New York Times

Apple Computer Corp. has become the darling of the technology sector for its wildly popular digital music player. But scorching iPod sales have also made it the target of an aggressive environmental coalition, which is trashing Apple as rotten to the core. Environmentalists with the Computer TakeBack Campaign are planning a yearlong campaign to protest Apple’s lackluster recycling efforts. Despite drizzle on Tuesday at the annual Macworld Conference & Expo, activists passed out leaflets and erected a giant banner proclaiming, “from iPod to iWaste.”

The advocacy group, which last year badgered Dell Inc. until it significantly bolstered its recycling initiatives, plans protests at Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters throughout 2005, a letter-writing and e-mail campaign, and other attacks against the maker of Macintosh computers. Environmentalists said they’re targeting Apple because the hardware and software company makes it difficult to replace batteries in its digital music players, and it charges many consumers $30 to recycle their unused or broken computers and laptops.

“We know consumers won’t pay 30 bucks to get rid of something they think is junk,” said Robin Schneider, executive director of the Austin, Texas-based Texas Campaign for the Environment. “Apple can do a lot better — they’re lagging way behind Dell and Hewlett-Packard. Now they need to take the next step and really ‘think different,'” Schneider said, playing off Apple’s advertising slogan.

Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said Tuesday the company would not comment on the environmental crusade. On Thursday, Apple promised to join eBay Inc. and Intel Corp., which launched an informational Web site to help motivate Americans to resell, donate or recycle used gadgets. Apple doesn’t charge consumers to recycle outdated electronics in Japan, Europe, Taiwan and South Korea, but environmentalists say the company is a significant contributor to the growing problem of “e-waste” in the United States.

U.S. consumers retire or replace roughly 133,000 personal computers per day, according to research firm Gartner Inc. According to a study commissioned by San Jose, Calif.-based Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, roughly half of all U.S. households have working but unused consumer electronics products. Roughly 400 million gizmos will be thrown out by 2010. Protesters said the popularity of the iPod and iPod Mini — as well as more affordable gadgets such as the $99 iPod Shuffle, which debuted Tuesday — make Apple an obvious target for environmentalists’ scorn. Apple sold 4.5 million iPods in the fourth quarter and more than 10 million since their debut in 2001. During the 2004 holiday season, three of the top five consumer electronics sold on Amazon.com were Apple products.

The falling price and diminutive size of iPods — including the Shuffle, which weighs less than an ounce and is smaller than a pack of gum — promotes the notion that they’re disposable, said Mamta Khanna, program manager for Oakland, Calif.-based Center for Environmental Health. “People think you can just trash these things,” Khanna said. “No one’s thinking about where they end up.”

Austin American Statesman
Dan Zehr

It only took a few thousand letters and a set of prison uniforms.

When a small band of environmental groups first set its sights on Dell Inc. in May 2002, the world’s No. 1 producer of personal computers had little interest in expanding the recycling programs for the PCs it sold.

Customers didn’t care much about recycling, Chairman Michael Dell said that summer when protesters first showed up at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Austin.

“At first they did ignore us,” said Eleanor Whitmore, who worked for the Texas Campaign for the Environment in Austin before moving to its Arlington office. “But if you’re a company, and you’re concerned about profit, and you have 6,000 letters coming in from customers and shareholders, it really starts to add up after a while.”

At the time, Dell said the letters hadn’t made it to his attention. That changed when the Texas Campaign began directing correspondence to Dell’s home address.

The letters and the growing number of environmental groups that started joining the nationwide Computer Takeback Campaign helped ratchet up pressure on the company. The small Texas Campaign — it has a staff of about 25 has about 8,000 members enrolled this year — stepped up and took the lead.

“They targeted Dell because they felt it would be the hardest, and it’s also the biggest,” said Julie Gorte, director of research at the Calvert Group Ltd., one of the country’s biggest socially responsible investment funds. “I do think that had an effect, but it wouldn’t have if there hadn’t been some willingness to negotiate, to talk about change, on other side.”

Dell officials soon met with the representatives of the Texas Campaign and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. The company began looking for ways to promote recycling. It held a public forum on computer recycling at the University of Texas.

