[rescue] Computer trash

[Steve Pacenka]

On Wed, 2002-02-27 at 11:01, David Cantrell wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 25, 2002 at 06:12:07PM -0500, Steve Pacenka wrote:
> > Europe seems ahead of the US in heading farther back in the industry
> > chain by having an original manufacturer take some responsibility for
> > what happens to their products after their useful life.
> 
> It's a good thing too, provided that the manufacturers get sufficient notice
> that they can redesign their products to be recyclable.  New cars, for
> example, are designed to be easily recyclable.  Trouble is, in a few years
> time the EU wants those same rules to apply to vehicles made before the
> regulations came into effect.  So a company like Landrover would become
> responsible for the disposal of *really* ancient vehicles - they were built
> to last, but were also built with nary a thought of recycling.  And we're
> talking a large number of their vehicles thirty or forty years old which
> are only now reaching the end of their working lives.  Landrover have to
> just eat that cost, cos unlike with modern vehicles they can't either pass
> the cost on to the current owner or redesign it to be cheaper to recycle.
> 
> So it ain't all sweetness and light.

The part of manufacturer-responsbility that I like is the advance part
-- design the stuff initially so it is not a waste burden on somebody
else.

Mandating retroactive responsibility is unfavorable to the
manufacturers, I certainly agree; many of them were doing adequately by
the rules in place at the time.  So wider society should continue to
bear some of the burden of dealing with discarded older products.  Would
the EU subsidize some of the retroactive costs, or are they "dumping"
the whole thing on the manufacturers?

It seems to me that a long useful life of a product should be something
to encourage in this kind of regime.  The Landrover example is a great
one.  So when a manufacturer sets a price of a new item today taking
into account future extra recycling costs, presumably a long-lived item
should have a lower extra cost than a short-lived similar item.  Maybe
the economics work - the extra price comes to them today and they have a
future cost that is discounted based on the company's ROI minus
inflation.

-- SP