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HP to Expand Its Recycling Program

Posted on: Thursday, 8 July 2004, 06:00 CDT

Hewlett-Packard Co. plans to expand its recycling program for personal computers and other electronic devices to 1 billion pounds in the next three years to keep the machines from leaking chemicals into landfills.

Hewlett-Packard, the world's No.2 maker of PCs, has recycled 500 million pounds of electronic waste, which includes computers, printers and cartridges, since 1987.

One billion pounds is the equivalent of about 400,000 passenger cars.

Cathode-ray tubes, used in computer monitors, were declared a hazardous waste in 2001 by the state of California.

Other toxins found in electronic devices include lead, cadmium and mercury, according to the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition in San Jose, California, a nonprofit organization that tracks environmental problems in technology companies.

"It's a significant step in increasing the volume of material they are recycling," Sheila Davis, a spokeswoman for the group, said in an interview.

Hewlett-Packard topped the group's list of computer companies' environmental performance, she said.

Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard has recycling plants in California and Tennessee. It said it is the only major computer manufacturer to have its own full-service recycling facilities.

It provides postage-paid envelopes in some replacement printer cartridges to send in used ones and offers Internet coupons to customers who pay to have old products picked up for recycling.

Shares of Hewlett Packard rose 22 cents to $20.26 as of 4:01 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

The stock has fallen 8.1 percent in the past 12 months.

International Business Machines Corp. is the world's largest computer maker.

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