Four regional Australian councils have adopted a ban on sending electronic waste to landfill, in the hopes that the move will force the federal government to finalize a national recycling scheme. The four councils -- Mosman, Manly, Warringa and Pittwater, which together cover all of Syndey's northern beaches -- have enacted a no-landfill policy effective in January 2010, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

A new study analyzing the Amazon Kindle electronic book reader's impact on the environment suggests that, on average, the carbon emitted over the life of the device is offset after the first year of use.

Nike and Creative Commons are calling upon other companies and stakeholders to bring the network efficiencies of open innovation to solving the problems of sustainability. GreenXchange will seek to bring together stakeholders in working groups to discuss strategies for advancing the commons by exploring ideas such as using patent pools, research non-assertions, and using technologies that support networked and community-based knowledge transfer and sharing.

This document reports on an LCA study of PCs, according to the terms of reference described in Technical Annex XI.E.4/96/0056 of the Commission's call for tenders and on pp 12-14 of Atlantic/IPU's tender for the project, which was distributed to the PC ad hoc working group on 21 January, 1997.

Offer expires July 31, 2009.

Millions of printed circuit boards from discarded electronics are tossed into landfills every year. In addition to the volume of waste, the material can leach chemicals into the soil. As an alternative, researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China are finding various ways to reuse the panels, including as an additive in asphalt.

As more organizations worldwide come to see the value of investing in eco-friendlier hardware, PC vendors are jockeying for the right to lay claim to the greenest wares. Proving a central weapon in this battle is the EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) registry. Plenty of companies are finding the tool invaluable for finding green machines that meet their particular needs. The problem is, some vendors -- intentionally or otherwise -- might be abusing the system to make themselves and their wares look greener.

Headlines abound with stories of branded technology being fished out of rivers and landfills in developing nations leaking toxic metals into the water supply. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates roughly 400,000 tons of e-waste goes to recyclers every year, and that up to 80 percent of the materials sorted for recycling end up in operations in China, India, Southeast Asia and West Africa where it is disassembled and burned or dumped. But it doesn't have to be that way, declares Mark Newton, the senior manager of environmental sustainability at Dell Computers, the computer manufacturing giant based in Round Rock, Texas.

Make Magazine has some ideas for things to do with your old analog TV.

Formerly the International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment. View the conference program and see guidelines for their student paper competition.

Information about computer recyclers and refurbishers in the U.K.