Approaches to techno-trash

What to do with all those electronic gadgets we discard as we fall head over heels for the next new thing? This morning my inbox contained three articles addressing the question.

The Associated Press, via Technology Review, reports that only a "sliver" of techno-trash (otherwise known as e-trash or e-junk) actually gets recycled. That's a sliver of some 2 million tons of "broken Blackberries, old monitors and burned-out cell phones," based on the Environmental Protection Agency's 2001 estimate.

Explanations for the techno-trash buildup range from consumer ignorance about what to do with discarded gadgets to disingenuousness on the part of alleged recyclers. Ted Smith, executive director of the Silicon Vally Toxics Coalition, estimates that 60 to 80 percent of "the amount of stuff people think is being recylced" is actually "dumped in containers and sent to China."

A variety of creative solutions to the problem are being tested by commercial, government, and nonprofit groups. Reuters reports that Skyscape, a mobile medical information company, is "collecting used personal digital assistants (PDAs) to send to doctors in Africa, and outfitting the devices with the latest, up-to-date health information."  A World AIDS Day request to Skyscape subscribers last Friday garnered about fifty used PDAs within 48 hours.

Skyscape, working in partnership with the charity SATELLIFE, is loading key medical references onto the PDAs before shipping them to Africa and will update the information if the doctors can link to the Internet. If your old PDA is one of the seven million such gadgets that Americans discard each year, there is still time to donate it to this worthy cause. Visit www.skyscape.com/AIDSDAY to learn how.

Finally, on what seems to be the theory that antique technology should bloom where it's planted, a Dutch company has created a cell phone cover that grows into a sunflower when thrown away. Created at the behest of Motorola and manufactured from a "totally biodegradable and non-toxic plastic," the phone cover "contains a sunflower seed, which will feed on the nitrates that are formed when the polyvinylalcohol polymer cover turns to waste."  It is one of several related products that the Dutch company, Pvaxx Research & Development, will introduce next year.