For those who have larger amounts of solid waste, companies in your area sell large ewaste solutions. Check out http://www.komarindustries.com/ewaste.cfm. Pretty cool.

Unfortunately, shipping working electronics, while getting around the legal barriers of shipping electronics overseas, isn’t always the environmentally sound thing to do. You also have to look at the economics of what you’re shipping.

I recently talked with a buyer looking for CRT monitors for shipment to Egypt. I was offered from $2 for old white monitors to as much as $17 for newer black ones. In researching the markets, it turns out that while the more expensive monitors were being legitimately resold into local markets, the $2 monitors were being used for parts in building TVs with the remainder going to dump sites.

It’s not enough to test if the equipment you ship works. If you really want to do the environmentally right thing, you have to do your due diligence in finding out what’s going on with the electronics you sell overseas, and you need to pay attention to the economics of the equipment you ship.

For this reason, my company doesn’t ship electronics overseas, working or otherwise, unless we’re sure that it’s not going to end up being used for parts with most of it ending up in a landfill. A lot of companies claim to have a zero landfill policy, but many turn a blind eye to what they’re really doing.

Despite some people have criticism on carbon offsetting the volunary market worldwide has doubled in 2008 reaching a volume of USD 705.000.000.

Now E-waste offsetting is totally new, and of course -like carbon offsetting- also getting criticism. I would like to emphasize Ewaste Foundation as everyone is opposed to the export of Ewaste. We only approve the exporting of WORKING ICT equipment too developing countries in order to get a second life (which is necessarry to close the digital gap with these countries).

And next to the illegal streams of exported ICT, also for the normally used ICT equipment which becomes end-of-life in developing countries, there is lack of a proper disposal process. Capacity building for proper local disassembly is essential. This is among other things the main goal of Ewaste Foundation. We would like others to support us in this work an help us in different possible ways!

visit us at http://www.ewaste.org

We have solutions to the e-waste issues. Please review our web site, and contact Myself, or other members of our organization. We have been providing proper solutions for many years, and are continuing to add new processes for EOL GADGETS, etc.

How can we particicate in your removal program, we are interested in Worldwide solutions.

Thank you, and keep up the good work.

Companies and municipalities in the US should pay the cost of true recycling upfront and work only with companies that do not export…not an easy task. When Chinese brokers are paying $2 per CRT monitor and it costs upwards of $5 to send them to a glass processor in the US, the choice is a very hard one to make.

I work for CompuCycle out of Houston. We charge for recycling, and it’s something we’ve got to be proud of. Luckily Earth911 readers know the difference between green and greenwashed, but a lot of consumers out there think all recyclers are equal.