It's that time of year again: Shopping season. Black Friday -- the day after Thanksgiving, the day that retailers across the country hopes will put them or keep them in the black -- happens this week, and my inbox is being flooded with deals and shopping highlights.

For the first time, though, I'm also seeing a different kind of announcement tied to the this retail holiday: Two different reports are looking at how Black Friday impacts the e-waste problem.

The first is a two-part investigation from investigative journalism group I-News in the Boulder, Colo., Daily Camera, into that state's e-waste recycling challenges. Part one follows the e-waste collected from an Earth Day recycling event, which was shipped to Hong Kong, despite promises to the contrary from the head of the event.

These types of broken promises happen more often than individuals would expect, as we found in a similar case that I wrote about in 2009. But the second part of the investigation breaks some new ground: Tying the Colorado government in to e-waste exports.

Kristin Jones writes:

State agencies are selling junk computers and other electronics at surplus auctions, where the discarded items are then considered products instead of hazardous waste.

 

While some working or repairable electronics went to homes and businesses that needed them, I-News found that others ended up in landfills, risky backyard recycling operations, and illegal trade to developing countries.

This kind of e-waste laundering leaves some experts questioning state law and policies. Count among them Mary Jo Lockbaum, environmental health and safety manager for area e-waste handler, Metech Recycling.

"If we were talking about hazardous chemicals or paint," Lockbaum says of the discarding practices, "you wouldn't even ask the question."

The public and political awareness of the hazards of e-waste are becoming ever more common, even as the country's reliance on and hunger for gadgets grows exponentially. So a new report from Demos, focusing primarily on what to do -- rather than yet another study of "what's wrong" -- is well timed.

The report, "Tackling High-Tech Trash," was written by Elizabeth Grossman, takes stock of the size of the problem: Americans own three billion gadgets, per a slightly outdated but soon to be updated report from the EPA, as much as 80 percent of those gadgets will be sent overseas for dismantling.

Grossman writes:

In contrast to other waste streams such as industrial effluents and air pollution, the rapidly growing electonic waste (e-waste) stream is largely uncontrolled and lightly regulated, relying on a patchwork of corporate "take-back" initiatives, state and local recycling programs, and a handful of (mainly European) e-waste policy directives. With projections of 4 to 5 billion units entering the e-waste stream from the United States alone over the next 10 years, we urgently need to develop a more comprehensive and coordinated policy framework to restrict hazardous dumping and recycling while also regulating and incentivizing design innovations that extend product life-spans and reduce overall toxicity in electronics.

Grossman then echoes, but in much greater detail, some of the recommendations in the recent "Story of Electronics" video, namely:

• Expanding existing take-back and recycling programs to cover a greater scope of products and making these programs easier and more convenient to use.

 

• Expanding "extended producer responsibility" for electronics products, requiring manufacturers to "internalize" the full life-cycle costs of their products.

• Ending the export of hazardous e-waste for environmentally unsound and socially irresponsible materials recovery, processing, and disposal.

• Requiring improvements in both hardware and software design that would ease reuse and recycling, reduce overall environmental health hazards associated with electronics (from manufacture through end-of-product-life), and ultimately extend the life of products.

Granted, none of these changes will happen before, say, Friday. But the raising of awareness is of course a good thing, and perhaps a slightly more educated shopper will be more likely to skip out on that $20 printer from Walmart that no one really needs, and that will just end up in China in two years (or less).