Thanks to Caroline, a student in ENVR 201.
Bureau En Gros in Quebec has opened a new program together with Le Réseau québécois des CFER (Centre de formation en entreprise et récupération) and and the Quebec governmental agency RECYC-QUEBEC to properly recycle e-waste. They accept pretty much everything, from screens, to laptops, to walkmans, to cell phones. The participating stores–a list is provided-have a special counter where you come and give away your e-stuff. They take it and put it in a special bin where a CFER truck will come once a week (can be more, depending on load) and will deliver it to a place where workers in a youth training program will ‘decompose’ each item to its little pieces to be later reused or simply recycled.
Apparently, for a small cost to the consumer, Bureau en Gros also will download the contents of the computers onto CD or DVD. [Hopefully, this will reduce the 70-80% of stockpiling of computers.]
As Caroline reminds us, it surely doesn’t solve the problem of consumption, but at least the stuff that we already have can be disposed and taken care of more carefully.