MNN - Mother Nature Network

 

The numbers are staggering. Every day in the U.S., 130,000 cell phones are thrown away and every year over 100 million computers end up in U.S. landfills. Because we lack federal e-waste regulations, many states have jumped in with their own programs, inadvertently making the situation worse for manufacturers and recyclers desperate for a single set of recycling standards.

 

Help is on the way thanks to the Obama administration. The Electronic Waste Research & Development Act of  2009 was just drafted and will likely pass into law this year, making the U.S. the latest country to create a national e-waste law. In the meantime, we are beset with a growing problem. According to the (EPA) only about 11 percent of our ewaste is recycled. And despite multi-million dollar marketing campaigns and convenient drop-off locations, Americans just won’t seem to change their behaviors around recycling old consumer electronics.

 

So the Greener Gadgets summit convened a panel of foir top experts in the field of eycling (e-waste recycling) who presented some innovative solutions for solving this problem: Ron Gonen CEO of RecycleBank, Michael Newman VP of ReCellular, Carl Smith CEO or RBRC (Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corp.) and David Thompson Environmental Director at Panasonic.

 

Above is an excerpt from Ron Gonen's presentation. Gonan’s company, RecycleBank, has created the most successful incentive program in the U.S., paying consumers nationwide to recycle using an innovative system that records their deposits and pays them in rewards points which they can redeem to purchase other products. 

 

You can sign up and start getting paid to recycle now by visiting the RecycleBank site.

 

Check out Part 2 of this post: 2^nd life for old cell phones