Word: pcs
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...hardly makes a dent, however, in the annual bumper crop of dead computers. Every year an electronic trash heap nearly as tall as Mount Everest is tossed into garbage cans, stashed in garages or forgotten in closets. Some 500 million PCs will be rendered obsolete by 2007 in the U.S. alone--abandoned by users who have upgraded to faster and sexier machines--according to a report by the National Safety Council. Computers are ranked as the nation's fastest-growing category of solid waste by the Environmental Protection Agency...
...most dangerous. Old PCs contain lead, cadmium, mercury and other unsavory components. Yet only 10% of the machines are recycled. Many of them find their way into landfills and incinerators, where they can threaten the environment. That's why the European Union has drafted rules that will hold manufacturers responsible for recycling their wares...
...precious metals and other reusable parts, it's still tough to make any money recycling PCs. Minus the cost of processing, the average used system is worth a measly $6 in raw materials, according to electronics recycler Envirocycle in Hallstead, Pa. The monitor is worth just $2.50. When IBM announced its consumer-PC recycling program last fall, it decided to have the carcasses shipped not to its 700,000-sq.-ft. recycling center in Endicott (where it mines corporate PCs for parts) but to an independent recycler 30 miles away. The reason: "Typically all that low-end stuff...
Because metals are especially valuable, Hewlett-Packard mines its own. Step inside its 200,000-sq.-ft. warehouse in Roseville, Calif. (which it runs with partner MicroMetallics), and you will see computers stacked three stories high. A hulking blue machine swallows PCs and mainframes whole, grinds them up and a few minutes later spits them out in quarter-size pieces. A system of magnets, screens and electrical currents separates out aluminum and steel, while the remaining mixed metals go to Noranda Inc., a copper smelter in Quebec. The metal scrap HP produces by the ton has a higher percentage...
...into people's houses and take their computers out for them," says Renee St. Denis, environmental-business-unit manager for HP. That's true. But if consumers aren't given sufficient incentive to turn their computers in, then all those recycling initiatives--not to mention all those PCs piling up in closets--could simply go to waste...