It’s that time of year again—out with the old and in with the new cell phones, MP3 players, laptops, and TVs that were nicely wrapped and placed in the holiday gift pile.

Now that the new gadgets have been sufficiently warmed up, it’s time to figure out what to do with the old ones. And technology and electronics companies want consumers to think twice before tossing them to the curb along with the crumpled wrapping paper. If they can’t be donated for reuse, then it’s time to find a way to recycle them.

In many ways, electronics recycling is still a problem with no easy solution. Recycling is a costly process, which is why most companies haven’t made the effort easy for consumers. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that unwanted electronics amounted to approximately 1.9 million to 2.2 million tons in 2005. Of that total, about 1.5 million to 1.9 million tons were primarily discarded in landfills and only 345,000 to 379,000 tons were recycled.

But as the green movement has spread, tech companies have realized that they can no longer ignore the problem. In 2005, for instance, Hewlett-Packard had $6 billion in requests for proposals from potential customers that mandated environmental or social criteria.

It’s hard to quantify exactly how much of a dent recycling makes in companies’ bottom lines. When asked, Dell, Nokia, Hewlett-Packard, and Xerox all declined to provide specific dollar amounts spent on recycling efforts, but they clearly want the public to know that they are doing it. They were similarly reluctant to divulge how much money, labor, or time is put into processes such as making packaging more environmentally friendly.

It’s easy to see how quickly the costs mount. There are logistical and labor costs for equipment pickup and costs associated with disassembling products in search of reusable and recyclable parts. Desktop PCs are made mostly of metal and steel, which are relatively inexpensive to recycle because their value can help offset processing costs. But a photocopier, which is made mostly of plastic and one small circuit board, has many more costs associated with the recycling process.

“It’s like making an investment in any other parts of the business,” said Patty Calkins, vice president for environment health and safety at Xerox. “We may have to put a little bit more cost into the product to enable remanufacturing...[but] we get far more payback than we end up having to invest.”

Not only are computer monitors, circuit boards, cell phones, and other electronics gadgets sources of toxic waste, they’re also sources of valued commodities like copper, steel, nickel, and even gold.