E-Waste Focus
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Ft Worth Star-Telegram, November 28, 2008 By Mike Lee
As the DTV switch approaches, and with the holiday shopping season in full swing, environmental groups are warning consumers about impacts on the environment halfway around the world.
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Greenercomputing.com, November 19, 2008 By Mary Catherine O'Connor
Often, advocacy groups campaign against specific business practices --- take the movement to ban BPA from baby bottles, for instance. But when it comes to the electronics industry, non-government organizations are attempting to shift the entire business paradigm.
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Daily Texan, November 18, 2008 By Lindsey Morgan
Life-size television zombies sound more like a futuristic sci-fi plot than a campaign for efficient recycling of electronics. But on Monday, activists from the Texas Campaign for the Environment, an environmental advocacy group, dressed as zombies with television sets as heads to protest the improper disposal of televisions in Austin.
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KUHF Houston Public Radio News, November 18, 2008 By Bill Stamps
Audio: An environmental watchdog group says TV manufacturers aren't doing enough to prepare for next year's transition to all digital television. Click here to listen!
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SustainableBusiness.com News, November 18, 2008 By
The Electronics TakeBack Coalition (ETBC) today released its new TV Recycling Report Card, grading the major TV manufacturers on their efforts to establish national programs to take back and recycle old TVs.
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GreenBiz, November 18, 2008 By GreenBiz Staff
More than half of TV manufacturers have no recycling program in place even though there are only three months left before the digital TV conversion.
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WFAA-TV D/FW , November 18, 2008 By Cynthia Izaguirre
Video: With just three months remaining until the nation's transition to digital television, manufacturers of old analog TVs got a ghoulish recycling report card. Click here to watch!
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NBC 5 D/FW, November 18, 2008 By
Video: Texas Campaign for the Environment released its TV makers green report card, which grades the recycling programs of major television manufacturers. Click here to watch!
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KVUE News Austin, November 18, 2008 By Tom Harris
Video: You may find recycling your old TV set a little more difficult than you might think if you are planning on purchasing a new digital TV this year. Click here to watch!
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News 8 Austin, November 18, 2008 By News 8 Austin Staff
The report card is in, and most television makers are failing: The Texas Campaign for the Environment released their report on how well television manufacturers have prepared to recycle their consumers' old TVs.
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San Antonio Express-News, November 18, 2008 By L.A. Lorek
Landfills overflowing with junked TVs containing lead, mercury and other toxic materials could eventually threaten San Antonio's water supply. That's why Texas environmental activists want TV manufacturers to take back their old sets.
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New York Times, November 12, 2008 By John Hanc
Finding ways to dispose of America’s increasingly large stream of e-waste is difficult: an estimated 133,000 computers are discarded by homes and businesses every day. In a 2006 report, the International Association of Electronics Recyclers estimated that about 400 million pieces of e-waste are scrapped each year.
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Philadelphia Inquirer, November 10, 2008 By Sandy Bauers
Updated guidelines offer more information on how much energy our sets use - or do they? That's just one environmental concern as events point to a big buying spree.
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Siliconvalley.com, October 25, 2008 By Melita Marie Garza
Proving Kermit's adage, Dell spent three years building 25 prototypes before the computer maker found a way to twist bamboo into a natural fiber exterior for its new "Hybrid" desktop.
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New York Times, October 2, 2008 By Azadeh Ensha
In a bid to secure your green bragging rights, you have the usual suspects covered, but what about your PC? After all, the machine that can provide you with information on how to lead an ecologically sound life can also be contributing to the environmental problem you are trying to solve.
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Newsweek, September 22, 2008 By Lily Huang
What happened to all the once useful things we wanted before? The cell phone that's not a computer, the GPS that's not a phone, the squarely three-dimensional television, the videotape rewinder? With the right design, a manufactured good can be broken down into a number of universal, toxin-free components.
