In Sight, In Mind: The province of Ontario is considering adding fees to the price of computers, printers, monitors and TVs to cover the cost of recycling those items.

 

The Toronto Star editorializes thus: "Some consumers may balk at [the] price increases. But the recycling fees would be relatively insignificant compared with the cost of the big-ticket items they are buying. And if the fee is visible to shoppers, rather than buried in the purchase price, it will help make all of us more aware of the toll that cast-off electronic products are having on the environment."

 

We agree. The more information, the better. What's wrong with stating a product's recycling cost instead of hiding it? Let's bag the old "out of sight, out of mind" approach, and, when it's possible to do so, give consumers an itemized accounting of the costs of the product they're buying.

 

Your Trash-Compactin' Heart Done Squooshed Me Good: Add Nashville to the list of cities assessing the viability of a pay-as-you-throw trash collection system.

 

Someone down on Music Row should jump all over this development. There has to be a good/bad song idea lurking in there somewhere.

 

Scratch that. I just did a search on Allmusic.com, and I'll be danged if Ernest Tubb and Loretta Lynn ain't already been-there-done-that.

 

Pete Fehrenbach is managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.

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