Dell eventually hired an executive to oversee its recycling program. It launched free recycling for customers who bought new PCs, including it as part of the online sales process and training sales people on recycling options.

“What they did was give us a bit of a wake-up call,” Dell spokesman Bryant Hilton said. “Environmental responsibility wasn’t new to us, but we probably hadn’t put enough thinking into our ‘product retirement’ strategy.”

Meanwhile, shareholders such as Calvert, which holds about 967,000 Dell shares among its 27 funds worth $9.7 billion, also quietly pushed Dell to change. Gorte, though, gives most of the credit to the environmental groups’ willingness to challenge Dell and Dell’s willingness to learn and respond.

Today, the company is singled out for praise, not scorn, by the once-critical environmental groups.

“Dell, especially, has responded since a couple years ago,” said Sheila Davis, director of the Clean Computer Campaign at the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, a nonprofit group in San Jose, Calif., that’s supported by several thousand dues-paying members. “When we started the campaign, they were laggards.”

Although environmentalists say there is still more progress to be made, Dell is no longer the environmental groups’ primary target.

Said Whitmore, of the Texas Campaign: “It was awesome to get to go to that (July 9 shareholders) meeting and say ‘good job at Dell’ rather than protesting.”

Dell wasn’t chosen so much for its record on recycling compared with other PC companies as its position as the world’s largest computer seller. That’s where grass-roots efforts find the most publicity and can have the most impact, said Alan Siegel, chief executive of the Siegel & Gale brand consultants in New York.

“Dell is a major factor in the industry and voice in the industry,” Siegel said. “You’d expect them to have a constructive stance on this, and, if they don’t, they’ll” draw a negative reaction.

And that’s what happened as the environmental groups “made it a point to show up at every public event to let people know,” Whitmore said.

The groups knew that Dell was sensitive to its public image. After all, Dell instantly dropped its popular television pitchman, actor Ben Curtis, who played Steven in the company’s widely recognized commercials, after he was arrested with a small amount of marijuana.

Two strategies did more to change Dell’s approach than the piles of letters and the slowly developing discussions.

The first came at the huge January 2003 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Activists there donned prison uniforms to protest the use of inmates by Dell’s recycling vendor, Federal Prison Industries Inc., better known as Unicor. The protest made news worldwide.

The Las Vegas protest “really threw it out there,” Whitmore said.

Six months later, Dell had dropped its contract with Unicor. But there were larger issues at play.

“It was an opportunity for us to make contact with the rest of the industry, to send the message that you could be next or this is what we’re working toward,” Whitmore said.

The environmental coalition followed by targeting one of Dell’s key consumer demographics: students. The groups, led by the Boston office of Clean Water Action, garnered support from student organizations at 150 colleges in all 50 U.S. states.

“That provided a great amount of momentum for the campaign,” said Toral Jha, program director at the GrassRoots Recycling Network in Madison, Wis.

It also got the strongest public reaction from Michael Dell.

“The issue of effectively disposing of electronic waste has Dell’s full attention, and we’re working to address this challenge and meet our responsibilities,” he said in an open letter to students.

Dell followed that letter with a teleconference during which he answered questions from students and environmental groups. It was during that call that he said the company’s customers want Dell to institute a recycling program, a complete change from his first exchange with the Texas Campaign.

Although the company didn’t like all the coalition’s methods, it now regularly meets with environmentalists to discuss environmental policies. And Dell provides updates on how its programs are developing.

“I was a little surprised by some of their tactics,” Michael Dell told the Austin American-Statesman earlier this year. “We make a whole lot more progress when we sit down and have a conversation instead of someone coming in with 10,000 letters and going away.”

But there’s no denying the impact.

“Their push got us moving in the right direction,” Dell spokesman Bryant said. “Then the natural Dell momentum took over.”

Dell, along with No. 2 Hewlett- Packard Co., scored higher than other computer manufacturers on the Computer Takeback Campaign’s recycling report card this year. Both companies announced voluntary recycling programs last month.

And a few days later, Texas Campaign Director Robin Schneider attended another Dell shareholder meeting. This time, she stood up to praise the company.

