Dell computer coupon

Dell Canada recently launched a national donation program to provide schools and non-profit organizations with used computers in an effort to keep old PCs out of landfills and increase access to computer technology.

Dell Canada Inc.'s Web site will be the main way consumers and small businesses can donate any brand of used computers.

As an incentive, Dell Canada plans to give donors a coupon valued at 10 per cent that can be used towards the purchase of software and peripherals in its online store.

By 2005, the amount of disposed electronic junk from computers and peripherals will double to more than 67,000 tons in Canada alone, according to Environment Canada.

Moreover, the agency says, an estimated 4,740 tons of lead is found in personal computers and TVs thrown away each year in Canada, and by next year discarded PCs will contain an estimated 4.5 tons of cadmium and 1.1 tons of mercury.

As a founding member of Electronics Product Stewardship Canada, a non-profit group made up of several leading technology companies searching for environmentally friendly solutions for the country's electronic waste, Dell Canada is working with governments to encourage a national policy that would enable greater participation by the tech community, says Frank Fuser, director of services at Toronto-based Dell Canada.

Online donating is a natural fit with Dell's business model of delivering computers via its Web site, says Fuser. Doing it alone is an "expensive proposition," which is why Fuser hopes to encourage other EPS Canada member firms to band together in its Internet donating strategy and thereby accelerate the adoption of recycling computer technology.

Waste not, want not

Pat Nathan, sustainable business director at Dell Inc., says the Round Rock, Tex.-based company began this program--underscored by the motto that no computer should go to waste --at the behest of American environmental activists urging Dell to take responsibility for the computers it helped to bring into the waste stream.

She says 30 per cent of customers surveyed by Dell have PCs stored in their closets.

Noranda, which works with all major printing, PC and copier companies, plans to break down unusable components from Dell Canada's program and make the individual materials, such as copper, aluminum, lead and steel, available again for commercial use, explains Cindy Thomas, plant manager of Noranda Recycling in Brampton, Ont.