http://www.techforecasters.com/weblog/archives/electronics-in-the-environment-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/ Read what our thought leaders are thinking, in our every-other-Friday TFI blog entries. Sign up with your favorite RSS Feed service and get an automated alert whenever there's a new posting to the TFI Weblog. Wed, 21 Jul 2010 10:20:37 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8 hourly 1 http://www.techforecasters.com/weblog/archives/electronics-in-the-environment-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/comment-page-1/#comment-13079 Tim Sturgeon Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:31:06 +0000 http://www.techforecasters.com/weblog/archives/electronics-in-the-environment-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/#comment-13079 Pam makes an excellent point here. It was very disheartening to learn that donating or taking my old electronics the local recycling center could easily lead to the very horrible outcome described in recent news reports, namely children "recycling" old electronics by burning them in open air settings in poor countries, releasing toxins into the environment and poisoning themselves in the process. As Pam argues, we need a more effective system to ensure that electronics are disposed of properly. Protecting brand names is one important motivation for this, but I still worry that, even if this leads to an effective system, the piles of unbranded or weakly branded products will continue to fall through the cracks. If this is not a case for some sort of global regulatory system with teeth, I don't know what is. In the meantime, the pile of old electronics in my basement will continue to grow… Pam makes an excellent point here. It was very disheartening to learn that donating or taking my old electronics the local recycling center could easily lead to the very horrible outcome described in recent news reports, namely children “recycling” old electronics by burning them in open air settings in poor countries, releasing toxins into the environment and poisoning themselves in the process. As Pam argues, we need a more effective system to ensure that electronics are disposed of properly. Protecting brand names is one important motivation for this, but I still worry that, even if this leads to an effective system, the piles of unbranded or weakly branded products will continue to fall through the cracks. If this is not a case for some sort of global regulatory system with teeth, I don’t know what is. In the meantime, the pile of old electronics in my basement will continue to grow…

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