Dell Computer Corporation, Georgetown’s primary supplier of computers, announced new initiatives last week to make recycling electronic equipment more convenient and affordable. Dell spokespeople said student environmental activism, such as the Georgetown EcoAction protest held in Red Square on March 31, was one factor leading the company to improve its recycling program.
“Dell was created by a college student on a university campus, so student interest in this issue was a motivator,” Dell spokesperson Cathie Hargett said. Hargett said Dell is also promoting its new program on a five-city tour. The company partnered with students on several university campuses along the way to encourage recycling electronics.
EcoAction member Andy Asensio (COL ’05) said he is pleased with Dell’s new goals. Asensio acted as a “walking petition” during EcoAction’s last protest, asking passers-by in Red Square to sign his Hazmat suit before sending it to Dell headquarters.
Asensio said that EcoAction was familiar with Dell’s earlier recycling program and found it inadequate. “That’s why we felt the need to turn up the pressure, to show Dell that they needed an even greater commitment,” he said.
Dell’s previous recycling program, Dell Exchange, gave customers free recycling, but they had to pay for the cost of sending their equipment back to the company. The new program, Dell Recycling, allows consumers to recycle up to 50 pounds of their electronics for $15 and Airborne Express will pick up the computers at the customers’ homes.
According to Dell spokesperson Michele Glaze, prior to the revised policy, customers would pay anywhere from $11 to $75 to ship 50 pounds of electronics for recycling.
“By partnering with Airborne, we’re able to keep the whole cost down to $15, and we’re working to make that even lower,” Glaze said. “Plus, the beautiful thing about the $15 program is that Airborne also comes right to your door.”
Glaze also said that Dell has asset recovery and value recovery programs for its institutional customers, like universities. Asensio praised these programs and said that with EcoAction’s support, GUSA recently passed a resolution to encourage the university to request them in all its future purchases.
EcoAction also protested sending computers overseas or using recycling vendors who send the computers to federal prisons for dissembling. Glaze said that Dell has a very firm no-landfill, no-export policy, which means that no old equipment is simply thrown away or shipped to a developing nation for disposal. Dell does, however, work with Unicorp, a company affiliated with the Department of Justice.
“Some dissembling is done in the federal prison system, but they do meet all of the Environmental Protection Agency’s standards and health and safety standards,” Glaze said. She said Dell keeps very strict guidelines to assure the workers’ well-being and monitors the sites carefully.
Asensio said that EcoAction is happy with these new goals as well. “The company is doing a lot to show that they aren’t making recycling somebody else’s problem,” he said.
EcoAction had also called for the phase-out of hazardous material in computers, and Glaze said Dell is working to reduce the toxins in their product. Recent European legislation requires that all electronics companies meet standards for lower levels of toxic material by 2006. Glaze said Dell is on track and that the standards will apply to all Dell products in the United States as well. “We are a multinational corporation, so what we do in one country, we do in all countries.”
While EcoAction found Dell’s initiatives impressive, the group plans to follow the company’s progress. “As they work on implementing the program, be sure that we will be monitoring them to make sure they hold true to their promises,” Asensio said.