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Marketing Daily, August 22, 2008 By Laurie Sullivan
The Electronics TakeBack Coalition has launched a marketing campaign attacking Samsung for what it considers a weak stance on environmental protection and electronics recycling.
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Austin-American Statesman, August 11, 2008 By Asher Price
A day before the Olympic torch was lit Friday in Beijing, two men in warm-ups, waving bouquets and wearing giant fake gold medals, ascended a podium on a hot street corner in Northeast Austin.
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The Daily Texan, August 8, 2008 By Stephany Garza
Protesters gathered outside Austin's Samsung plant to show their disapproval of the electronics company for not offering its consumers a free nationwide recycling program for television sets, computers and other electronic devices.
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Cheryl Diaz Meyer/Dallas Morning News |
Dallas Morning News , July 8, 2008 By Jefferey Weiss
Tech trash is the fastest-growing category of American garbage. While computers and their assorted peripherals are still a relatively tiny tributary to the national waste stream, they are numerous enough to represent a problem – and an opportunity.
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Austin Chronicle, June 13, 2008 By Kevin Brass
Judging by the reaction in some circles, on the scale of media disasters, the nationwide transition to digital television ranks somewhere between the apocalypse and the cancellation of Star Trek. TV service will be ripped from poor minority communities. Millions of outdated TV sets will be dumped into landfills, creating ecological ruin. Families will be cut off forever from American Idol, prompting mass hysteria.
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Business Week, June 2, 2008 By Michael Liedtke
Best Buy Co. is testing a free program that will offer consumers a convenient way to ensure millions of obsolescent TVs, old computers and other unwanted gadgets don't poison the nation's dumps.
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DC Government |
Chemical and Engineering News, May 28, 2008 By Jeff Johnson
ON A SUNNY Saturday in late April, some 4,000 cars and trucks crawled up 16th Street in northwest Washington, D.C., ferrying loads of electronic and other wastes to drop off at the city's semiannual hazardous waste collection event.
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St Louis Post-Dispatch, May 27, 2008 By Jonathan J. Cooper
The switch from analog to digital television in February could bring problems beyond new costs to consumers: clogged landfills and pollution from old televisions.
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San Antonio Current |
San Antonio Current, May 21, 2008 By Gilbert Garcia
With an estimated 19-million households owning at least one analog-only television, it's reasonable to assume that the looming conversion deadline will spur many consumers to purchase new TVs.
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Fort Worth Star-Telegram, May 12, 2008 By Scott Streater
Common household dust has long been known to carry pesticides, allergens and other irritants. But the dust that coats your television sets might finally answer why virtually every American tested has traces of a chemical flame retardant that might be harmful.
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Fort Worth Star-Telegram, April 22, 2008 By Scott Streater
When you buy a new computer and bring it home, you take it out of the box, proudly position it in on your desk and plug it in. Then you look down at the old computer on the floor and ask: What do I do with it?
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E-Waste Focus - Prison Labor and Export
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USA Today, December 29, 2008 By Julie Schmit
Hong Kong intercepted and returned 41 ship containers to U.S. ports this year because they carried illegal electronic waste from the U.S., thwarting attempts by U.S. companies to dump 1.4 million pounds of broken TVs or computer monitors overseas and an estimated 82,000 pounds of lead, a known toxin, in the devices.
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Houston Chronicle, December 25, 2008 By Allan Turner
Most people — about 88 percent according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — simply toss so-called e-waste into the trash.
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CBS News, November 9, 2008 By 60 Minutes
Video: 60 Minutes is going to take you to one of the most toxic places on Earth - a place government officials and gangsters don't want you to see. It's a town in China where you can't breathe the air or drink the water, a town where the blood of the children is laced with lead. Click here to watch!
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Business Week, October 15, 2008 By Ben Elgin and Brian Grow
As the e-waste recycling industry proliferates, it has also become enmeshed in questionable practices that undercut its environmentally friendly image. Lax rules and weak enforcement allow scrap companies to profit by sending junked computers, printers, and TVs overseas.
