Japan is getting tough about recycling—and not in the paper and plastic kind of way. Recently, the country requires that all electronic goods—TVs, VCRs, stereos, and more—be recycled. But recycling will not beleft to consumers, instead, the devices will be sent to the original manufacturer for proper disposal.

　　The new law poses a few challenges to manufacturers who are now rushing to set up collection networks and perfecting techniques to disassemble and recycle older products.With an eye toward the future, they are also integrating easily recycled materials into new products. Plastics, a major component of most electronicproducts,pose a particular obstacle because their quality becomes worse and worse with age,losing strengthand flexibility even if reprocessed.NEC Corp. overcomes this problem by creating a plastics sandwich, in which the filling is 100 percent recycled plastic and the outer layers a mixture of 14 percent recycled material.The resulting plastic has sufficient strength and toughness for use as a case for desktop PCs. The company, in cooperation with plastic maker Sumitomo Dow, has also developed a new plastic, which engineers claim retains its mechanical properties through repeated recycling. NEC uses the plastic, which is also flame-retardant (阻燃的) in battery cases for notebook PCs.

　　Meanwhile, Matsushita Electric, maker of the Panasonic brand, is avoiding plastic in favor of magnesium (镁). Magnesium, says the company, is ideal for re cycling because it retains its original strength throughrepeated reprocessing. Matsushita has developed molding techniques to form magnesium into the case for a 21-inch TV. Unfortunately, the magnesium case and energy-saving features make the TV about twice as expensive as an ordinary model.The company hopes, however, that increased use of magnesium will eventually bring prices down.