Environmentalists want electronics companies to make products more recyclable

• Wondrously white and smooth and with a navigational Click Wheel so touch sensitive, it granted music lovers a sense of magical powers untold.
• Because of the sheer numbers of the devices being sold, and Apple's reputation as a forward-thinking company.
• In the last part of 2004, Apple sold 4.5 million portable music players.
• Last week, legislation was introduced in the House that would charge consumers a fee on the purchase of computers and TVs to fund a nationwide recycling program.
• Environmentalists say the real push may come from Europe: New European Union laws ban hazardous materials in all consumer electronics and require companies to take full responsibility for recycling them.
• At the same time, US universities, government agencies, and other large purchasers of consumer electronics have started applying pressure to manufacturers to produce more environmentally friendly wares.
• So the expectation is that companies will come up with product designs and models to satisfy new requirements.
• "This is a very exciting period," says Joanna Underwood, president of Inform, which researches corporate environmental practices.
• "It is a time of intense creativity by corporations.
• The design is still under research, but a cellphone that begets a sunflower puts the notion of electronic wizardry in new perspective.
• If successful, it would represent the paradigm shift that environmentalists hope for.
• Ideally, they say, companies would think about not just how to dispose of an MP3 player, or how to build lead-free monitors, but about a product's entire life cycle.
• "The European market is driving everything, there's no doubt about it," says Jack Geibig, acting director of the Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies at the University of Tennessee.