Green Options

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and stay up to date.

Europe is pushing to help solar power spread and Italy is reacting by going forward quickly. The country’s demand is rising even if a large part of Italians are quite doubtful about the advantages of installing solar panels on their homes. The lack of a national strategy, together with an insufficient information, is impeding the use of alternative energy and producing confusion about prices, productivity and maintenance costs.

Despite that, is very surprising what can be done locally. I recently learned about an ecological cemetery in a small town near Milan, in the north of Italy.

Three large electronics manufacturers are taking a proactive step in an industry screaming for action. Panasonic, Sharp and Toshiba have established an electronic product recycling management company, Electronic Manufacturers Recycling Management Company, LLC (MRM), to spearhead electronics recycling and collection in the United States. This dream team was formed to provide a recycling service to electronics manufacturers and others, including state and local governments, and to meet recent Minnesota requirements on recycling electronics.

“We believe that forming an independent company to manage collective electronic recycling programs is the best way to achieve the economies of scale and efficiencies to create a sustainable recycling system for used electronics products.” Said David Thompson, MRM president.  

One very important thing the new company is striving for is to provide convenient recycling opportunities for consumers. There’s no question most people have an old TV or computer lying around that they would like to throw away but are too conscious to just toss in a landfill or dumpster. So with the work of MRM, that conundrum is solved. It already seems MRM is making some waves. According to Brad Moore, the commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency:

“In the first five months since Minnesota’s new electronic recycling law took effect, MRM collected approximately 750 tons of used products - a significant amount.”