That's heavy: Dell collects 150M pounds of e-waste in FY2011

Less than one week after the consumer electronics industry vowed to do better on collecting, reusing or recycling end-of-life products, Dell has announced that it took in about 150 million pounds of unwanted technology in fiscal year 2011.

That amount includes computers, monitors, printers, scanners and computer accessories. Dell's collection rate increased 16 percent over the previous year; what's more, the company is about two-thirds of the way toward its goal of collection 1 billion in electronic-waste (aka e-waste) by 2014. The amount of stuff that was attributable to the Americas market is 95 million pounds.

For perspective, Hewlett-Packard (according to its latest Web site information) has collected about 2 billion pounds of electronics and supplies since 1987; 1.68 billion pounds have been recycled and (since 2003) about 450 million pounds have been reused.

The fact that Dell's collection rate increased by 16 percent over the past year is encouraging. As more businesses update their aging technology this year, post-recession, should be enlightened to see how many consumer and commercial customers take advantage of recycling and reuse programs.