Pressure is being put on electronics manufacturers by states to take the responsibility for the tonnes of electronic waste that is dispensed with every year. This will make it less problematic for members of the public to recycle their old television sets and personal computers.
Around mid-2007 for instance Minnesota passed legislation that compels manufacturers to collect and recycle an amount of electronics corresponding to sixty per cent of the weight of electronic items that were bought from them in Minnesota the preceding year.
In Oregon a dissimilar e-waste recycling legislation will be implemented on the first of January 2009. Oregon and Minnesota comprise two of the nine states that have passed e-waste recycling legislation that compels manufacturers to collect and recycle products such as mobile phones, computer screens, television sets and portable DVD players or hire some other person or organisation to do it for them. The state of Virginia and New York are expected to take the same steps.
The e-waste recycling laws signify a break from the past where users of electronic items took most of the logistical and financial burden for the recycling of electronic items. As per Environmental Protection Agency three years ago in 2005, only fourteen per cent of unneeded electronic items ended up being recycled while the remainder which was over two million tonnes found its way to landfills. The danger with this is that toxins like lead and mercury emanating from such electronic waste can end up leaking into the soil and water when they are dumped in landfills.
In some cases consumers are still paying part or all of the cost of recycling electronic waste.
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