Some companies say recovering large amounts of those metals could help offset recycling costs. A single computer contains only a fraction of an ounce of gold, but in an average shipping unit of H-P computer equipment, there might be eight or 12 ounces of gold. On a day when gold closes at $680 an ounce, that’s $3,600 worth of gold in one box. 

"Certainly, it’s a reasonable chunk of how you offset the costs,” says Renee St. Denis, the director of product recycling for H-P’s Americas unit. “The thing to remember is, different products are going to contain different amounts of gold and silver and platinum and palladium, which are the main metals you would be going after.”

There are other ways that companies can minimize the costs of being green: encouraging reuse of items like toner cartridges and waste toner; manufacturing products with fewer materials and parts so less labor and energy is required; and making products with more reusable materials that can have second or third lives.

Xerox says reusing parts generates “several hundred million dollars” in savings each year and that in 2005, reuse conserved enough energy to light more than 220,000 homes for a year.

Still, it’s not exactly easy for consumers to recycle their electronics, which is why so many old stereos and computer monitors end up collecting dust in storage spaces.

Sony offers free electronics recycling at 75 drop-off centers run by Waste Management. Non-Sony products can also be recycled but may incur a fee. “One of the problems in recycling has been the economic sustainability of these programs, and that’s exactly what we’re trying to do—to develop them,” says Waste Management spokesman Wes Muir.

Most computer manufacturers will recycle old laptops and PCs for free with the purchase of new ones. Only Dell will recycle for free without a purchase. Smaller devices like phones and MP3 players can usually be mailed to their manufacturers for recycling at no expense to the consumer.

Sheila Davis, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition, said it’s up to companies to figure out cost-effective ways to recycle and include them in overall product costs. Some haven’t gotten there yet.

“It should be easy to recycle your product,” Davis said. “You should not have to package it up or mail it off or wait for some special day to actually recycle it.”

Of course, recycling still has its chorus of skeptics. Martin Reynolds, vice president of emerging trends and technologies at Gartner, an internet-technology research and advisory company, says recycling is simply not profitable, even with the fees that many companies charge for picking products up from consumers. Moreover, he says, consumers don’t care enough about the environment for companies’ efforts to pay off in the marketplace.

Last May, Apple C.E.O. Steve Jobs acknowledged that his company had not been forthright about its environmental policy, promising a greener Apple. “Apple took a black eye for being a very environmentally unfriendly company,” Reynolds said, “but consumers cried, ‘We don’t care. Give us our iPods.’”