Computer World - February 12, 2009
February 12, 2009 (IDG News Service) Disposal of electronic waste is a growing crisis, and Congress should pump money into electronic waste research, said Rep. Bart Gordon, chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee. . . .Witnesses at the hearing called for more e-waste research. Municipal recycling programs and e-waste recyclers should be able to track and sort discarded electronics using RFID (radio frequency identification) tags, just as RFID tags are used to track new electronics, said Valerie Thomas, an industrial and systems engineering professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The electronics supply chain is not designed for recycling, she said. "The supply chain for making and selling electronics is a model of efficiency, managed with electronic data interchange, electronic manifests, radio-frequency tags on pallets and cartons, and UPC codes on every single package," she said. "In stark contrast, the end-of-life supply chain is managed almost entirely by hand, with little record-keeping or even potential for monitoring or oversight. That the result has included unsafe, polluting and illegal activities ... should not be a surprise." Read more>>>>