Researchers at the University of York have recently come up with a method of recycling that seems like it fell from the pages of a science fiction novel. They want to turn discarded television screens into components for biomedicine.

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Although the environment is hardly the priority issue du jour, China has not entirely changed its course with regard to the environment, despite the economic turmoil, as a “worst case scenario” might have suggested. Legislation on the management of electronic waste, signed into effect this week by China’s cabinet, the State Council, is a key example of China’s continued commitment to making progress on environmental protection.

The new law mandates the establishment of centralized funding for enlargement and improvement of safe electronic recycling facilities in China. It also places responsibility on manufacturers, retailers, repair and customer service providers and recycling companies to collect and responsibly handle electronic waste; though the wording of the scope of their responsibility as well as punitive measures for noncompliance is vague.

These regulations aim to reduce a stream of pollution that builds each year. The problem of industrialized countries’ illegal exportation of e-waste on China and other developing countries has generated significant attention and debate in recent years, both inside and outside China. While advocacy groups like Greenpeace point fingers at the corporations for not taking efforts to control the disposal of their products or designing them with fewer toxic components, insufficient legislation and monitoring by both sending and receiving countries has exacerbated the problem.

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I often have email exchanges with ecopreneurs, non-profits, NGOs and various business folks that don’t necessarily end up as a blog post. Sometimes I start in one direction and end up in another. That’s what happened here when I received an email from Rob Wallace at Keep America Beautiful.

Rob had one of those ironic moments. He sent out an email and press release to us asking:

How can recycling wireless phones support the new administration’s energy policy?  Our recycling partner, ReCellular, is a reuse-oriented recycler of cellular equipment, and we’re confident that their structure and operations support zero-waste wireless recycling.

Great email pitch. Bookmark this page for next time you send out a press release. However, this pitch landed on my screen the day after I wrote this post on 60 Minutes and Executive Recycling. I immediately asked Rob if he’d be interested in commenting on the whole issue of dumping of e-waste in China instead. And he was and here is what he had to say:

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The average American replaces an old cell phone with a new one about every year and a half. With around 256 million cell phone users in the U.S., that’s a lot of electronic waste. Because we replace them so often, cell phones are major contributors to the “wireless waste” in this country.

Cell phones contain a number of toxins that build up in the environment over time, like arsenic, antimony, beryllium, cadmium, copper, lead, nickel and zinc. These chemicals are linked to all sorts of nasty health problems, such as neurological disorders and cancer. That’s the bad news. The good news is, there are lots of free, easy ways to safely dispose of your old cell phone and keep it out of the landfill. Rather than pitching your old phone in the trash, check out a few ways you can use your old phone to do good or even score some cash!

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Simran Sethi and Sarah Smarsh are writing a series on the impacts of everyday things. They will be posting previews on Green Options before launching the posts on Huffington Post. Want to know how to green your internet porn (or emailing or iTunes) habit? Check out these tips and a post-mortem of where your computers go to die.

Recently, the world computer population surpassed 1 billion. It’s a legion of artificial intelligence that will never die, at least not while humans are around to see it.

The computer species appears to have a high mortality rate (whether due to the rapid progress of technology or an industry conspiracy to ensure that products must be replaced regularly). They “crash” and “die” in droves, their human counterparts literally kicking them to the curb. But there is no heaven, no place in the clouds, for the cold, hard shell once warmed by electrical currents. Once it has left your desk, your computer doesn’t disappear. In a sense, it lives on.

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Then there are the unintended other consequences: all the resulting waste generated by gadget catalogs, gadget manuals, gadget bills ( i.e., the 300-plus-page printed iPhone bill) … again, not exactly Earth-friendly.

Yes, it’s possible to recycle these gadgets after they outlive their cutting-edge usefulness, but many consumers don’t: the old electronics end up either languishing in closets and basements, leaching heavy metals into landfills, or piling up in Chinese scrap heaps until they are, maybe, recycled.

So how can the situation be improved? Yes, going digital eliminates a lot of extraneous waste, but should we do more to encourage — or even mandate — electronics recycling? What is the best way to reduce all this waste?