The WEEE Directive so alarmed the U.S. computer industry -- specifically the American Electronics Association, whose over 3,000 members include Microsoft, Intel, IBM and Motorola -- that it prepared a legal position paper claiming the directive violates -- surprise -- the international trade rules of the World Trade Organization; the association managed to convince the United States Trade Representative to adopt its key positions. Targeted are the directive's phaseouts of hazardous chemicals because, as the USTR states in its 2000 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, "viable substitutes may not exist" -- though plenty of people will tell you they do.

"The United States supports the drafts' objectives to reduce waste and the environmental impact of discarded products," the National Trade Estimate Report states. "The Administration has expressed concerns, however, on the adverse impact on trade from the current proposals' ban on certain materials ... and with the provisions regarding producers' retroactive responsibility for the collection and recycling of end-of-life products."

While it's hard to say just how much USTR and AEA lobbying has influenced the directive, a list of revisions in the various drafts (the most recent version is the fifth) casts a recognizable shadow. The deadline for the phaseouts of hazardous chemicals has retreated from 2004 to 2008; the list of materials scheduled for phaseout has shrunk; the minimum recycling rate for cathode-ray tubes has dropped by 20 percent; provisions mandating the use of recycled plastics have vanished; and most worrisome of all, the most recent draft splits the directive into two separate legal documents: one dealing with the phaseouts of toxic materials, the other with everything else.

"I'm concerned they're going to focus on one [document] and relegate the other to obscurity," says Smith of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, who's convinced the U.S. electronics industry will continue to fight, particularly against the phaseouts. "[The directive] is not just talking about producers who are home-based in Europe; it's talking about everyone who wants to sell into the European market. Everybody wants to do that. Everybody has to do that. If this thing holds, it's going to set the de facto global standard."

For the time being, the de facto global standard is that the industry sells products to consumers, and consumers are responsible for their disposal. No matter that consumers have no control over -- much less any idea of -- what materials are used in the manufacture of electronics. I was appalled to learn the extent of the toxins in my e-junk.

Along with the lead in my cathode ray tubes and circuit boards, my U-Haul was loaded with chemicals with documented risks to public health and the environment: There was cadmium in my semiconductors, SMD chip resistors and infared detectors; there was mercury in my switches and position sensors; chromium in my steel housing; brominated flame retardants in my circuit boards and connectors; nickel, lithium, cadmium and other metals in my batteries; and in my cabling and older casings was polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a widely used plastic that during both production and incineration releases dioxins, which are among the most toxic chemicals known. All that was missing was a 55-gallon drum.

I had started my recycling mission by asking around for referrals. Few were forthcoming -- not from my co-workers, not from friends in IT departments at other companies. The typical suggestion was to donate the equipment to schools or nonprofits. "But the stuff doesn't work," I found myself sputtering. "It's defunct. It's 'end-of-life.' What's a school going to do with fried 486s and blown cathode-ray tubes?"

It wasn't until I showed up in person at the Market Street offices of the Solid Waste Management Program in San Francisco, and asked with some belligerence what to do with my dead computer, that I was handed a comprehensive Commercial Re-use and Recycling Directory, listing a handful of local electronics recyclers.

In the meantime, I learned that schools and nonprofits have wised up in recent years. Many reject anything less than a Pentium 166, and refuse individual donations as a matter of policy. With the growing demand for newer and faster machines, "the nonprofits became everyone's dumping ground," says Dan Schimenti, purchasing manager for HMR-USA, a San Francisco recycling business that was recently awarded a $100,000 grant from the city's Solid Waste Management Board to purchase a $350,000 monitor-crushing machine. "They don't want 486s, they don't want low-end Macs."

It's not just CPU speed that's the problem: Few schools or nonprofits can afford the skilled help necessary to refurbish old equipment. "Most schools in California are budgeted for a single, part-time computer repair person," says Steven Wyatt, executive director of the Computer Recycling Center. "Given what schools pay, it's also the case that they don't always get computer people with lots of experience and skills."

To make things easier, the CRC makes a point of donating clusters of machines with identical components and drivers -- a practice that makes it easier for schools or nonprofits to make them functional, but difficult for individual defunct computers to find useful second lives. At the Santa Clara warehouse (just a few blocks from an Intel Superfund site) pallets of shrink-wrapped CPUs and cathode-ray tubes tower nearly to the ceiling. On the warehouse floor, a group of volunteers and paid technicians test newly donated systems. Nonworking equipment, or equipment that can't fit into clusters, is carted to the back room to be dismantled for recycling.

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