If you’re not familiar with 3D printing, here’s a quick primer to help you understand what it is and why the Filabot sounds appealing. Unlike traditional printers that lay out ink on paper in a 2D plane, 3D printers create physical objects. They do this by heating up and extruding small layers of plastic atop one another. The plastic used for 3D printing comes in spools and isn’t what I’d call inexpensive; especially if 3D printing takes off and consumers use more plastic to make things. Shop around and you’ll see it’s about $40 for a kilogram spool.

That’s where the Filabot comes in. You can feed cut-up plastics into the device and it will melt them down and squeeze the remains out into strands of material for a 3D printer. The Filabot can handle plastic chunks up to 3-inches square and will extrude plastic strands in either 1.75-millimeters or 3 millimeters in thickness; fairly standard sizes for 3D printers. Here’s a look at an early stage concept:

I’d expect the Filabot’s price around $500 based on the Kickstarter pledge levels, but there are no details yet on exactly how much you’ll be able to purchase one for. And since 3D printers use filament for each successive printing layer in an object, that material is likely to be used up quickly.

So a machine that can create its own 3D printing filament could be a money saver in the long run. Even better is the fact that you can essentially reuse plastics at home for printing. In fact, if a 3D printed model doesn’t come out quite the way you’d like you can actually recycle with a Filabot and print an improved object.

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Apple’s position since the story broke has been that it follows plenty of other green standards, which it does lay out clearly on its website. But the reaction from the City of SF provoked a longer statement from Apple on Tuesday, essentially repeating the same idea, but in more detail. For Apple’s thoughts, see The Loop.

It’s very true that Apple has made an effort to keep dangerous chemicals out of its products. And that is likely satisfactory to a lot of individual consumers. But that doesn’t address the recycling question. The move signals that future MacBooks that won’t be EPEAT certified — therefore will not be as recyclable by individuals — and will theoretically still end up in a landfill some day. And e-waste is e-waste — it still needs to be dealt with. More crucially for businesses, Apple’s statement doesn’t address the standards issue, which government purchasing departments and corporate IT buyers still have to adhere to — many are required to buy EPEAT-certified computers.

So what is Apple up to? Well, the company might actually be cooking up a solution by contributing to a future recycling standard that is more up to date. The Green Electronics Council that administers EPEAT certification said that it’s been trying to update its standards to fit how today’s electronics are manufactured. The group’s spokeswoman told Fortune that a group including Apple has “just delivered reports on a number of preliminary questions which will inform the IEEE 1680.1 standard refresh process, expected to launch shortly.”

Does this mean Apple will buy back into EPEAT if a new standard fits its design priorities and environmental goals? I guess we’ll have to see.

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You might have seen some of these green phones being talked about in the blogosphere, but it’s likely you’ve never seen them in the wild; it seems like nobody really buys these things. That’s anecdotal, given phone companies don’t often break out these numbers and the market is still new. But Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said at an event in San Francisco in April that the percentage of green phones sold compared to the company’s other popular phones is small.

I’ve only seen these green phones at trade shows, or at press junkets. There are half a dozen models of these phones from manufacturers like Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Nokia, which have recycled parts, sometimes offer solar accessories, occasionally use biomaterials and often times have more efficient chargers.

This week, blogs were excited that the Samsung Replenish, available on Sprint, is coming to the U.S. The Replenish phone is made of recycled materials, has an efficient charger, has an additional back solar panel accessory, and comes with an envelope for easy recycling. The phone is being touted as the first solar-powered smart phone available in the U.S., though other green phones have been available in the U.S. for months.

That kind of adulation is like saying your aunt is the best macrame pot holder-maker in Bakersfield. Who cares? Yes, cell phones should be recycled, should be made of as much recycled material as possible and should have a smart charger. But these efficiency tools should be mandatory for all phones.

And when it comes to individually powering cell phones with mini solar panels, it’s not really going to make a dent in the developed world. The tiny panels just don’t draw enough power, and the power grid is just too convenient and useful in developed countries. For example, the Frostfire’s Mooncharge, iPhone4 plus extra battery, will give you an extra five minutes of talking on the phone for 20 minutes of direct sunlight shining on the lil’ panel.

Do they sell?

