Recycling and recovering end-of-use PCs seems to be the less-costly way to deal with the returned products after WEEE came into affect in UK recently. The other option could (should) be refurbishing and reusing the PCs, as Michael Dell pointed out. Every year 125M PCs complete their useful life for their users and enter into the waste stream.
Michael Dell proposes that these computers are as useful as the PCs in One Laptop per Child Project. So why directly recycle them when you can use them in a philanthropic cause like this project and be environmentally conscious too. A research by UN University in Tokyo shows that it is 20 times more energy efficient to reuse a PC- considering both the energy used to manufacture the PC and energy used to operate the PC. 75% of this energy consumption actually occur during the manufacturing of a PC. Moreover, these PCs has already have 3-4 more years of useful life- or value.
Cascaded re-use of products are not new- there are examples of cell phone re-use. Why recycle, (more of a cost-reducing activity) when you can re-use them by minimal refurbishing activities. If OEMs are not interested (some of them already refurbishing to re-sell), then philanthropic causes and not-for-profit organizations can play a key role in putting PC re-use in track, enabling cascaded use of these PCs for people in need. Computer Aid is a charity organization, they shipped 90K computers that are donated by UK companies to developing countries. If you can, please do support Computer Aid by being a donor for your organization to be an environmentally and socially responsible corporate citizen.
Please find more detailed information on reuse of PCs in the articles here and here.
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