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By Mark Martin, The San Francisco Chronicle

SACRAMENTO, California, 27 February 2002 --. Warning that obsolete computer monitors and televisions are becoming an environmental nightmare, two state senators have introduced legislation to develop recycling programs that would probably increase the costs of electronic equipment. The new bills would make California a front-runner in dealing with an ugly aspect of the technology boom in Silicon Valley -- computers and televisions that quickly become outdated contain toxic amounts of lead and other hazardous materials. New rules ban computer monitors and TVs from landfills. Few recycling programs are geared toward handling this equipment, and a new report shows much of it ends up polluting Third World countries. That's why the state should add fees to computers and charge manufacturers to develop better ways to handle the 6,000 computers and televisions that become obsolete every day in California, according to Sens. Byron Sher, D-Palo Alto, and Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles. The legislation addressing so-called e-waste sets up a fight with powerful manufacturing groups which argue that many computer companies already have voluntary recycling programs and that government intervention will force companies to increase the prices of their products or leave the state. "California has an electronic waste crisis," Romero said yesterday. "Simply shipping it oversees without protections is not an answer."

Romero will carry legislation that would require computer and television manufacturers to do one of two things to step up recycling of their products: develop a free program allowing customers to return their unwanted equipment to the company, or pay a fee that would go toward setting up a recovery program. Romero's bill, SB1619, also calls for a goal that 75 percent of all discarded computers be recycled by 2010. The figure at present is only about 15 percent.

Sher plans a measure that would require consumers to pay a surcharge on new computer monitors and TVs, which would go toward paying local governments to set up recycling programs. The legislation is similar to legislation proposed in Nebraska and South Carolina, which would add a $5 fee on any new equipment that has a cathode ray tube, the primary hazardous component of most computers and televisions. The legislation comes on the heels of a new report showing that huge quantities of scrap electronics from the United States wind up in the hands of impoverished people in Asia who extract valuable material by primitive methods that are highly dangerous both to the health of the workers involved and to the environment. The report, titled "Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia," includes photographs of Chinese women and children working amid burning plastic and melting lead. It was published this week by the San Jose-based Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and the Basel Action Network. Neither of the new bills specifies how much fees would be, a detail Sher and Romero said would be hammered out as the measures work their way through the Legislature. Computer companies said yesterday they would have to review the proposals before taking a position on them. But a spokeswoman for Hewlett-Packard said the company already has a computer recycling program that allows customers to pay to have computers removed. So do IBM and Dell. "Here we have some fairly comprehensive voluntary programs, and all of a sudden, we're getting a mandate from the Legislature telling companies how to do this," said Gino DiCaro, communications director for the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, a lobbying group. "Eventually, these costs could come back to the consumers."

DiCaro also noted that companies that sell computers online would not face the same fees as California manufacturers. He said his group would urge lawmakers to turn the two bills into voluntary programs. But environmental groups say the reason computer parts end up being disassembled in Chinese villages is that voluntary efforts have not created a large enough recycling market in the state. Studies show that Californians have 6 million old computers and televisions in their attics and garages, a flood of environmentally dangerous products will eventually have to be taken care of.E- mail Mark Martin at markmartin@sfchronicle.com