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David Butow |
Business Week, October 2, 2008 By Brian Grow, Chi-Chu Tschang, Cliff Edwards and Brian Burnsed
How counterfeit, defective computer components from China are getting into U.S. warplanes and ships: the garbage-strewn streets of Guiyu reek of burning plastic as workers in back rooms and open yards strip chips from old PC circuit boards, often exported from the US.
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Scientific American, September 23, 2008 By Susannah F. Locke
Just days after congressional investigators slammed companies for shipping e-waste overseas (and the feds for failing to crack down on them), a major U.S. recycler today vowed to stop the practice. Waste Management, based in Houston, today announced that it would not send hazardous electronic garbage to developing countries for recycling.
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Boston Globe, September 23, 2008 By Derrick Z. Johnson
It is easy to dump on China's tainted milk, toxic toys, and poison pet food, ignoring how the United States makes China its personal PC dump.
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Scientific American, September 18, 2008 By David Biello
A new report proves that the fed's environmental watchdog has knowingly allowed toxic e-waste to be shipped overseas.
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Washington Post, September 17, 2008 By Juliet Eilperin
The Environmental Protection Agency has done little to curb the export of discarded electronic products containing hazardous waste, much of which ends up in poorly regulated countries and harms the environment and public health, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report being released today.
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BusinessGreen, August 25, 2008 By Rosalie Marshall
The government last week was accused of failing in its duty to enforce its own e-waste regulations in the wake of fresh reports that large quantities of broken IT equipment are continuing to be dumped illegally in Africa.
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Portsmouth Herald News, NH, August 4, 2008 By
Leaders of a campaign to protect the public from toxic chemicals in electronics applauded U.S. Rep. Gene Green, D-Texas, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials, for introducing a congressional resolution (HR 1395) Friday that calls for the U.S. to join other nations in banning the export of toxic e-waste to developing countries.
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ABC News, July 10, 2008 By Kristen Jones
Toxic dust from an electronics recycling program run by the federal prison system may have put hundreds of inmates, workers and even their families at risk, according to preliminary findings in a two-year investigation by the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General.
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Uriel Sinai, Getty Images |
USA Today, July 8, 2008 By G. Jeffrey MacDonald
Consumers saddled with old cellphones, TVs and computers are flocking to electronics recycling events, which have sprung up in more than 1,000 communities over the past four years.
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Time Magazine, June 29, 2008 By Bryan Walsh
Coal, steel, oil — we think of these old-economy industries, and we picture pollution. But the tech industry has a dirty little secret: it has toxic waste of its own.
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E-Scrap News, May 6, 2008 By E-Scrap News
According to the release, Nigeria receives 500,000 PCs monthly, of which only 25 percent are working. The remaining 75 percent are relegated to landfill and crude metal-recovery workshops — where peripherals and circuit boards are set afire on the ground, and the resultant metals are picked out of the pile of dirt and melted plastic. (Click here to watch the new video Hidden Flow).
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E-Waste Focus - Producer TakeBack Recycling
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Huffington Post Blog, December 15, 2008 By Philip G. Baker
The Electronics TakeBack Coalition's Annual Report Card grades TV manufacturers for their recycling programs that reduce e-waste, and has just been released.
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ConsumerReports.org, December 12, 2008 By Kristi Wiedemann
A new TV Recycling Report Card is out from a non-profit advocacy group, evaluating TV manufacturers, and a few retailers, on their efforts. Many companies received flunking grades, reflecting gaps in existing TV producers' recycling programs and the significant number of companies who don't offer recycling at all.
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Associated Press, November 13, 2008 By Jessica Mintz
Under the partnership announced Wednesday, people can drop off any amount of Dell-branded PCs, monitors, keyboards, printers, mice and other accessories at any of Staples' 1,500 U.S. stores for recycling, without having to make a purchase.
