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A group of environmental activists yesterday launched a campaign to get Apple Computer to “think different” about what happens to old computers and music players—and the lead and other toxic materials they contain. 

Under a giant banner reading “From iPod to iWaste, toxic trash in your pocket,” the Computer TakeBack Campaign—a national network pressuring high-tech manufacturers to take responsibility for their products when consumers, schools, and businesses no longer want them held a small demonstration outside Apple’s Cupertino headquarters on Monday. The group plans another one today (Tuesday) at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, where Apple chief executive Steve Jobs is scheduled to kick off the annual West Coast version of Macworld Expo, a trade show dedicated to Macintosh computers and related products. 

The campaign, an affiliate of the San Jose-based Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, announced that it plans to make Apple its top target in 2005. It also launched a Web page (www.badapple.biz) through which visitors can send Jobs an electronic message urging him to take the lead in the movement for recycling of tech equipment and to stop testifying in opposition to legislation that would require manufacturers to take back discarded products in the United States, as they are already required to do in Europe and Japan. 

“People tend to assume Apple would be a leader in this sort of thing, because it projects such a hip, counter-cultural image, but it’s not,” said Ted Smith, senior strategist at the toxics coalition and one of the founders of the take-back campaign. “We think they should be, and we think a significant number of people from the Mac community will be right there with us.” 

Smith and Robin Schneider, a leader of the take-back initiative in Austin, Texas, tried Monday to deliver a letter about the issue to Jobs, along with supporting testimonials from some 75 Apple customers. A receptionist denied their request to see the CEO, but promised to pass along the materials.  

For the past several years the take-back campaign has concentrated its fire on Dell, the world’s largest computer maker. The Round Rock, Texas-based company initially denied responsibility for dealing with its products. Later it set up a program that required customers to pay for recycling their old equipment, and it contracted to have the work done by prison inmates. 

But after a vigorous struggle by the take-back campaign—whose tactics included delivering a truckload of discarded Dell computers to the annual meeting of the company’s shareholders and publishing a report documenting unsafe working conditions among the prisoners disassembling its machines—Dell began to change its tune. It abruptly severed its prison contract and instead promised to rely on environmentally-certified recyclers. It now offers free recycling of old equipment with purchase of certain new computers and all Dell-branded printers, and it has been pilot-testing a free drop-off program in cooperation with Goodwill Industries, according to Schneider. 

Dell’s recent turn-around has brought it together with its closest competitor in the PC business, Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard, as a leader in the computer-recycling movement. HP, which runs its own disassembly and resource-recovery facilities in Roseville as well as in Nashville, Tenn., launched a pioneering consumer-oriented computer recycling program almost four years ago. Though the program (www.hp.com/environment/recycle/index.html) currently requires that users pay for the cost of recycling, HP has also been experimenting with a free program in cooperation with OfficeDepot, according to Schnieder. 

Following its success with Dell, the take-back campaign conducted a two-month poll on its website to choose a new focus for its work. Among the six companies listed, Apple was the clear winner, followed by IBM and Sony, according to Smith. 

The most serious toxic threat associated with computers comes from CRT (cathode-ray tube) monitors, each of which contains several pounds of lead. But the circuit boards in computers, music players such as Apple’s iPod, and other electronic devices also contain lead solder and other dangerous materials, and cables within computers are often coated with brominated flame retardants, which have been shown to cause neurological and reproductive problems in laboratory animals and are found in steadily increasing concentrations in human breast milk. If high-tech gear containing such materials is dumped in landfills, studies have shown, they are likely to leach eventually into the groundwater. 

Apple failed to return repeated phone calls seeking comment about the Computer TakeBack Campaign and its recycling policies.