronic Industries Alliance.
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Will dirty dealers scare eBay users off?
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Computer users are being asked to donate their unused processor power to help solve social and environmental research problems. The IBM-backed project, called World Community Grid, aims to put the untapped
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More and more resellers of used computer equipment are charging to erase data that may still be left on hard drives.
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TORONTO (CP) - Ontario residents will likely have to pay more for their televisions, computers and electronic gadgets under a recycling plan now under development.
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WHAT: On Saturday, June 23rd, the Tulare County Fair is giving residents an opportunity to recycle their old computers, television sets, VCRs, stereos, fax machines and other out-dated, unusable or unwanted electronics from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
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Electronics vendors are working to push through a legislative mandate that will make it easier for consumers to recycle consumer electronics.