One place you don’t want your used electronics to wind up is in the media.
We get asked all the time why we charge money to recycle computers and monitors and TVs, cell phones, Blackberries and other used electronics. The reason we get asked this question is that there are a lot of “recyclers” out there who will take this stuff away for free, or even pay to take it off your hands. Why, we are asked, does IRN charge to recycle electronics when other companies will do it for free.
There’s...

The thing I like best is when there's a hurricane and a hurricane expert comes on TV and says "It's releasing as much power as fifty Hiroshima atom bombs going off every minute." Or else this: "It's producing 200 times, as much energy as all of the electric generating plants in the world."
Nothing points out better the absurdities in discussion of America's energy future. Because last time I looked, a hurricane is solar energy.

Solar energy on the scale of...

This is a story for everyone who says that recycling and reuse cost too much and aren’t worth the effort, and for everyone who has to deal with those folks.
Newton is a suburban city, population about 85,000, less than ten miles from downtown Boston. When the City opened a new high school in August 2010, it reused and donated locally as much furniture as possible from the old school, but was still left with more than 4,000 items of surplus furniture and equipment that needed to go away. Most...

It’s an understatement to say that Columbia University was transformative for my Dad. He was a poor kid from a Depression-beaten family in the Irish ghetto of Dobbs Ferry. In 1939 Columbia gave him a $600 scholarship and a part-time job and said “Make it if you can.” Four years later he was an honors History graduate, managing the campus laundry service, and voted Most Likely to Succeed by his classmates. He never forgot the doors that Columbia opened for him, nor the personal potential that Columbia...

Boston.com recently published a couple of anti-recycling columns by Jeff Jacoby. I can’t bring myself to write down the link. If you want you can find them easily enough. They’re standard diatribe. Recycling is a pain in the neck. Recycling costs more than throwing stuff away.

Backed by standard sources for persons with Mr. Jacoby’s point of view: The Heartland Institute (Wikipedia: “The Heartland Institute questions the scientific consensus on climate change, arguing that global...