http://www.marcgunther.com/2009/08/17/cash-for-electronic-clunkers/ This blog is about the impact of business on society. Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:27:48 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 http://www.marcgunther.com/2009/08/17/cash-for-electronic-clunkers/comment-page-1/#comment-283569 B. Klafter Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:43:33 +0000 http://www.marcgunther.com/?p=1577#comment-283569 This business model looks just like another company called Flipswap. Flipswap focuses exclusively on cell phones, but the basic concept is the same, i.e. buy recent vintage items of some value and take the others at no charge. The issue with the model is that the market for older, used electronics is rather limited and therefore a lot of the stuff ends up in the "developing" world. The fate of the goods at that point is what should concern environmentalists - are the items actually being used or are they mined for valuable materials or are they dumped somewhere? This business model looks just like another company called Flipswap. Flipswap focuses exclusively on cell phones, but the basic concept is the same, i.e. buy recent vintage items of some value and take the others at no charge. The issue with the model is that the market for older, used electronics is rather limited and therefore a lot of the stuff ends up in the “developing” world. The fate of the goods at that point is what should concern environmentalists – are the items actually being used or are they mined for valuable materials or are they dumped somewhere?

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