As my inaugural post should have indicated, I am fascinated by the myriad problems that coalesce under the “E-Waste issues” category. Most of these aren’t really strictly legal-there’s a lot to be said, for example, on the topic of whether the ever-increasing ephemerality of electronic appliances (both in terms of planned obsolescence and shoddiness of manufacture, in stark contrast to the days where your Sansui stereo receiver weighed 200 pounds and was designed to last to the dystopian future and beyond) is the prime agitating force behind many E-waste issues. One prominent, borderline-legal aspect of E-waste management that must inevitably be considered, however, is the ease of “proper” disposal. I suspect that we approach truism when we admit that a greater disparity in difficulty, cost, and convenience to a consumer between the “right” method of disposal and the “wrong” method of disposal corresponds to a steadily lessening compliance, especially in an arena that is so new and, comparatively, unfamiliar.
A personal anecdote might be helpful here. I spent several years living in Chicago, a city whose managerial “issues” are both legion and infamous. When I arrived, the primary “regular” recycling paradigm involved the “blue bag” system: you were instructed to put your recyclables in an ordinary alley trash bin, but instead of using a standard garbage bag, you were to use a blue plastic bag supplied by the city. This magical plastic implement would signal to trash collectors that…well, actually, I’m not sure what it practically signaled, as few believed that the system actually worked, many buildings were effectively ignored by the blue-bag program, and compliance/comprehension in areas that were served remained perilously low (you can check out a Chicago Reader article on this and other Chicago recycling problems here; an obituary for the blue bag program, which was officially put out to pasture on May 2nd, is available here.).
Near the end of my stay in the Windy City, however, the winds of change brought with them a new recycling initiative. Cognizant of the failings of the blue bag approach-but, in typical Chicago fashion, loathe to take action that would upset Chicago’s delicate balancing of warring interests-the city government decided to move to a single-stream model, focused around the placing of “blue-cart” recycling centers around the city. These carts would essentially be free-standing recycling “dumpsters,” where all recyclables (admittedly, a greater variety than I’ve found to be traditionally accepted in New York) could be dumped with impunity. The single-stream model removes the sorting and cataloging that has traditionally served as one of the many consumer-level impediments to recycling, and its adoption represented an important step forward for the city.
However, the decision to embrace a distributed disposal model brought with it several additional problems. As the second Reader article above notes, the program has struggled with funding issues from the get-go, and some areas of the city simply weren’t very well served by the new program; moreover, the locations that were established were frequently…let’s be charitable and say that they were located slightly counterinuitively. For example, the closest location to my apartment was located at 1758 S.Clark. For those unfamiliar with the area or the city of Chicago in general, I’ve included a very high-tech illustration of this location below, courtesy of Google Maps’ satellite view.

Yep; my drop-off center was in the middle of nowhere, next to some train tracks, in a random parking lot at 18th and Clark. All that was missing was some broken-down Terminators and perhaps a flaming barrel or two.
Obviously, this model presents several problems. One, you need a car to haul your stuff to the center. Two, time and effort is required to actually make the trip…and for those for whom leisure time is a rare luxury indeed, time is no-doubt better spent at places other than the nearest recycling depot. That most residents of my area found this approach to recycling impracticable was aptly demonstrated by the sheer preponderance of Trader Joe’s bags I saw used as carriers for recyclables.
Tying this back into my original topic: currently, municipal E-waste models seem to embrace this “you bring it to us” paradigm, which no-doubt limits compliance by even those whose Janist-like dedication to recycling would normally equate one accidentally thrown-out glass jar with a minor tragedy worthy of garment rending. In Westchester, for example, large E-waste recycling is seemingly limited to specific dates and locations; convenient if your huge old CRT happens to break the day before the collection down the block, not so much if a power spike kills ten computer monitors in early January in the northern part of the county. The burden is placed largely on the consumer; the negative aspects of compliance are potentially severe, and those without access to transportation cannot hope to take advantage of the services provided.
So what’s the solution? More central control? A centrally standardized approach to E-waste management? Not necessarily. Convenience for the consumer needs to be a plank of any plan that seeks to seriously confront the E-waste recycling problem. These initiatives are likely to be economically inefficient; after all, arming municipalities with call-and-pick-up programs is likely to cost more than the current model while providing little in the way of immediate financial benefit. The Penns and Tellers of the world, then, will not be pleased with initiatives along this line. Yet the scope of the problem and the general difficulty of compliance in the majority status-quo would seem to compel measures that go above and beyond economic modeling and cost/benefit pragmatism to embrace a strategy that would do as much as possible to avoid future E-waste-related tragedies.