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TWICE, October 31, 2008 By Greg Tarr
A group called Electronics TakeBack Coalition (ETBC) was claiming credit Friday for forcing the announcements Thursday of plans for a cooperative national recycling programming involving Panasonic, Sharp and Toshiba.
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Panasonic, October 30, 2008 By
Panasonic announced today that it is creating a program designed to provide consumers convenient and easy recycling of their Panasonic branded TVs and other consumer electronics. The recycling program will expand to all 50 states over the next three years.
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Plastics News, October 20, 2008 By Don Loepp
Canon Inc. and Apple Computer Inc. made headlines last week for materials-related choices in their electronics products.
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GreenRightNow.com, September 18, 2008 By Harriet Blake
Thanks to new legislation that took effect Sept. 1, all computer makers are now responsible for recycling their products. Texas is the fourth state to have such a law, says Jeff Jacoby, staff director with the nonprofit Texas Campaign for the Environment.
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Daily Green News, September 9, 2008 By Dan Shapley
As the countdown to the switch to digital television continues, Samsung has joined the ranks of companies offering free recycling of their used electronics.
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KUHF Houston Public Radio, September 2, 2008 By Laurie Johnson
A new state law is in effect this week that requires all computer manufacturers to provide free recycling. The law is intended to bring budget relief to county and city governments that often pay for electronics recycling.
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GreenerComputing, August 5, 2008 By
LG Electronics and Waste Management will partner to open more than 160 recycling centers across the country to handle masses of unwanted electronics. Beginning next month, the companies will launch e-waste recycling centers in all 50 states.
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San Antonio Express-News, May 22, 2008 By Anton Caputo
It's official. If you want to make computers and sell them in Texas, you need to have a free program to recycle the equipment when customers are finished with it.
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Austin American Statesman, May 21, 2008 By Asher Price
The passage of a computer recycling law was one of the few triumphs counted by environmentalists in the last legislative session. But the group that pushed for the law says rules by the state's environmental agency, which will take the step today of putting the law into practice, lack teeth to stop recyclers from disposing of hazardous materials overseas.
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BrandWeek, May 12, 2008 By Steve Miller
EWaste management has gone from being a headache to a marketing tool. Electronics manufacturers and retailers are attempting to address the problem and give themselves a green halo by encouraging consumers to recycle old TVs, computers and other devices.
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Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 11, 2008 By Angelea Galloway
From carpet recycling to curbside pickup of broken televisions and computers, Seattle politicians are considering ways to help shift away from taxpayers some of the burden -- and cost -- of waste disposal.
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General Issues
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Melanie Burford/DMN |
Dallas Morning News, September 18, 2008 By Jeffrey Weiss
What does a community organizer do? There are no simple answers. Details of the job vary from agency to agency.Here are the stories of three Dallas-Fort Worth groups that employ professional community organizers.
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Houston Business Journal, September 10, 2008 By Christine Hall
The advocacy group works with local organizations to fight problematic landfill sitings and expansions and to improve the standards for landfills.
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KUHF Houston Public Radio, September 9, 2008 By Rod Rice
The Texas Campaign for the Environment opened an office in Houston today. Organizers will begin door-to-door canvassing to spread the word about recycling electronics.
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Houston Press Online, September 8, 2008 By Olivia Flores Alvarez
The Texas Campaign for the Environment (TEC) opens an office in Houston today and plans to be hitting the streets organizing door-to-door this afternoon. They’ll be talking to residents about recycling options, including the Texas Computer Recycling law that went into effect last week -- oh, and collecting donations for the cause.
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Landfills and Recycling Focus
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San Antonio Express-News, December 27, 2008 By Colin McDonald
Hanging off the back of a garbage truck, Hector Villanueva and Juan Aguirre scramble down block after block to collect San Antonio’s trash. Villanueva didn’t think about recycling until he started hoisting trash cans filled with cardboard, plastic bottles and newspapers that could have been recycled.
