Kudos to Amazon.com for making Kindle recycling simple
My old Kindle 2 gave up the ghost awhile back, and I finally got around to doing something about it. I ended up getting a refurbished PaperWhite, which works fine, and has much longer battery life than the Kindle 2 (thanks to progress in battery, screen, communications, and computing technologies, which we discuss in detail in a forthcoming article in the Annual Review of Environmental and Resources).
The part of the process that I didn’t expect to be so easy was recycling the old kindle. Instead of having to hunt around for local recyclers, I just searched for Kindle recycling online and found this site through Amazon.com: http://recycling.ecotakeback.com. I entered my name, address, and email, and it printed a prepaid UPS label. That was it, so off to UPS it goes. That counts as responsible environmental stewardship by any measure!
I’m sure other companies have programs like this, so I’m interested to hear your experiences, both good and bad. Email me!
Addendum: Readers of Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs will remember that extended producer responsibility, which requires manufacturers to take responsibility for their products at the end of life, is one way to modify property rights to ensure better choices from the environmental perspective. Almost all analyses of options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions ignore the potential for changing property rights, but it’s a powerful way to create new possibilities for better environmental performance.
