Recycle computers, panel's experts urge.

By 2005, one computer will be discarded for every new one put on the market, according to the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. The group says that that right now, fewer than 14 percent of unwanted computers are recycled or donated for reuse. The rest -- more than 20 million computers in the United States -- are expected to be thrown out as trash. The problem with dumping is not only one of space, environmentalists say. Toxic substances contained in electronic ware, such as lead and non-biodegradable plastics, endanger groundwater under landfills and pose health hazards for neighboring communities. Recycling computer and electronics castoffs -- grinding them down into fine powder, extracting the metals and disposing of hazardous waste or finding new uses for the varied plastics -- has been slow to catch on, the experts say, because it is so costly and few recyclers for those products exist. Many who spoke at the conference stressed the importance of urging manufacturers to keep a product's reuse value in mind when designing hardware. ``What we're saying is when you're looking at the front end, keep the back end in mind,'' said Ellen Ryan, division manager for Integrated Waste Management for the city of San Jose. It doesn't have to involve a requirement that manufacturers take back hardware when it becomes obsolete, ``but looking hard at what parts that are being created can be reused,'' Ryan said.