Companies all over the world are starting to realize the positive impact that green business initiatives can have on the bottom line. But for electronics manufacturers, one of the biggest and most-needed improvements is also the most complicated: how to deal with a product at the end of its lifecycle.

There are benefits aplenty to extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs, which require manufacturers to collect and recycle or reuse their products before they end up in landfills. Aside from the environmental and health benefits of diverting consumer electronics from waste streams, the potential business benefits of EPR are significant: fostering a stronger bond with customers, reducing manufacturing and waste expenses, and reusing resources are a few.

But the challenges of funding, developing and ingraining EPR into a corporate structure are daunting. And in the U.S. especially, states have addressed a failure to map an e-waste solution on the federal level with a patchwork of varying laws, making the process all the more difficult. Some of the electronics goliaths have sowed their own, successful recycling programs while others have collaborated with other manufacturers. Which path is easiest? And which is the most successful?

The concept of EPR is not a new one and it has been widely adopted by a number of industries since the 1990s, when Germany passed laws requiring packaging manufacturers to be responsible for the packaging waste they produced, clogging much of the country's dwindling landfill space.

Due to the presence of lead and other toxins, electronics -- everything from desktop computers to cell phones and televisions -- pose a significant risk to human health and the environment. In Europe, the waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE) directive was passed in 2006 to force manufacturers of electronics to mitigate these risks by taking back and recycling used product in order to divert it from landfills, illegal dumps and unsafe disassembly practices.

Thus far, WEEE appears to be working-London's Environment Agency completed a study that shows landfills in England and Wales in 2006 received 60 percent less hazardous waste than in 2004, while recycling and re-use increased 64 percent over 2004, according to E-Scrap News. However, attempts to pass similar legislation at the federal level in the U.S. have all failed, a number of states have passed state legislation requiring electronics makers deploy EPR programs.

While these laws are helping divert hundreds of thousands of tons of used electronic products from U.S. landfills, they are also creating major challenges to manufacturers who sell products in those states, because each state has different rules and regulations that manufacturers must now follow. With eight more state governments cranking out their own take-back laws, manufacturers are finding that the morass of regulations is thickening.

Aiming to both comply with the various laws and clear a number of hurdles that have marred the success of electronics take-back programs in the past, many manufacturers are stepping forward with what they say are effective solutions. Electronics manufacturers who have thus far taken a wait-and-see approach stand to learn from the successes and failures of manufacturers who are already taking action. But manufacturers who wait too long to act risk fines for non-compliance with state laws, not to mention a poor reputation with consumers of their products and the ire of activist groups.

The Costs and Lessons Learned So Far

While all types of consumer electronics contain components that raise environmental concerns, such as phthalate plastic softeners, brominated flame retardants and lead used in solder, different electronics-based products have varying degrees of value to the collectors and recyclers that collect them.

The costs associated with recycling consumer electronics break out to three main categories, according to John Dickenson, vice president of business development for AER Worldwide, a recycler of electronics whose clients include many of the top electronics producers in the world.