But the work won’t end there, environmental leaders said. They want legislators to pass laws that make computer makers responsible for recycling old PCs, and they want the companies to more aggressively promote current programs.

Otherwise, said Davis of the Clean Computer Campaign, “the problem is just sitting there in their closet, or it’s sitting on their desk, or it’s sitting in their garage.”

Associated Press
Matt Slagle

The world’s two largest personal-computer manufacturers have gotten a little greener. Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. announced free, temporary programs Tuesday to encourage U.S. consumers to recycle toxin-filled computers and electronics.

Beginning next week, Dell customers in the United States who buy a new Dimension desktop or Inspiron notebook computer can recycle their old computers free. The offer expands on a free recycling program the company has had for printers since March 2003.

Rival Hewlett-Packard, meanwhile, has teamed with retailer Office Depot to offer free recycling for computers, digital cameras, fax machines, cell phones and other electronics. Consumers can drop off electronics at any Office Depot store between Sunday and Labor Day. The service is limited to one computer system or other electronic device per customer per day.

Environmental groups, which have long blasted the computer industry for lax recycling efforts, lauded the news. Only about 11 percent of electronics are recycled.

“Finally, consumers and small businesses have some options that don’t charge you to do the right thing,” said Robin Schneider, executive director of the Austin-based Texas Campaign for the Environment.

The group is one of three that teamed up for the Computer TakeBack Campaign, which monitors the recycling efforts of the world’s computer makers. In May, the campaign published a report that ranked the recycling programs of Dell and HP above many foreign competitors. A year earlier, Dell fared poorly in the report, mainly for its use of prison workers who earned 20 cents to $1.26 per hour to recycle hardware.

Round Rock, Texas-based Dell now uses two domestic recycling companies and says none of the parts will end up in overseas landfills. Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP has recycling centers in Roseville, Calif., and near Nashville, Tenn. Michael Rosenstein, Dell’s director of consumer e-business, said the new program was in reaction to demands from consumers and environmental groups. He would not say how long Dell’s limited offer would last.

The Dell program lets consumers get free recycling as part of the checkout process on its Web site. Buyers will get two prepaid shipping labels – one for the computer, one for the monitor – and instructions to put old equipment of any make or model in the boxes that contained the new equipment. DHL will pick up the boxes for free.

Those not buying new Dell computers can buy home pickup recycling for $5 per unit; the price had been $15.

HP also has a mail-based computer recycling plan that costs consumers $35. Similarly, IBM Corp. accepts mailed-in computers, printers and monitors, by any manufacturer, for a $30 fee, with shipping included.

San Antonio Express-News
L.A. Lorek

Getting rid of obsolete electronics will cost San Antonio taxpayers $56 million by 2015, according to a report released Monday by the Texas Campaign for the Environment. Junk TVs, PCs, cellular phones, and CD and DVD players will cost taxpayers statewide $606 million if actions aren’t taken to prevent more than 2 million tons of toxins from ending up in Texas landfills and incinerators, said Robin Schneider, executive director for the Austin-based environmental group.

“There are so many toxins inside computers,” Schneider said. “These toxins migrate from landfills and incinerators into our air, land and water.”

Government and industry leaders will meet in Austin today for a seminar on what to do about all this electronic waste. Getting rid of old PCs and electronics will cost about $80 per household, but those costs should not be paid by taxpayers, Schneider said. The environmental group wants state legislation to make PC and electronics makers take back products for proper disposal.

Two months ago, Maine became the first state to require producers of monitors, laptops and TVs to take back their obsolete products. California has proposed similar legislation.

Currently, Texas law does not prevent consumers from sending PC waste into landfills — and that’s dangerous to the environment, Schneider said. Each computer or TV display contains an average of 4 to 8 pounds of lead. Computers also contain mercury, cadmium and other heavy metals that pose significant health hazards if they contaminate groundwater or get released into the air.

And the problem of mounting computer and electronic waste threatens to get worse as more computers, TVs and other electronics get replaced with faster, cheaper and better models.

“Consumers have, on average, two to three obsolete computers in their garages, closets or storage spaces,” according to the Texas Campaign for the Environment report. “U.S. government researchers estimate that three-quarters of all computers ever sold in the United States remain stockpiled, awaiting disposal.”

