That's the logic Dell Computer, PC market leader, is applying to the still fledgling computer recycling business: Turning a potential public relations liability into a new product marketing opportunity.

"The best thing to do with a PC is to extend the life of it," Dell (DELL.O) spokeswoman Michele Glaze said.

Responding in part to the black eye the computer industry got recently from reports of mounting piles of hazardous electronic waste, the Austin, Texas based company is aiming to turn recycling into a pay-as-you-go business.

Dell's Web site promises hot deals! toll-free sales lines, optional trade-in offers, discount coupons for follow-up purchases - turning the drudgery of recycling on its head with a buy, trade, deal or donate ethic.

"We have taken computers and lowered the cost to consumers. The same theory applies to recycling," says Don Brown, Dell's director of environmental affairs.

"We are very happy to take any computer, any brand back," the site says.

It's the classic Dell marketing philosophy at work: Computer waste amounts to a failed opportunity to connect the seller with the right upgraded component, auction buyer, recycling business or philanthropic outlet.

But environmentalists say Dell and other computer makers, have been slow to respond to a problem that has been building for two decades, at first in closets and store rooms, now increasingly in garbage skiffs and waste dumps.

Perhaps the biggest problem is caused by older computer displays, which, similar to television tubes, are lined with about four pounds of lead. Plastic components still often use hazardous flame retardants and heavy metal cadmium is found in coloring.

"Dell has everything they need to create a system that is easy and convince their consumers to recycle every Dell PC sold in America," David Wood, program director in the Madison, Wisconsin, offices of GrassRoots Recycling, a U.S. network of recyclers that is part of the Computer Take Back Campaign.

The coalition of U.S. environmental activist groups has singled out Dell, the industry's trend-setter, in its campaign. If the market changes practices, the industry will follow, they say.

...so goes the nation?

Dell's detractors have focused in the past year on the growing export of computer waste overseas, especially to Asia, according to long-time industry critic Ted Smith, director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition in San Jose, California.

"It's these low-road avenues to recycling that we want to close off," Smith said during a noisy protest of Dell's recycling policies at a Las Vegas trade show last week.

To the charge that Dell fails to take responsibility for the emerging export trade in computer waste, Brown says the company already requires suppliers of parts used in Dell products to agree to responsibly handle any resulting waste.

Furthermore, in the hands of accountable suppliers, the return of recycled computer materials is the best way to insure maximum reuse of these materials in new computers, he says.

Taiwan, South China and the surrounding region have become the epicenter of computer manufacturing, including Dell's own. Wood argues that Dell, which has reshaped the computer industry over the past decade with its direct-to-the-customer sales model, is uniquely positioned to use e-mail and phone numbers they keep on former customers to track and potentially manage the disposal of older equipment.

Dell officials themselves say they study the feasibility of such "reverse logistics" to recover old computers but must find economical ways to make any such system work. "We are trying to understand consumer demand," Brown says of this research.

Dell officials argue that the company did not begin targeting consumers in earnest until 1997 and that consumer PC sales represent only about 15 percent of its $32 billion in annual sales. Its older consumer PCs have just begun to be discarded.

State legislation spurs industry action

But activists are calling for Dell to halt what they say is a two-faced approach to recycling - experimenting with recycling on its own site, while showing lukewarm support for state and federal legislation that would fund PC recycling systems.

Various state legislatures have taken up the issue of requiring upfront purchase fees that consumers can recover if recycling through approved channels. These would borrow from the success of the old rebates that spurred U.S. can and bottle recycling starting in the 1970s.

The Computer Take Back Campaign is asking Dell to adopt a wide-ranging recycling program that includes consumer education, product take-back programs and the redesign of its PCs to eliminate hazardous materials and components.

Dell responds that it is moving on many fronts to address that problem, not only in the way it communicates with its consumers on its own Web site, but in reaching out to work with its suppliers, rivals, industry groups and government regulators.

Last weekend, Dell joined officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to unveil a new consumer recycling campaign. The EPA campaign, detailed on the agency's Web site at http://www.plugintorecycling.org, has enlisted electronics retailer Best Buy to accept the drop-off of many popular hi-tech devices at selected stores nationwide.

Panasonic (6752.T), Sony Corp. (6758.T) and mobile phone operator AT&T Wireless (AWE.N) have joined Dell as early sponsors of the EPA push.

EPA officials said they expect other major industry names to participate in the voluntary recycling campaign, in which companies agree to take back old components for free, a nominal fee, or just shipping charges.

The officials said consumers will be able to learn about the national campaign from notices in retail catalogs. The agency also is working with city governments to insert information about local efforts into garbage bills by trash haulers.

"Consumers want options. They want easy ways to recover the value out of their systems," Brown says of Dell's latest recycling push. "There is not a single idea that is going to meet everyone's needs."