recycling

Technology helps us manage family life in many ways. It's hard to imagine being a parent without email and cell phones (though our parents managed just fine), and I've written about TiVO and iPod as transformational technologies for parents in my book, Mojo Mom.

And yet, I sit here on the brink of mental information overload, and physical gadget overload.

The sure sign that this situation has passed the tipping point is that I frequently find myself using one phone to call the other, usually to find my Blackberry as I fly out of the house. It goes both ways though, mobile to landline and vice-versa. I've pitched the idea of a "cordless phone tether" to several friends, and they've all said it was a good idea, before realizing that it was a joke about the fact that we already have corded phones.

Three other signs: First, the proliferation of gadgets and their docks/rechargers/adapters has formed an impenetrable layer in my desk drawer. It's hard to know when it is time to part with each of these accessories. Many of the adapters look nearly identical but have slightly different connectors, creating a confusing mass that is quickly approaching junk.… Read more

Has conspicuous consumption got you down? You could do as some green pack rats do, and keep the landfill very close to home.

Ari Derfel, shown right, quietly collected his garbage for a year. Except for food that he composted for fertilizer, Derfel refused to take anything he threw away outside of his Berkeley, Calif., home.

Click over to this CNET News.com image gallery to see the great lengths he and some other eco-bloggers are going to in order to reduce the waste they generate.

Admit it: When you buy a smartphone, laptop, or any of a zillion types of consumer electronics devices, you're usually not thinking about what effect you're going to have on the environment. Maybe it's time you should.

Certainly, there are a growing number of eco-friendly options out there, whether in the gadgets themselves or in the accessories and services that go along with them. Some of that was on display last week at the Greener Gadgets conference in New York.

Solar energy was a recurrent theme amid the gadgetry. Nokia, for instance, showed off a concept for … Read more

Hewlett-Packard says it has begun to manufacture ink cartridges with some of the stuff in your home recycling bin.

The multi-resin process, devised by HP and chemistry specialists Lavergne Group and Butler-McDonald, essentially allows HP to mix in plastic from discarded printer cartridges with lower-grade plastics used in objects like Mountain Dew bottles or Night Ranger CD cases. Broadening the type of plastics that can be used increases the amount of recycled materials HP ultimately puts into new products. (The metals inside printer cartridges, meanwhile, get recycled too.)

So far, HP has manufactured more than 200 million cartridges with plastic … Read more

Admit it: somewhere in a drawer or stashed in your closet, you have an old cell phone or digital camera with no practical purpose.

Second Rotation is a Web site designed to find a home for that used and no-longer-loved electronic gear. On Tuesday, the company announced that it has raised $4.4 million in funding led by Venrock to expand its product catalog and ramp up marketing.

The Web site, which launched last July, acts as a broker between consumers and eBay or an electronics recycler.

Japan's Bird Electron has always been known for the literally stripped-down design of its products, but it seems to be in a particularly minimalist mood these days for the iPod.

First we saw the industrially bare steel speaker stand made for the Touch, and now we have a decidedly DIY-looking iPod speaker. And it's not just any speaker, according to GeekAlerts, but the "one and only recycling speaker for iPod."

The EZ17-B speaker is designed to fit snugly into the clear plastic box that comes with certain versions of the Nano and Shuffle, without the need … Read more

Imagine this in the near future: While separating the bottles and cans from paper products in the recycling bin, we may also need to set aside some old flash drives. That, at least, is part of the goal put forth by memory manufacturer ATP, which is releasing what it calls "the world's first bio-recyclable USB drive."

The "EarthDrive," which comes in capacities ranging from 1GB to 8GB, is a bit on the pricey side at $20 to $100 considering how cheap thumb drives are getting these days. But it's all for a good cause: … Read more

Earth Class Mail, which enables people to manage snail mail online, has closed $13.3 million in Series A funding.

The round was led by Ignition Partners of Bellevue, Wash., with more than half of the money raised by the Keiretsu Forum angel investment group.

The company aims to open a chain of retail stores, starting with one in Manhattan early this year, according to the Portland Business Journal. The storefronts will focus on easing the process of signing up, which requires completing some notarized forms. The Seattle-based service is used currently in 130 countries.

Earth Class Mail is billed … Read more

Three of the biggest makers of TVs have formed a company to help manage the wave of electronics waste set to swell with the onset of digital television. Panasonic, Sharp, and Toshiba have launched the Manufacturers Recycling Management Co. in Minnesota.

That state last year enacted a law making vendors responsible for their brands' discarded electronics. MRM contracts with third-party recyclers including CRT Processing and Materials Processing Corporation, which specialize in handling tired monitors and televisions.

Old televisions and monitors are laced with lead, cadmium, and toxic flame retardants, but careful recycling can recover valuable and reusable metals and plastics.… Read more