Some manufacturers, such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard, have publicly announced support for policies requiring manufacturers to take back their products.

PC maker Dell, based in Round Rock, has increased its recycling efforts in response to consumer demand, spokesman Bryant Hilton said. In March 2003, Dell launched a recycling program providing home pickup of old computers, no matter what the make or model, for $7.50. For more information, visit Dell.com/recycling.

“We certainly do understand that producers play a role in recycling,” Hilton said. “We don’t have a problem with taking back our product.”

In San Antonio, Discount Computer and Networking at 5500 Brewster recycles computers that consumers drop off or that it collects through computer drives around the city. In Austin, Image Microsystems handles recycling for Dell’s old computers.

Hewlett-Packard also runs a recycling program nationwide that will pick up any brand of PC from consumers’ doorsteps for a fee. For more information, visit its Web site at www.hp.com/recycle.

Wired.com

Disney has stopped selling its movies on 48-hour DVDs, but that doesn’t mean the technology is disappearing. Flexplay developed the technology that renders a DVD unreadable after a set period of time. The company has been sold to Atlanta-based Convex Group, which plans to release content in this format.

The EZ-D was marketed to consumers as a way to avoid late fees from movie rental shops. Once opened, the EZ-D can be played unlimited times in 48 hours. Then a chemical compound on the disc combines with oxygen, rendering the DVD opaque and unreadable after two days. Movie fans can throw away the expired disk or pack it off to a special recycling facility to be recycled.

“We believe wholeheartedly in the platform,” said Dawn Whaley, executive vice president of the Convex Group. “I don’t think we would have acquired a company if we didn’t think it would be successful.”

During the holidays, the Convex Group released an independent film, Noel, in the Flexplay format. Copies of the film are still available on Amazon.com for $5 plus shipping. Whaley said the company is talking with retail partners and content providers, and plans to roll out additional titles later in 2005. She declined to be more specific.

Environmentalists criticized Disney for releasing its films on EZ-D, charging that the product would lead to unnecessary waste in landfills. They didn’t buy the argument that movie fans looking for convenience would take the time to send their expired DVDs to a recycling center.

A spokesman for Buena Vista Home Entertainment, the division of Disney that released the films, confirmed that its disposable DVD pilot program is over. He said they are now evaluating what they want to do next.

“It looks like the technology has been set back, at least for now,” said Robin Schneider, executive director of Texas Campaign for the Environment. “This is just a bad idea. I’m glad to see that both the customers and the studio … have not responded very favorably to it.”

Whaley said the Convex Group is aware of the environmental concerns about disposable DVDs and is making an effort to address them. The company refers its customers to GreenDisk, a company that recycles DVDs and CDs.

The Convex Group is also developing a way to include permanent content on a DVD in addition to the short-lived movie. Whaley said the company hopes to include an interactive game tied to the movie, a music video or a trailer that a customer would want to save.

Schneider said the argument to buy an EZ-D to avoid late fees doesn’t really apply anymore, now that one of the largest DVD rental shops, Blockbuster, has nixed its late fees. Netflix, another popular rental service, never charged late fees.

The EZ-Ds didn’t sell particularly well, either. Officials in a number of the stores that carried the EZ-D said the price was too high — about $7 — for a product that self-destructs.

“They just kind of quietly disappeared,” said Tom Mullen, store director for Cub Foods in Peoria, Illinois, one of Disney’s eight test markets around the country. “One day they were gone, and I haven’t heard anything about them since.”

Austin American-Statesman
Kevin Carmody

Armed with two studies showing elevated levels of fire retardants in the breast milk of American women, including some Austinites, a Texas environmental group called for a ban on the chemicals Tuesday.

“Brominated fire retardants don’t belong in breast milk, they don’t belong in babies, and they should be phased out as soon as possible,” said Robin Schneider of Austin-based Public Research Works, which is associated with the Texas Campaign for the Environment.

At a news conference Tuesday, Schneider unveiled the most recent study, in which the Washington-based Environmental Working Group used a certified lab to test breast milk from 20 women from throughout the country, including one from Austin.

