David Wood, organizing director for the national Computer TakeBack Campaign, said at a press conference at the Best Western Midway Hotel in La Crosse that Cascade Asset Management, with operations in Madison and Milwaukee, also has signed the pledge.

By signing the pledge, he said, companies agree to, among other things, prevent hazardous electronic waste from going to municipal waste landfills or incinerators, prevent the export of hazardous electronic waste to developing companies, and use free-market rather than prison labor to remanufacture, dismantle or recycle electronic waste.

Discarded electronics are a problem for the environment, said Andy Niles, Scientific Recycling's vice president of research and development. He said they contain such hazardous wastes as lead, mercury and cadmium.

Niles said Scientific Recycling started in 1988 with one employee, and now has about 50 employees at four locations in the Midwest and South.

"What we hope to do is showcase companies like Scientific Recycling, apply pressures throughout the electronics recycling industry and pull performance upward," Wood said. Most electronics "recycling" done in the United States does little to minimize environmental and public-health threats caused by improper disposal of discarded computers and consumer electronics, he said.

Wood, who also is program director of the GrassRoots Recycling Network, said that organization and two others - Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition - are promoting the Computer TakeBack Campaign and its Electronics Recycler's Pledge of True Stewardship. As part of that campaign, he said, model legislation is being introduced in 12 states including Wisconsin to require brand owners and producers of electronics to take financial responsibility for the impact of their products and to phase out the use of hazardous materials.