It seems like consumers just don’t care enough to buy a phone based on its eco-friendly characteristics. Sprint is actually selling its green phones as low-end phones, and trying to attract people to them with rock-bottom prices, such as $49.99 for the Replenish and taking $10 off the monthly bill. This is part of an effort to “make green really mainstream,” said Hesse in April. The extra solar panel back is a $29 accessory.

Sprint has been particularly bullish on getting green-marketed phones for its customers as a way to differentiate itself from its larger competitors AT&T and Verizon. Hesse said in April that he personally pushed for these green phones for customers, and faced internal pressure from his development team who maintained that green phones wouldn’t sell.

Hesse gave mixed messages about how well the green phones have been selling at the event in April, too. He said that on a percentage basis of sales, the green phones are “still fairly small,” particularly because some of the higher-end screens and packaging aren’t able to be produced in an eco-friendly manner just yet. But at the same time, he said the green phone line is “profitable” to sell. So at least the phone company isn’t losing money on these.

More effective greening of phones

Here’s what should actually happen to make phones more efficient: Cell phone companies need to sell smart chargers with all their cell phones, not just green-marketed phones. These smart chargers, like what AT&T started offering last year, will stop drawing power when the cell phone is fully charged. Cell phone companies in Europe are adopting these chargers, but U.S. phone companies are farther behind.

The majority of the carbon emissions attributed to cell phones comes from so-called vampire power, which is chargers sucking power even when the phone doesn’t need it, according to The Climate Group’s Smart 2020 report (pretty much the only report of its kind of the carbon emissions of IT). Because of the use of smarter chargers in Europe, the Smart 2020 report predicts the carbon emissions associated with cell phones (the devices not the network) will drop from 3 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions for ICT in 2002, to 1 percent of ICT’s emissions by 2020.

Recycling cell phones should also be a de facto move by all cell phone companies and carriers, and not a marketing effort. Recycling phones can actually produce revenues, if the business model is set up effectively.

Mini solar chargers are an interesting and cool thing to use for a cell phone, but it’s a novelty for anyone who lives in an area with a functioning, modern power grid. Anyone who has tested these things out (I’ve played with a few and a solar backpack) will tell you how little solar power these tiny panels generate. Much of their use comes when they are bundled with a battery, and using the extra battery for backup power when needed.

I think marketing a certain subset of phones as green phones actually does a disservice for making cell phones overall more efficient. Particularly if they are lower-end phones that don’t have the latest features. Green phones as a marketing exercise, actually enables a cell phone companies to benefit from green marketing without taking the more important, and more costly, moves of using smart chargers for all phones, and implementing better recycling measures for all their phones.

At the end of the day, phones should be more efficient and recycled, and yes, greener. But not via marketing.

Images courtesy of Samsung, AT&T and Risager.

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ecoATM’s secret sauce is its kiosks’ ability to automatically estimate — using electronic and visual techniques — a price of the unwanted items that will give consumers an “immediate financial incentive” to recycle at the station, Mark Bowles, ecoATM’s chief marketing officer, told us today. The company has built a network of 50 buyers around the globe that will take used consumer electronics devices that ecoATM collects from its kiosks (currently just mobile phones but soon expanding to iPods, MP3 players and game cartridges) and recycle the components. ecoATM finds the best price for the devices and then passes a portion of that revenue onto its customers.

So far the company has placed five kiosks, and it aims to deploy 200 across the U.S. by the end of the year, mostly in electronics retailers. Typically, customers receive coupons for buying products in the store where the kiosk resides, and ecoATM then reimburses the store for the value of the exchange. But the coupon model encourages more spending, which contributes to more waste. That might be part of the reason Bowles said ecoATM is also experimenting with paying customers in cash.

ecoATM has certainly hit upon a market ripe for innovation. The EPA says that in 2005 the U.S. generated 2 million tons of e-waste and only about 350,000 tons of it was recycled. The remaining bulk ends up in landfills. All that valuable waste has led to a flurry of activity in the recycling market, much of it so far revolving around web sites like SecondRotation that help consumers find homes for their used goods (here’s a list of five such sites).  In another example, Kleiner Perkins-backed RecycleBank partners with cities to provide incentives for residential recycling.

