Consumer electronics recycling program
Catching up — I’m already behind, so posting twice today. That “Greener Gadgets” conference I went to yesterday is still on my mind. During one of the panels, Sony, among other corporations, were hyping their (highly flawed) recycling program. A lot of emphasis was put on electronic products’ “end of life” (how consumers need to be educated on how to properly dispose of them), with little discussion or responsibility being taken for the environmental impact of resource mining, energy consumption in the production stage of the product, labor practices, and on and on.
Anyway, while checking the status of my video camera repair on Canon’s website today, I checked out their recycling policy. The page had a rather incongruous image of bears in the wilderness, and was I reminded of how certain images/ideas had been (and apparently continue to be) used to represent environmental concerns — a fairly depoliticized image that functions as a kind of short hand for the issue. As if to say the problem is out *there*. It’s pretty common to pull out the mediagenic , guilt-trip inducing images to demonstrate corporate kinship with the world. So I thought I’d do an image search on keywords related to corporate recycling programs in the electronics industry. Here are a couple of samples. I’ll post an expanded version on my site soon.
