We live in a disposable age; it’s also an environmentally conscious one. So, when you’re updating your office technology, how do you get rid of monitors, printers, computers and cellphones that have become obsolete? After all, sending certain electronic items to landfills is environmentally hazardous and, in some cases, illegal.

Depending on where you are, there are ways to dispose of your old equipment safely. Some charities and four provinces have established recycling programs for electronic products, including computers, monitors, printers and cellphones.

Such programs are important, says Joan Meyer, executive di-rector of the Saskatchewan waste electronic equipment program in Regina (www.sweepit.ca): “There are many other uses that can be made from the byproducts of electronics that they should not be dumped into landfills.”

Nova Scotia was the first province in Canada to make it illegal to dump electronic products such as monitors, television sets and computers into landfills. Many municipalities have required that these items be taken to a hazardous waste depot for disposal.

“Electronic products are a fast-growing waste stream,” says Kathy Palko, a policy analyst with the waste-resource management branch of the Nova Scotia government in Halifax (www.acestewardship.ca). “These products are bulky and costly to dispose of.”

They are also potentially dangerous. Many components contain hazardous materials, including lead, mercury and cadmium, says Jim Sellers, communications manager with Alberta Recycling Management Authority in Edmonton.

“Many people will scavenge old computers for usable parts, but we don’t know what happens to the rest,” he says. “With the increasing popularity of LCD screens over CRTs, many of these old tubes, each loaded with up to five pounds of lead, will be scrapped. Unless these are properly handled, they can become hazardous waste.”

Four provinces have electronics recycling programs up and running: British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia. In most cases, there is a small fee for recycling the equipment. In Alberta, for example, recycling a laptop or notebook computer costs $5. In Nova Scotia, recycling a monitor costs $12.

Canada’s new electronics recycling programs have had a significant impact. The B.C. program (www.encorp.ca/electronics), set up in 2007, has collected and recycled more than four million kilograms of electronic waste, says Malcolm Harvey, spokesman in Toronto for the Return-It Electronics Program, overseen by a non-profit consortium called the Electronics Stewardship Association of B.C.

In Alberta, the four-year-old recycling program (www.alberta-recycling.ca) is equally successful. “The program has taken in more than 20,000 metric tonnes of electronics, including 320,000 computers, 396,000 monitors and 190,000 printers,” says Sellers.

For financial advisors in a province without an electronics recycling program, there are still options. A number of companies, including Hewlett-Packard Development Co. LP and Future Shop, offer electronic recycling programs. Some charities are in the recycling business as well. Project Redial, for instance (www.diabetes.ca/section_services/redialindex.asp), launched nationally in April 2006 by the Canadian Diabetes Association, accepts donations of cellphones and PDAs. “It is important to the association that we not only raise funds for diabetes, but also divert items that may otherwise end up in our landfills,” says Randi Garcha, an associate of marketing and communications for the organization’s Ontario region and business operations in Toronto. “Since the start of the program, over 15,000 cellphones have been donated to the association and diverted from landfill.”

You must balance your desire to help the environment with a need to protect your information. Meyer recommends wiping the hard drive before taking a computer to the recycling depot.

“However,” she adds, “once electronic material is received by our depot, it is secured and moved to a disassembly centre, where the hard drive is removed and has a hole drilled through it. It is then sent on to be recycled into another product. No equipment is sent into the ‘reuse’ stream, where access could be gained to stored information on a hard drive.”

In Alberta, as elsewhere, notes Sellers, products are broken down to their commodity components: plastics, metals and glass.

“This ensures the security of the data,” he says, “[and] commercial clients are issued a certificate of destruction for the computers they bring in.” IE