Kudos to HP

After I read the book "Gone Tomorrow" about the ever increasing amount of garbage our world is having to deal with, I began noticing more what companies and individuals are doing to help or worsen the situation.

Thus, I was pleased to see a small note in an HP advertisement that referred to Hewlett-Packard's recycling program which is further explained at www.hp.com/recycle. For years HP has been at the forefront of recycling laserjet toner cartridges. Every new HP toner cartridge comes with a return address label which provides free pick-up and shipping of the used cartridge back to HP. Since there is no charge for the service, I always assumed that the savings in raw material more than made up for the costs to HP of recovering the used cartridges.

But they're into much more than recycling toner cartridges. For a small fee, you can have PC's, laptops, PDA's, monitors, batteries, power supplies, scanners, printers, plotters, and other miscellaneous electronic computer-related equipment (no DVD, TV, of VCR equipment please) picked up and returned to HP's recycling center. There, according to HP,

"All returned products go through a state-of-the-art, environmentally responsible, multi-phase recycling process. They're sent to a recycling facility and are reduced to raw materials that can be used to make new metal and plastic products."

I'd like to suggest a round of applause for one company which seems to have found a way to be a responsible citizen of the planet as part of their business plan.