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In Fact Daily, December 10, 2008 By Mark Richardson
A resolution on today’s Council agenda to direct City Manager Marc Ott to hire an outside legal firm to assist in “un-doing” an agreement between the city and landfill operator BFI could spark some spirited discussion.
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Austin American Statesman, July 10, 2008 By Melissa Mixon
Orlynn Evans remembers the unease among some residents a year and a half ago when Williamson County commissioners discussed selling the county's controversial landfill.
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KUT Radio, June 30, 2008 By Erika Aguilar
Hutto residents aren’t against expansion—they want to make sure the landfill doesn’t get too big and trash from outside the county goes elsewhere.
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Photo: Alan Zale for The New York Times |
New York Times, June 25, 2008 By Stephanie Rosenbloom
The nation's second-largest retailer is creating widespread recycling program for the bulbs, accepting them at all U.S. locations.
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KVUE News, June 23, 2008 By Jessica Vess
Hutto residents and city council members are taking a stand against a proposed landfill expansion. Operators at the Williamson County landfill are looking at a plan that would allow trash from outside the county to be dumped there anyway.
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Austin Chronicle, June 6, 2008 By Lee Nichols
Austin's plans for an eastern landfill hit a little obstacle – the people who live there.
"I think that the region should focus on zero-waste policy and programs before doing another landfill," says Robin Schneider, Executive Director of Texas Campaign for the Environment.
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Weatherford Democrat, June 5, 2008 By Carman Williams
Landfills never stir up sanitary images, but if proposed new standards are approved by the state, municipal dumps may be getting too dirty for some groups to handle.
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Austin American-Statesman, June 2, 2008 By Melissa Mixon
A 2003 contract between Williamson County and its landfill operator, Waste Management of Texas, is valid, according to a district judge’s ruling released late Friday.
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Houston Chronicle, August 10, 2003 By Dina Cappiello
Ask Marta Medina what she does for a living, and she replies in Spanish "reciclar," or recycle. The 50-year-old Guatemalan immigrant has made a success of recycling, something that Houston, the fourth largest city in the nation, has struggled to do.
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Landfills Focus - Waste and Climate Change
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Fox Business, June 19, 2008 By Market Wire
As a result of the increased awareness of climate change and global warming, more and more people have become concerned about greenhouse gas emissions and are developing strategies to reduce their carbon footprint.
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Landfills Focus: Zero Waste
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Andy Nelson/The Christian Science Monitor |
Christian Science Monitor, December 16, 2008 By Amelia Newcomb
Tucked almost imperceptibly into cedar-blanketed mountains an hour's winding drive from the nearest metropolis, Kamikatsu seems an unlikely spot for a revolution. But try to throw even a candy wrapper away here, and it's quickly apparent that residents are radically reshaping their relationship to the environment.
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Austin American-Statesman, December 9, 2008 By Sarah Coppola
The Austin City Council will discuss a "zero-waste" plan this week aimed at diverting 90 percent of Austin's trash from landfills by 2040.
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Austin American-Statesman, October 9, 2008 By Letter to the Editor, Robin Schneider
There is a solution that Texas and 15 other states have adopted for old computers and other electronics that can be applied to pharmaceuticals, too. Require producers to pay for the safe disposal of their products.
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Austin American-Statesman, April 22, 2008 By Peter Mongillo
Austin-area guide for recycling everyday consumer products. Everything from styrofoam to pill bottles is covered in this recycling resource.
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National Public Radio, March 28, 2008 By Morning Edition
Recycling newspaper and plastic can only go so far toward achieving a "zero-waste" world, recycling activist Eric Lombardi says. The next step, he says, is getting industry and government to work together to make going greener more profitable.
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Los Angeles Daily Breeze, January 21, 2008 By Sue Doyle
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