Green Design Series Issue 2

Take care of two evils at once! I know that I am a tech geek who also knows, I am not alone. I am on my 24th computer over the last 2o years and close to that many cell phones.

If all that plastic and heavy metal was ending up in a dump instead of being reused and recycled I would hate to think of the waste. Add mine to yours and multiply that by a few hundred million and we have a real mess to clean up. The actual numbers are mind blowing. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that over 5.5 Billion pounds of electronics were tossed out in 2005. ( This number includes TV's, Stereos, Phones and computers.)

This is only half the story. Identity theft is something that is on many peoples minds. When you throw out that Hard Drive with all your personal information on it, or your cell phone with all your numbers stored, it is a pretty tempting and valuable asset to identity theives. I hope you don' t actually beleive that deleting that information provides any protection. It does not.

So, what can we do with this electronic stuff? Ill give you the juicy ideas first. You can actually make some cash back on those old cell phones stuck in your junk drawer ( and free up the space as well!) Visit www.greenphone.com and you can get paid for that little piece of plastic. Also for every phone sold the company will plant a tree. Nice and green.

Just so I don't forget to pass along the other info, those nasty cell phone batteries are full of nasty chemicals hence the notice on them, "Please dispose of Properly." BUT, what is "Properly" how do we get rid of them? Many people don't know that the store or site that sold you those electronic pieces must take them back to be recycled.

Computer monitors, the older ones as us middle agers will remember were called CRT's which stood for Cathode ray tube (I am starting to feel old enough to be recycled myself!) This older technology was also used in Televisions and the tubes used lead which can be reclaimed and recycled instead of poluting our ground and ground water. There are companies that can refurbish and resell computers and Televisions or recycle the components. Some of these electronic items are donated to schools or sold. A good resource for this is http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/hazwaste/recycle/ecycling/donate.htm. The EPA site has links for donation possibilities. You may even get a tax deduction.

There are also companies like Creative Recycling who serve small to large businesses is asset tracking and can provide services to completely destroy data and insure the safety of your precious information. Another way to reuse old components is Recycles.org. This is a posting site where you can list the equipment you would like to dispose of and readers of the site can connect with you to pick it up. In Connecticut the website is: http://www.recycles.org/states/Connecticut/ I have to caution you that you will be responsible for cleaning your data off the hard drives.

As I was writing this article I learned that Connecticut Govenor Jodi Rell signed a Manditory Electronics Recycling Law.

WWW.Environmentalleader.com for those of you who want to take your participation to a new level.

Richard Allan Marti Jr.