Critical Exponent

You know fish is generally good for you, but which fish are not? And which fish are not ocean-friendly?

Here’s a guide from seafoodwatch.org at the Monterey Aquarium and another one from Oceans Alive, together with the latter’s table of toxic fish.

Salon has an interesting story this week about what happens to computers and other electronics when they die. Let’s just say they don’t go to heaven.

The US is the only industrialized country not to sign the Basel convention. We are also the country with the highest per-capita concentration of electronics. We are thus leading the way in making the Third World our global dumpster.

For all the talk of free markets and unbridled competition, what often gets left out are the externalities that are not reflected in the free-market prices. In this case, that would be the cost of proper disposal to prevent environmental degradation and health risks to the poor who are currently crudely “processing” our scraps by the most primitive of means.

I think electronics manufacturers should incorporate the cost of disposal into the purchase price of their products. (Not a bad idea for all manufacturers, really. Call it “life-cycle pricing.”) Yes, it means higher prices at the checkout, but these are costs that society will have to pay sooner or later in one form or another. Simply pushing the costs out of sight to a leeching landfill in China manned by underpaid and unprotected peasants is not acceptable.

As an added incentive, perhaps a fraction of this additional recapture cost could be held in escrow and be refunded to customers when they return their machine to a certified recycling center. The escrow tag would be attached to each piece of hardware, so that even if equipment goes through multiple owners, the current owner always has the option of terminating the consumer life cycle of the equipment by taking it to a recycling center and getting the escrow deposit back.

It’s just a thought, but we need to do something to take responsibility for our own waste.