Just how much tech junk is getting recycled?

Apr 29, 2009 by Candace Lombardi

Last year, Office Depot recycled almost 1.5 million pounds of old tech equipment through its service for consumers, the company said Wednesday.

That sounds like a lot. It makes you realize how quickly all those landfills must be filling up since that figure represents only the junk from people who 1) actually bother to recycle, and 2) chose to go with Office Depot’s recycling program.

For a comparison, I decided to check how other company-sponsored recycling programs are doing. Unfortunately, as sustainability expert Kevin Wilhelm told CNET, there is yet to be a standard way for companies to calculate such statistics. What’s included in recycling statistics varies from company to company, but the data I dug up offers a rough idea of what’s going on in this arena.

Staples, an Office Depot competitor, began offering an in-store recycling service in May 2007. It charges $10 per large item regardless of where you originally bought it; recycles small items like keyboards, mice, and speakers for free; and offers $3 in Staples rewards for Hewlett-Packard, Lexmark or Dell brand printer cartridges.

By the end of the 2007, Staples had recycled 2 million pounds of tech junk, including almost 24 million printer cartridges in the U.S., according to the company’s 2007 sustainability report.

What about the computer manufacturers themselves?

Continue reading article on CNET….