For most of things we buy and use recycling isn’t a requirement. Buy a box of cereal or Hamburger Helper and there’s no one to yell at you if you don’t recycle the box. Maybe you’re just happy if the people in your house remember to flatten the packages and take out the trash. However, many of us have become accustomed to taking out those three extra recycle bins along with the trash.

It’s time to expand those efforts and start finding ways to take responsibility for the proper disposal of everything we buy and own.

Snohomish County is doing its part to make sure we have bettermeans of disposing of certain electronic equipment such as televisions and computers. This type of equipment is made up of more than just a bunch of wires and small metal parts in odd shapes. They often have cathode-ray tubes, which contain toxic materials such as lead and other heavy metals.

County representatives have been working for more than a year with electronics manufacturers. There have been discussions of a nationwide solution that would include tacking on a small fee to the product to cover disposal costs, said Jeff Kelley-Clarke, solid waste director for Snohomish County. When consumers were finished with the product, they could take it back to the store where they bought it and know it would be property disassembled and disposed of in a way that doesn’t hurt the environment.

"This is not what normally happens," Kelley-Clarke said. "There’s been a lot of progress made working with manufacturers." As he pointed out, automakers don’t take back their cars when they’ve been totaled.

It may even lead to more changes in the way these products are assembled, hopefully leading to fewer toxic materials in them. Right now, TVs and computers are designed to work well, not to be easily taken apart, Kelley-Clarke said. In the future, manufacturers might be designing them to work well and be easily disassembled when they are no longer useable.

For the rest of us, all of this means paying attention to what we’re tossing out. It means no more dumping old TVs and monitors alongside the road or next to the overstuffed garbage bin for someone else to pick up and toss in one of our landfills.

The county will also save money (that means taxpayers will save money) by not having to try to dispose of the equipment. Instead, they will be able to spend less.

We’ve had it easy for a long time now. We buy something, use it and throw it away. Now we’re being asked to think beyond the garbage can or Dumpster.