That study found that the level of fire retardants in the milk of the first-time mothers averaged 75 times higher than those seen in recent European studies. The chemicals are widely used in this country in home electronics and furniture to slow the spread of flames, but they are being phased out in Europe.

A study published last month by researchers at the Dallas regional campus of the University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston measured the levels in breast milk from 23 women at a women’s health clinic in Dallas and 24 from throughout Texas who donated milk to the Mothers’ Milk Bank in Austin. It reported finding levels 10 to 100 times higher than in European women.

The potential for health effects at such levels in humans, including infants, is not clear. No human health studies have been completed, but animal studies have identified damage to the developing brains and the reproductive systems of newborn animals exposed to certain types of fire retardants.

“There are some very reputable scientists who believe the levels we are now seeing in humans may be at the levels that can cause the type of effects seen in the animal studies,” said Arnold Schecter, a professor of environmental sciences at the Dallas campus and lead researcher on the study.

The environmental group’s tests found an average level of 159 parts per billion of the chemicals in breast milk of the 20 women, with a low of 9 parts per billion from a Tennessee woman and a high of 1,078 parts per billion from a Missouri woman. The Missouri woman had the highest level ever reported worldwide, the study said.

The Austin woman, lawyer Leila Feldman, had 44 parts per billion of the chemicals in her breast milk. Feldman, who volunteered for the study, said the results were scary but didn’t stop her from breast-feeding her son Max, now 5 1/2 months old and healthy. She said the decision to continue breast feeding was in part based on studies indicating that there is greater potential for chemicals to enter a child while still in the womb than through breast-feeding.

“I think the health benefits of breast-feeding outweigh the potential risk, so I didn’t stop,” she said.

Like PCBs, a group of synthetic organic chemicals that can cause a number of harmful effects, the chemicals bind easily to fat.

Schecter said he suspects that the chemicals are entering people primarily through the meat, fish and dairy products they eat.

A spokesman for trade group representing the chemicals’ manufacturers said the documented benefits of the fire retardants are significant, with at least 630 people saved from fire deaths annually, but there is no scientific evidence of a health risk from levels seen in humans.

“Some people equate detection (of a chemical) with effects in humans,” said Peter O’Toole, spokesman for the Bromine Scientific and Environmental Forum. “You can’t make that extrapolation.”

Austin American-Statesman
Amy Schatz

Stung by mounting criticism for using federal prison labor to recycle computers, Dell Computer Corp. said Thursday that it will begin using other recycling contractors instead. It was an about-face for the Round Rock-based computer company, which previously has defended its partnership with Unicor, the government-run corporation that uses federal inmates for labor.

“We were able to change vendors and keep the costs the same,” said Bryant Hilton, a Dell spokesman. “One of our goals has been to bring down the cost of recycling for consumers. This is one more move in that direction.”

The change came little more than a week after a Silicon Valley environmental group released a report highly critical of Dell’s partnership with Unicor, accusing the company of exposing inmates to toxins as they took apart computers and monitors.

It was the latest salvo in an ongoing battle by environmentalists who want Dell, the world’s largest personal computer maker, to institute a model recycling program.

In the past year, they’ve dubbed founder Michael Dell the “Toxic Dude” in a letter-writing campaign, dressed in prison garb to protest at Dell PC recycling events across the country and even gathered outside Susan Dell’s boutique during a fashion show in May.

Dell should lead the industry because its direct sales model would allow it to contact customers directly about recycling old computers, monitors or printers, environmentalists say.

“Their decision to stop this was very welcome,” said Robin Schneider, executive director of the Austin-based Texas Campaign for the Environment, which protested at Dell’s annual meeting last year and is planning to do the same at this year’s meeting, July 18, at the Austin Convention Center.

A company spokesman denied that the recent report or demonstrations had anything to do with the decision to drop Unicor. But asked whether the company hoped the change would halt the demonstrations, Hilton said, “Yes.”

Dell will contract with Dallas-based Resource Concepts Inc. and California-based Image Microsystems Inc. for consumer recycling and is searching for other partners. The company is also expected to announce next week an expanded effort to promote recycling among corporate and government customers.

