Outdated 15-inch CRT monitors and PCs too poky to run Photoshop are piled in a back room that WorldWise, a Web design shop in Grand Blanc, Michigan, also uses as a kitchen. The company stacks so much equipment there, according to WorldWise co-founder Jerry Kocis, that "I think [employees] started going out so they wouldn't have to eat on top of old keyboards and other stuff."
Mounds of Monitors
Kocis is just one of many business owners who worry about the escalating problem of disposing of unwanted tech equipment cheaply, safely, and legally. For instance, a national stampede to LCD monitors leaves thousands of lowly CRTs, like WorldWise's 15-inchers, awaiting disposal. In the third quarter of 2003, LCDs outsold CRTs for the first time; and Rhoda Alexander, director of monitor research for ISuppli/Stanford Resources, reports that they're expected to dominate sales in 2004. But at least five states (California, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Virginia) have passed laws banning CRTs from their landfills, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. And monitors aren't the only problem. The National Recycling Coalition (NRC) has estimated that nearly 500 million PCs in the United States will become obsolete between 1997 and 2007.
News source: PC World
