The WRITE initiative was a collaborative approach that drew upon industry, state, local governments as well as the EPA's Risk Reduction Engineering Laboratory with the overall goal of developing more effective pollution prevention technologies that could assist the electronics manufacturing industry in developing a "crade to grave" approach to managing these products (Rappaport, 1999).

Besides these earlier efforts, in more recent years, increasingly rigorous laws and regulations have been implemented by the EPA with the goal of minimizing the impact of electronics and electrical device waste on the environment have began to make a major difference in recovering these toxic substances before they ever have a chance to become waste. For instance, pursuant to the above-mentioned Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, it is now illegal for companies in the United States to simply discard hazardous waste, including electronics and electrical devices, in normal trash receptacles (The importance of recycling computers,...
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