What do you do with your old unused computer? How about that old television? There may be no convenient way to get rid such “electronic waste.” But please do not donate it to Goodwill Industries of Northern New England. We are grateful for donations of useful items. Donations are the lifeline of the Goodwill organization. Used electronics, however, are generally worth less than nothing and cost us money to dispose of properly. That is one reason why Goodwill Industries strongly supports the computer and TV recycling bill pending in Maine Legislature.

As technology improves and electronic equipment becomes obsolete faster, electronic junk is piling up in closets, basements and barns, only to end up in Maine’s landfills and incinerators. Unfortunately the silicon revolution involves a lot more than simple silicon. Discarded consumer electronics contain heavy metals like lead, cadmium and mercury, as well as other toxics, such as dioxin-like brominated flame retardants. And not just in small amounts. The cathode ray tubes in televisions and computer monitors contain four to eight pounds of lead shielding. This is hazardous waste that poses a threat to public health.

The state Legislature is set to vote on a bill that, if passed, will provide all Mainers with a convenient way to drop off waste computers and TVs for safe recycling. The bill, An Act to Protect Public Health and the Environment by Providing for a System of Shared Responsibility for the

Safe Collection of Electronic Waste (LD 1892), deserves the support of the Legislature.

The current situation needs fixing. While electronic devices are in use, they rarely emit toxic chemicals. However, when placed in storage or dumped with trash, they present a toxic threat to those who comes in contact with them. When electronics are crushed in landfills their toxic contents can leach into soil and groundwater. When they are incinerated, the toxins enter the air and rain down, eventually ending up in the food chain and in our bodies.

With a national average of 400 million electronic devices being thrown out a year, we must find a way to safely recycle and recover electronic waste in Maine. Goodwill collected and disposed of 25 tons of electronic waste in this past year. That is a 30 percent increase in the amount of electronic waste dropped at our sites, regardless that our policy is not to accept them.

The computer and TV recycling bill includes one of the most effective approaches to the electronic waste problem; it is called extended producer responsibility, or producer take-back. Take-back requires the companies that design, manufacture and market electronic products bear some of the cost and responsibility for safe management and recycling at the end of a product’s useful life. It shifts some of the cost of collection and recycling from taxpayers and non-profit organizations to the manufacturers. Take-back also pushes the manufacturers to begin to use materials that are less harmful to our environment.

Producer responsibility for electronic waste is the law in Europe and in Japan. Manufacturers that operate profitably in those markets under these rules frequently object to proposals to extend producer responsibility here.

Under the Maine proposal, manufacturers of computers and televisions sold in Maine will be responsible starting in 2006 for picking up and recycling waste TVs and computers.

The consumers will still be responsible for taking their computers and TVs to local collection points, usually municipal transfer stations and recycling facilities, but if the bill passes, dropoff will be cheap and convenient and the waste will be responsibly managed.

The Maine electronic waste-recycling bill is an important step in preventing the release of toxins into our environment. It spreads responsibility among all the parties who benefit from consumer electronics. It provides Mainers with a good, safe alternative to dumping their old computers and TVs at Goodwill, allowing Goodwill to use its resources to fulfill its mission to support people with disabilities to become more independent. I hope Maine legislators will heed this call and support LD 1892.

Robert Frederick is the collections manager for Goodwill Industries of Northern New England.