E-cycling revisited

Posted by Matt

It's been nearly a year since my post about the costs of e-cycling, in which I complained about having to pay to recycle my computer monitor. For those of you in Oregon who decided to hold on to your monitors until now, I have good news!

I just read an announcement from my garbage service company that the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality implemented the Oregon E-cycles program in January with the intent of providing free recycling of computers (desktop and laptop), monitors and televisions.

Visit http:/www.oregonecycles.org to learn more about the program or to find local drop-off facilities. I was pleased to learn that my previous recycler of choice (Free Geek) is participating in the program and that all participants are required to follow environmentally sound management practices.

Now, if you've made it this far, I'll give you the full disclosure about the costs here. The recycling isn't really free, right? Someone has to pay for it, right? Electronics manufacturers who sell their products in Oregon have been funding the E-Cycles program (whether they like it or not) since 2007, which probably means that those costs were been passed on to YOU the consumer when you purchased these types of products. But considering that we're all paying for the program anyway, let's at least use it to our full advantage.