Disposing with Disposability

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No federal legislation has been enacted yet, and there's no political will to. But some states have enacted take-back laws. I think there's four that have and 19 more that are looking at it. One of the most strict is Maine, where the manufacturers are actually forced to pay for collecting the stuff and disposing it. Still, it's to the manufacturers' advantage to have chaos in the take-back process -- some states will have laws, some states won't. I don't mean to sound cynical, but unless you put some sort of cap on [the manufacturers], force them to, first of all, not use the toxins that go into these machines and, secondly, to pay to take them back, they'll continue to use the most poisonous materials and make as many of them as they can sell.

Do you see any successful trends that are moving away from planned obsolescence?

In Europe, the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) initiative has been enacted, banning toxic substances in the manufacturing of electronics. Also, electronic manufacturers have been charged with paying to take back and recycle these devices. Manufacturers like Ericsson are beginning to design things that aren't nearly as poisonous and can be recycled easily and cheaply. I think you're not going to find a manufacturer that will willingly limit planned obsolescence. If they're forced to, they'll extend the life of their products.

In May [Apple CEO] Steve Jobs said you should replace an iPod every year. Who's that good for except Steve Jobs? Unless there's some legislation that says, 'If you dump 68 million iPods into the American landfills, you have to pay to collect them,' then I'm sure Steve will do a cost-benefit analysis and say, 'OK, it will cost us less to build them for two years than to recycle them all.' Then you'll get longer life products. I'm really interested to see what happens with Microsoft Zune [the company's planned iPod competitor], whenever it comes out. It will be very smart of them to build something that lasts substantially longer and to position it against the iPod.

I noticed that Dell -- before they had their battery crisis -- became the only electronic manufacturer to freely pay for the shipping of their old computers back to the manufacturer to be recycled. Hewlett-Packard makes their customers pay and I don't know what Apple does -- they've got a recycling program, but it's not very popular. If companies started competing against each other to be more eco-friendly, that would be a wonderful thing.

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