Information on Dell's recycling policies

e-Waste: Dell Campaign

Texas Campaign for the Enviroment took the lead on organizing pressure on Dell in the spring of 2002. We mobilized shareholders and others to have a strong presence at the 2002 and 2003 Annual Shareholder Meetings.

All the effort paid off. In 2004 the company endorsed a Statement of Principles on Producer Responsibility for U.S. Electronic Waste (see below). 

TCE and the Computer TakeBack Campaign continued to work with Dell.  On June 6, 2006, Dell issued a comprehensive statement of producer responsibility.  In this statement, Dell pledged to provide free takeback recycling services for all their products worldwide - and called on other electronics makers to do the same.  (The program starts in Sept. 2006 in the US and Nov. 2006 worldwide.)  The company also stated its support for producer takeback recycling legislation. 

Click here to see the entire "Dell Product Recovery Public Policy" statement.

Click here to read the Austin American Statesman story about Dell's new policy.

Click here to learn more about Dell's recycling programs.

Click here to see a comparison of Dell, HP and Apple's efforts.

Statement of Principles on Producer Responsibility for U.S. Electronic Waste

Joint Statement by Computer TakeBack Campaign*, Dell & HP

We support the policy of producer responsibility in the U.S. for electronic products at the end of their useful lives, wherein brand-name manufacturers/producers work with consumers and state and local governments to properly collect and manage electronic products in an environmentally responsible fashion. Manufacturers and producers accept responsibility for continually improving the environmental aspects of the design of their products and for the end-of-life management of their products. This policy will have many benefits for consumers, electronics producers, local governments, the public health and the environment.

This statement refers to the responsibility for the environmentally responsible management of the electronic waste from products sold to all customers in the future. As for products sold in the past ("legacy" electronic waste, including "orphan" products for which the relevant producer/brand owner is no longer in business), we advocate that all due measures should be taken to allocate primary responsibility to those who manufactured and sold these products in the first instance. For that orphan waste which cannot be allocated to past producers, we support the principle that current electronics producers as well as those entering the market in the future should share in the responsibility of managing this electronic waste based on an equitable cost allocation related to historic market share. [See point 3 of alternative policy section below]

We support the objective of producer responsibility to create incentives for producers to improve the design of their products to minimize their life-cycle impacts on the environment. In particular, we support activities designed to:

• Phase out the use of potentially hazardous substances consistent with the recent European ROHS directive and other worldwide standards as they become law;
• Improve options to upgrade equipment over the course of the equipment's life; and
• Increase the integration of non-hazardous recovered materials into new products.

We believe that producer responsibility can operate most effectively through the competitive marketplace, but that all stakeholders, consumers, producers, governments, and the general public -- play an important role. All stakeholders need assurances that all producers are held to the same high environmental standards. Therefore, we support a public policy framework in the U.S. that provides for individual producer responsibility, through mechanisms that assure proper end of life management of producers' own products sold in the future. It is expected that individual producers may choose to cooperate with others in carrying out this responsibility in order to achieve efficiencies of scale.

We do not advocate an "advanced recovery fee approach" to financing the management of electronic waste, such as has been adopted through SB20 in California and which is under consideration within the National Electronic Product Stewardship Initiative process. We support an alternative financing model which allows for responsible companies to avoid an Advanced Recovery Fee and provides for cost internalization of end of life management costs by producers for new products entering the marketplace combined with industry sponsored programs designed to offset the incremental costs borne by local governments and others to collect discarded electronic products.

We recognize that in order to be viable and effective, this preferred alternative policy approach includes:

• ambitious, workable and progressive goals and timetables to assure that both legacy and future electronic waste will be properly recovered and managed;
• effective and enforceable environmental standards to assure that hazardous electronic waste will be properly managed in strict compliance with international and domestic laws that govern export of hazardous electronic waste, worker safety, public health and environmental protection, and the use of market labor rather than incarcerated labor;
• a convenient, fair and equitable system of collection that does not create economic disincentives for consumers to participate and is premised upon financial participation by producers so that taxpayers, local governments, or others do not shoulder all the financial burdens of recycling and disposing of electronic products. (Large institutions whose electronic waste is regulated by federal law may be subject to fees to cover the costs of proper recycling and disposal of their historic waste.)
• consumer awareness designed to optimize performance of the system;
• flexibility for producers to design and implement recovery and recycling systems that best suit their particular business model while complying with all applicable laws.

*TCE is an active partner group of the Computer TakeBack Campaign and was part of the group negotiating this Joint Statement.

Campaign Press

Who's the greenest of them all?   (Globe and Mail)

Dell gets on the environmental bandwagon   (FortuneMagazine.comm & CNNMoney.com)

Dell, Toshiba broaden efforts for environment   (Austin-American Statesman)

Campaign Awards

Best of Austin 2004: Best New Partnership: Texas Campaign for the Environment and Dell

Relationships are hard work. But with compromise and understanding of your partner's concerns, you can work it out. Texas Campaign for the Environment and Dell started as adversaries of sorts, with TCE pressuring Dell to increase recycling of electronic waste. But Dell insisted it really cared about the environment, and when Round Rock's personal computer market leader put its money where its mouth is, protest turned into pats on the back from activists. TCE is still pushing for more, but at least Venus knows that Mars is actually listening.

Links

A partnership between Dell and Goodwill for recycling e-waste in Texas.

Dell & Goodwill Computer Recycling Project

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