That's a pile we'd create in the United States every year if an estimated 130,000 computers, discarded daily by businesses and homes, were tossed into landfills.

Laws vary from state to state. In Texas, it isn't illegal for individuals to throw their computers out with the rest of their household trash.

But that doesn't make it right.

"From an environmental standpoint, it's not the thing that we should be doing," says Stephen Haney, the assistant solid waste manager for the city of San Antonio.

Aside from creating your own collection of antique electronics — do you have an old Commodore 64 tucked away in your attic or garage? — better alternatives than the town dump exist for computers you don't need or want anymore.

If your computer still works and isn't a total dinosaur, consider donating it to a school, a charity or other institution, where you'll even get a tax deduction in return. Many businesses do this. Others have other disposal methods.

Local insurance giant USAA, for instance, which has about 25,000 desktop computers companywide, replaces about 20 percent of them annually and gives the used ones free to employees through a drawing.

Eventually, however, all computer systems reach the end of their useful lives. Then it's time to recycle. And that's where the disposal process can get a little complicated.

Buy a new computer and most manufacturers will gladly help you recycle your old one, sometimes for free. Commercial recycling companies can also do the job for a fee.

Not all recyclers, however, will keep your computer out of the aforementioned toxic landfill.

Environmentally "green" recyclers take great pains to make sure the computers and monitors are properly disassembled. Individual parts are sent to approved smelters and other businesses, instead of ending up in the landfills of developing countries.

Other recyclers simply stuff the electronics into seagoing containers and ship it intact to places such as China, where material is officially banned but privately welcomed.

"The reality is that it's cheaper for them to extract aluminum and copper and steel from the toxic waste stream, like electronics, than it is to mine it from the raw ore," says Sarah Westervelt, a spokesperson for the Basel Action Network, a group dedicated to enforcement of an international treaty that controls the shipment and disposal of hazardous waste. "So they're willing to take the toxics along for the ride."

Corona Visions Inc., a recycling company in San Antonio, handles an average of about 75,000 pounds of computer electronics monthly for customers ranging from individuals to large corporations and school districts. According to company owner Vandell Norwood, "Nothing we get gets sent overseas."

"The most important thing is to know your recycler," Norwood says. "You need to know if your computer is going from cradle to grave, or just cradle to cradle."

Sometimes, that's easier said than done.

In October 2005, the city of San Antonio got a public black eye when it was learned that one of its discarded computers had ended up in a garbage dump in Nigeria. At the time, the city typically sold its old computers on an Internet auction site.

The city now works with manufacturers to recycle obsolete machines.