In the past, Dell said it used Unicor because it provided a low-cost solution for recycling. The two other companies agreed to meet Unicor’s price, Hilton said.

Dell provides free printer recycling for customers who purchase new Dell printers. In March, Dell began a home pick-up recycling service for $15 per PC or monitor, matching a similar program offered by competitor Hewlett-Packard Co.

KPFT News Houston
Erika McDonald

As part of a national public relations campaign, Texas-based Dell Computers collected unwanted computers from a drop-off location in Southwest Houston one weekend in May. Where the e-waste goes from there has environmentalists raising questions over prison labor exploitation.

Federal Prison Industries, also known by the trade name UNICOR employs inmates to turn obsolete machines back into raw materials. Texas Campaign for the Environment’s Robin Schneider said inmates were being exposed to carcinogens without the benefit of the same environmental protections as their free-market counter parts.

“At a state-of-the art facility laborers are unionized so they have the ability to complain about their conditions and participate on committees that have input on health and safety policies,” she said.

Schneider said inmates who complained often faced retaliation and had no input on their conditions.

UNICOR spokesman Larry Novicky denied the charge. He said the company meets or exceeds all environmental and safety standards. In fact, neither the Environmental Protection Agency nor the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has yet developed guidelines for electronic waste recycling.

Still, Novicky defended UNICOR’s safety precautions. He said inmates are required to wear protective clothing when handling certain kinds of e-waste. Ventilation systems are also installed to minimize effects of toxic “dust.”

But environmentalists’ claims are not entirely unfounded. An investigator with the regional office of OSHA confirmed UNICOR was issued citations at federal prisons in Texas for inadequate environmental protections.

Dell spokesperson Michele Glaze defended UNICOR’s practices. She said Dell intends to stand behind UNICOR and continue to use the company for its year round recycling efforts.

“It’s too bad that a special interest group is choosing to focus on the labor issue,” Glaze said. “Our focus is the environment.”

Schneider also complained ultra-cheap prison labor undercuts recycling industry infrastructure, making it difficult for free-market companies to compete.

“There are responsible companies out there that make an effort to hire low income people of color and they’ve had to lay people off,” she said.

Novicky argued his employees, the federal inmates, were primarily low income people of color.

The event was cosponsored by Keep Houston Beautiful, a city-funded non-profit organization that provided volunteers and publicity for Dell. Events coordinator Michael Cowin said the city was not aware of the labor issues at play until contacted by the CEC. He said the revelation would not change KHB’s support for the event.

“Throwing the baby out with the bath water is just not sensible,” he said. “Recycling is a good thing no matter what the circumstance surrounding it.” He said Dell’s labor issues did not concern him when compared to the “shady” practices of other corporations in the Houston area.

Dell boasts their recycling program keeps their obsolete machines out of landfills and out of countries with weaker hazardous waste regulations. Schneider said Dell’s use of UNICOR raises doubts about this claim. She said UNICOR’s “lack of transparency” means the e-waste could be sold to other companies, which then export the waste. UNICOR will not disclose who buys the material.

Novicky confirmed that UNICOR does in fact sell the waste to companies which more than likely export it. “It’s absolutely possible the stuff ends up in other countries,” he said. “But we don’t really see the problem with that.”

The problem, Schneider said, is that lax oversight and unsafe work conditions and practices have led to serious health consequences and environmental degradation. The burning of plastics releases toxins into the atmosphere, which causes cancer and birth defects.

Texas Campaign for the Environment, an Austin-based group sent protesters dressed in prison uniforms to Dell”s recycling events in Dallas and Houston. The protesters said their aim was to educate people who wanted to dispose of their old computers with a clean conscience.

The group plans a larger action to coincide with Dell’s annual shareholders’ meeting on July 18. A community meeting will be held the night before. These actions are part of the group’s computer take-back campaign.

An effort to put pressure on American electronics manufactures to internalize the disposal costs of their own machines. Schneider said companies will have stronger incentive for less toxic design and greater product longevity if they are held responsible for disposing of the machines they produce.

E-waste is becoming a growing concern among environmentalists. Reports indicate the US will face disposal of an estimated 1 billion obsolete computers by 2010.