Column: "Few Rules for Recycling Electronics"

"Jeffrey L. Nixon, the owner of an electronics-recycling company called EarthECycle, says he has been unfairly painted as a purveyor of electronic waste to developing nations already choking on the rich world’s discarded -- and toxic -- gadgetry.

Among other sorts of equipment reclamation, Mr. Nixon’s company, based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, offers an attractive fund-raising opportunity for charities. In return for the charities’ sponsoring and orchestrating of electronics recycling events in their local communities, during which consumers can drop off their old computers, keyboards, printers and the like, EarthECycle not only hauls away the equipment, it promises to pay cash -- often in the tens of thousands of dollars, depending on how much equipment is collected -- to the charitable organizers. ...

In a scathing report published early last week, the Basel Action Network, or BAN, an advocacy group based in Seattle that seeks to curb the exporting of electronic waste from the United States, argued that EarthECycle -- and companies like it -- falsely represent themselves as recyclers."

Tom Zeller Jr. writes for the Green Inc. blog in the New York Times May 31, 2009.