Any self-respecting gadget hound knows that China is responsible for packing millions of shipping containers with the consumer electronics we crave. What you may not know is what we ship in return: our waste for recycling. Of growing concern is e-waste, resulting from the deluge of PCs, cellphones, televisions and crapgadgets we churn through at an accelerating clip each year. While domestic recycling programs are good-intentioned, often the most toxic of our e-waste is shipped illegally back to China and boiled down for its precious metals under some of the most crude conditions you can imagine. When faced with the choice of familial poverty or the slow accumulation of poison in their bloodstream (for $8 per day), it's not hard to imagine what many rural Chinese people will choose. So while we give Greenpeace's self-congratulatory promotions and oft-subjective "Guide to Greener Electronics" company ratings the occasional hard time, their attempts to raise e-waste awareness are commendable. Now go ahead, check the video from 60 Minutes' intrepid reporters after the break and let the guilt wash over you.

Update: As noted by reader Jason, a more thorough (and disturbing) exploration of these e-waste dumps can be found in a Current TV video shot last year in the same region.

Best Buy already gladly accepts cellphones, batteries, ink cartridges and other items for recycling, but it looks like you can now offload some of your larger, unwanted electronics gear free of charge as well -- if you near one of the 117 stores in the Baltimore, San Francisco, and Minnesota areas that are participating in the company's new test program, that is. According to the company, those stores will now accepting up to two items per day, per household, including televisions and monitors up to 32-inches, computers, cameras and other devices not including microwaves, air conditioners. or appliances. There's no word on any future plans for expansion of the program just yet, with Best Buy only going so far as to say that it'll "evaluate the success of the test and determine options for scaling it across the U.S." Of course, there's also plenty of other recycling options available if you don't want to wait for Best Buy to make up its mind.

The US Postal Service may soon become very relevant to a generation which seems increasingly disinterested in physical mail. The USPS is launching a pilot program in ten cities and 1,500 post offices which hopes to aid in the fight against electronic waste. Come rain, sleet, snow, or any other violent natural occurrence, the post office will now allow you to mail used printer ink cartridges, PDAs, MP3 players, and other small electronics to Clover -- a company which recycles the castoff hunks of metal and plastic -- free of charge. You can feel pretty good about utilizing the new service too, as Clover is a "zero landfill" company, which means they do everything they can to avoid making more waste. Now, if the postal service can just do something about these old TVs that need hauling...

Nokia's been putting quite a focus on contributing to a greener, healthier world as of late -- still running off the high of winning Greenpeace's praise, perhaps -- and its latest concept, unveiled at MWC, takes the commitment to an extreme. The "Remade" phone is exactly that: a handset made entirely of recycled stuff. The case and keypad are fashioned from tossed cans, for example, and apparently, even the electrical components (never mind that the Remade can't actually place a call in its current incarnation) are entirely reused. No plans have been revealed to produce the Remade or anything quite like it, but the way Nokia's going -- and the way we're throwing away tin cans -- we wouldn't be surprised if it happened down the road.

It's no secret that gadget aficionados like ourselves have mounds of kit that was hot stuff in its heyday, but figuring out what to do with it once its prime has passed is still a mystery to some. 'Course, the entrepreneurs in the crowd simply offer their previously loved wares up to the world via eBay (or similar), but for those lacking the time / motivation to do so, rest assured, companies are on the prowl to totally take advantage of you. TechForward and NEW are two firms that are looking to make a mint from entering the gadget buyback realm, and as you'd probably expect, the cash doled out to suckers individuals who bite on this is woefully less than market value -- but then again, it's ultra-convenient, shipping is free and it's guaranteed, hassle-free money. Sounds like the pawn shop just got with the times, eh?

[Image courtesy of PlanoPawnShop]

We surprisingly haven't heard a ton about green(er) tech at this year's CES, but there's still some news going down -- and Panasonic, Sharp and Toshiba have just announced that they've formed a new joint venture, the sexily named Electronics Manufacturers Recycling Management Company, to handle collection and recycling of their products in the US. MRM seems to have formed in response to some new stringent regulations recently passed in Minnesota, as well as similar regs that are about to go on the books in Connecticut, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, and Washington, but the idea is to provide recycling programs to state and local governments and other manufacturers -- and to that end, MRM already has deals with Hitachi, JVC, Mitsubishi, Philips, Pioneer, Sanyo, and Syntax-Brillian. MRM's managed to collect and handle 750 tons of old gear in its first five months in Minnesota, a feat the company credits to its strategy of making electronics disposal convenient to consumers -- sounds like an idea whose time has come.

