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Toxic Seepage

"What you don't want to do is incinerate [whole PCs]," Kelman said, because that releases mercury, cadmium, lead, and other toxic chemicals into the air.

Dumping computers into landfills isn't any better. "Lead and solder could slowly get into groundwater," he said.

That's not necessarily so, countered Jason Rose, assistant operations manager at Idaho Waste Systems in Boise, Idaho.

Computers do end up in Idaho Waste landfills, but the company guards against poisonous seepage, Rose said. "There's a liner system in there and a collection system to keep anything from migrating away from the landfill into water," he said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classifies computers as hazardous but hasn't aggressively enforced disposal regulations.

Through various trade groups, including the American Electronics Association, PC firms say the cost of taking back all of their old products and revamping their manufacturing processes would be too onerous and a barrier to trade. The AEA has urged U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky to object to the proposals, which she has done.

The AEA says PCs aren't really harmful in practical terms. "It's not like people are opening the things up and eating [what's inside]. It's the degree of exposure that's important," said Jennifer Guhl, a lobbyist at the AEA in Washington.

Lacking guidance from regulators or the waste industry, corporate IT managers are on their own. Analysts such as Gartner's O'Brien urge users to figure disposal into their total cost of ownership estimates and, more important, devise formal PC retirement policies before buying the machines.

"You've got to start taking responsibility for this," she said.