I guess I'm giving my age away, but I remember when the only place to buy "organic" fruit and vegetables was in the cluttered recesses of a "health food store." These days, we see growing quantities of whole and organic foods on the shelves of white-bread supermarkets everywhere. It's nice to realize that organic foods have moved beyond the granola-munching types and into the mainstream, allowing more farmers to earn a decent living while actually improving the land they work.

And while the phenomenon is far less developed in the green-tech world, I'm seeing hints of it.

Last week, for example, at the Tour de Sol clean energy race, I recalled that when I started covering it seven years ago, it was a wild collection of one-of-a-kind vehicles, mostly made by eager engineering students, with a light sprinkling of prototype cars from the automakers thrown in. Today, the situation is different, with cars you can actually buy-production electrics, hybrids and alternative fuel vehicles-making up nearly half the fleet.

While the Vehiculus Gigantus Suburbanus V8 gas-guzzler is not yet an endangered species, high-efficiency vehicles are showing up in small but noticeable numbers on mainstream America's highways. Honda's production hybrid Civic and Ford's nearly-ready hybrid mini-SUV show that driving these sorts of vehicles need not be a joyless exercise in eco-penance. Hopefully, public interest (and the manufacturer's attention span) will last long enough for HEVs to transition from novelty item to basic fact of life.

Similarly, electronics recycling is coming into its own, with companies like Dell following pioneers like IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Dell and other manufacturers are running pilot take-back events to see what it will take to make returning your old TV, computer, or other e-gadget a routine part of the shopping cycle. Unfortunately, manufacturers face both a steep learning curve and bewildering regulatory environment on the way to making e-recycling mainstream.

Michele Raymond, president of Raymond Communications, said that U.S. e-recycling needs a national policy for waste handling, processing and recovery, similar to the University of Tennessee's National Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative (NEPSI). Such semivoluntary standards could help create more efficient markets for e-scrap, lower recycling costs and give manufacturers useful guidelines.

Unfortunately, NEPSI is now stalled as manufacturers debate when consumers pay and how recycling fees are administered and distributed. Unless they're close to consensus by fall, the EPA is threatening to pull the plug on the project. Without national guidelines, jurisdiction will fall to the individual states-a recipe for a real train wreck that could set back e-waste processing in the United States by a decade.

Our industry's future depends on sensible, unified recycling guidelines. Hopefully, the EIA and a few short-sighted manufacturers will relax their death-grip on the NEPSI process and help move e-cycling the next step toward the mainstream.

Write me at lgoldberg@green-electronics.com.

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