Even casual fans of Jemaine Clement could appreciate the Recycl-o-sort -- after all, it's hard to deny the vitalness of sorting out the recycling. In that spirit, a team of MIT students concocted a prototype that automatically sifts through recyclables and deposits them into the appropriate bin depending on makeup. The sun-powered device is currently being tested in Boston's Codman Square area as part of Family, Inc.'s recycling awareness campaign, and it reportedly uses a "turntable" to pass each item through a trio of sensors to determine whether it's aluminum, plastic, glass or just plain rubbish. Call us crazy, but this whole thing just brings back memories of that team building exercise we did back in '99.

[Via Core77]

Sony today announced intentions to begin a national recycling program for your various unwanted or unloved electronics, imaginatively called the "Sony Take Back Recycling Program," which will begin on September 15th with 75 "eCycling" points around the country. The electronics manufacturer has partnered with Waste Management as part of the trash hauler's "Recycle America" program, and says that it hopes to grow its drop-off locations to 150 by year's end, with a spot in every state. 1.5 to 1.9 million tons of electronic waste went into landfills in 2005, and Sony hopes to curb those numbers by offering "end-of-life solutions," for products they produce. The company will also accept recyclables from other manufacturers for a fee, proving once again that Sony is only in it for the money. Just kidding.

As the green trend looms ever larger over the consumer electronics industry, HP is taking full advantage of the opportunity by unveiling the environmentally friendly rp5700 slim desktop PC. The company toots its own horn by boasting about the Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) Gold award that the machine has garnered, and we'd assume that building it from 95-percent recyclable components and packing it in a box made from at least 25-percent post-consumer recycled cardboard had something to do with it. Additionally, the unit sports an uber-efficient power supply and comes with "an optional solar renewable energy source" to extract juice from the sun. As for hardware, you'll find Intel Core 2 Duo chips up to 2.13GHz, up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM, SATA hard drives as large as 250GB, optional RAID 1 setups, and your choice of operating system. Of course, the EPEAT Gold-certified machine steps it down to a Celeron 440 CPU with 512MB of RAM, and while this particular configuration will start at $817, other options are available today from $648 right on up.

[Via Slashgear]

A select few have already discovered just how lucrative going green can be, but for mega-corps around the globe, this year's Earth Day was just as much about earning green as it was recycling. While throngs of companies have already instituted programs to recollect and recycle customer's obsolete gear, outfits are now looking for easy money in selling scrap material, used plastics, hardware components, and "refurbished PCs," all while tooting their own horn and eliciting a good bit of positive PR love along the way. According to IDC analysts, the global demand for such junk unusual treasures is on the rise, making it easier for companies such as Dell, Apple, and Sony to flip the returned hardware for extra cash. Furthermore, some say that these in-your-face recycling programs could even entice users to scrap their current PCs faster than they otherwise would, which could also lead to more business with said companies as they plunk down for yet another computer that they honestly didn't need. Sure, the motives behind going green in the tech industry could be swaying, but as long as hardware retirement and disposal is being handled in an environmentally-friendly way, we suppose there's not much room to repine.

While not quite as sweet a deal as getting a free computer for your rusty and bloodied old gun, Sony has still managed to one-up rival Apple's PC recycling program by actually offering you a cash incentive to bring in your used, non-Mac notebook when you go to purchase a new one from the Japanese electronics giant. Depending on your machine's capabilities, the company will give you anywhere from $23 (for a Pentium II-powered lappy) all they way up to $318 (for a Pentium 4 rig) as a trade-in credit towards a new Vaio, with Sony-brand laptops unsurprisingly fetching more loot than products from other manufacturers. Consumers interested in this deal can either bring their old gear to a Sony retail store or simply mail it in when they order online; as for us, we'll still be paying full price for our Sony products, because the CSR we spoke with just laughed and hung up when we asked how much they'd give us for our still-working Osborne.