E-waste and Earth Day

As I mentioned earlier this week, green geeks are hacking all sorts of tech tools for the greater good. Armed with old gear this Earth Day weekend? Here's a neat Yahoo Maps mashup to direct you to electronics recycling centers. Which of the centers in your region is best?

The lack of national e-waste laws makes it hard to tell who's doing what in the world of tech recycling. For example, you can check the Basel Action Network list for companies that have signed an international pledge not to export potentially poisonous scrap to developing nations. Still, just because a company has not signed the pledge doesn't necessarily mean that it's behaving badly. For example, although I noted yesterday that ReCellular's name is missing from the BAN pledge, the company pointed out that it does not send any scrap to poor nations. Instead, some of the 4.5 million mobile handsets ReCellular handles annually may go abroad for reuse, not end-of-life dismantling, says VP Mike Newman. BAN decided last year that its pledge would no longer allow shipping products to poorer countries for reuse.