Electronic Recycling

As U.S. landfills increasingly refuse to accept electronics or charge hefty disposal fees, nonprofit organizations, such as Goodwill, are often left with piles of computers and televisions that must be properly managed. With an estimated 500 million personal computers becoming obsolete this year, and even larger amounts of other electronics discarded each year, the challenge is to find appropriate ways to manage these products.

This challenge is crucial to the public, because studies show certain materials used in electronics pose hazards to human health and the environment. Cathode ray tubes - the glass picture tubes found in TVs and computer monitors -- contain five to eight pounds of lead. Computers also contain heavy metals, such as lead, chromium, nickel and zinc.

Goodwill supports the National Computer Recycling Act, which would direct the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a comprehensive e-waste study, develop an e-waste recycling grant program and assess a fee of up to $10 on new computers to fund that initiative.