For Immediate Release: July 10, 2003
For more info, contact: Teresa Schilling (510) 763-5616
See Photos from the tour, Summer 2003

Read clergymembers open letter to Michael Dell, CEO.

Hard Drive Across the West: Activists begin multi-city collection of discarded toxic Dell Computer gear for delivery to company's July 17th share holder meeting in Austin

Who:  Sarah Westervelt, Basel Action Network
Suellen Mele, Washington Citizens for Resource Conservation

Where:  Jack Perry Memorial Shoreline Public Access on Alaskan Hwy S. (1.1 miles south of the Coleman Ferry Terminal, on right just past S. Massachusetts Street - if you get to Cruise Terminal 30, you went too far)

Joseph DeBartolo, center left, and Geordie Smith, center right, stage the loading of a truck with unwanted Dell computers for television cameras Thursday, July 10, 2003, in Seattle. Computers in several Western cities will be colleted before being delivered to the Dell Computer annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas later this month. Activists with the Computer Take Back Campaign say the computer giant should do more in the area of recycling unwanted electronics and the safe removal of hazardous materials from unwanted computers. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

When:  10:00 am on Thursday, July 10th

What:  News conference. Truck is picking up obsolete Dell electronics wastes from Seattle for delivery to CEO Michael Dell at upcoming Dell Computers shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas on July 18th. This is first stop on seven-city tour.

Speakers will show that Dell has avoided sharing responsibility for its products when they become hazardous electronics waste; instead Dell has embarked on a misleading pr campaign. (Under prodding from the Computer TakeBack Campaign, which includes BAN and WCRC, Dell has abandoned its use of a controversial taxpayer subsidized prison labor program).

Discarded consumer electronics are the fastest growing component of municipal garbage, and contain toxics like brominated fire retardants, lead, mercury, cadmium and other heavy metals. Some officials estimate that if all the 3.15 million estimated outmoded computer terminals are thrown out this year, another 1.2 billion pounds of lead would end up in local garbage dumps.

Local governments are struggling to deal with this new waste crisis, yet the electronics industry has yet to join any programs that require them to take responsibility for their products. Very little of this electronics waste (termed e-waste) is recycled, due to the difficulty of separating valuable metals from low-value parts.

Of the slim portion that is recovered for recycling (less than 10% of all the e-waste tossed away each year), much has been shipped overseas. A report last year shocked the public by revealing that this offshore e-waste dumping is responsible for severe environmental and health problems in the Guangdong Province on mainland China.

Dell Corporation sought to avoid the bad press received by other electronics manufacturer and announced their own voluntary "recycling program." Instead of setting up meaningful programs helping citizens and local governments, Dell organized one-time only collection efforts. In addition, one of the groups who investigated dumping in China, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, compared Dell's taxpayer subsidized prison based program with a private recycling program used by HP.

The report showed Dell's recycling program used some of the same low tech approaches as mainland China. Dell's use of taxpayer-subsidized prison labor undercut private sector investment and jobs in better run, less dangerous recycling facilities. Stung, by accusations of running a high-tech chain gang, Dell last week dropped the prison program.

Recycling and environmental activists in seven western cities (Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Denver, Los Angeles, Dallas/Fort Worth and Austin) are working with the national Computer Take Back campaign to collect Dell waste electronics as part of upcoming actions at Dell's upcoming July 17th Austin annual share holder's meeting. "We'll deliver Dell e-waste as a message from those communities directly to Michael Dell," said Ted Smith of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, leader of the Campaign. "We don't think that all the citizens of Seattle should pay for cleaning up his hazardous waste problems. We want Dell to move beyond public relations and accept responsibility, cradle-to-grave, for the products they sell." According to a report on Dell's web site the company recycled less than 200,000 computers last year (or roughly 7 million pounds compared to rival HP's total of almost 50 million pounds recycled during the same period.)

See related stories: "2 PC Makers Given Credit and Blame in Recycling," NY Times, June 27, 2003,

"Dell to Stop Using Prison Workers," NY Times, July 4, 2003,