But Bowles says the web site-as-recycling-center model doesn’t work. Most people don’t want to go through the hassle of labeling and shipping their used items and finding prospective buyers. ecoATM, he says, is all about convenience.

Chrome OS is a browser for web apps. There won’t be any application installs within the operating system. Android, on the other hand, offers apps and the web. It’s geared for a smaller screen with touch. While Chrome OS will run on x86 devices, it will also support ARM-powered units. Now Acer hasn’t announced what hardware platform its Chrome OS netbook will run on, but when it says “netbook,” I immediately think of x86, which might be overkill for nothing but a browser. My hope is that by “netbook,” Acer means an ARM-powered smartbook in a clamshell form-factor with a touch-type keyboard. If instead, it means a traditional x86 netbook costing around $300, it’s going to be a tough sell when the same money buys you both a browser and application experience, no?

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Fuel from Biomass, Sewage Sludge Headed for LAX: Synthetic fuels and fertilizer maker Rentech announced a deal today with Aircraft Service International Group, which provides fueling at the LA International Airport, to supply up to 1.5 million gallons per year of renewable synthetic diesel fuel for ground-based equipment of at least eight airlines starting in late 2012. — Cleantech Group

Study: Renewables Safer than Fossil Fuels: Doctors from the Medical College of Wisconsin and Duke University Medical Center have just published an analysis finding that a shift to producing power power from renewable resources like solar and wind rather than burning fossil fuels could prevent an estimated 1,300 worker deaths in the coming decade. — Scientific American Blog

Energy Frenemies: “It’s not clear that wind and gas interests will coexist peacefully.” In Texas, wind is already driving down power prices, putting the squeeze on profits from natural gas. — WSJ’s Environmental Capital

Next-Gen Plastic Recycling?: The first factory that can take unsorted, dirty plastic waste and turn it into a substitute for plywood has just opened in Luton, England by a company called 2K Manufacturing, with support from construction compay Bovis. — The Economist

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Closet Excavation

It may not be quite as satisfying as unboxing something brand-new, or buying a big ticket item at retail, but digging around in your closet for old, nearly forgotten hardware and gadgets can actually be pretty satisfying. Especially if you haven’t looked at them in many years, since you’ll often be surprised with what recent software updates or new peripherals can help you do with older devices.

For instance, I recently reclaimed an old Palm T|X that was languishing unused in my brother’s bedside drawer. I’d passed the device onto him when I picked up the first iPod Touch, but he’d stopped using it long ago when he got his first iPhone.

Paired with a Bluetooth keyboard, it’s still a great solution for quick document writing and editing on the road, and it actually has the added benefit of preventing distraction. I’d almost compare the experience to working with a typewriter, whereas any computer is more like working with a typewriter in a movie theater while a movie’s playing with a jukebox going in the background. Not to mention the fact that the device is still a great universal remote.

Trade for Tech

People who work from home tend to accumulate a lot of stuff. It piles up, falls in and out of service, and eventually just takes up space. You could sell it, but often the depreciation on electronics makes that an unappealing prospect to me. A nice alternative that usually leaves me (and the people I’m dealing with) much more satisfied is to try to work out barter deals to trade things you’re not using for things you’d like to try out.

I’ve done trade deals a few times, and nabbed an eMac and a nice starter film SLR out of the deal. Most recently, I traded an acoustic guitar I had (no, I don’t play guitar, and yes, I did buy it new for some stupid reason) for a 1.33GHz 12-inch PowerBook G4. It’s seen better days, but everything still works well, including the optical drive, which is a rare find for this particular vintage of Mac. A trip to the Apple Store and my local independent computer supply store later, and I’ve maxed out the RAM (to 1.25GB) and have a brand-new battery that will get me four hours and change with smart battery management practices.

Having the Powerbook means that I don’t need my Eee PC anymore. Don’t get me wrong, the battery is great on that thing, and it handles video streaming somewhat better than the PowerBook, but I just cannot get back to using Windows as my primary OS for any length of time. The upshot is that I now have a relatively new Eee PC 1000HE to use for further bartering. I’m hoping to pick up a newer-model Time Capsule, with dual-band networking.

Start a Gadget Exchange Program

Chances are, if you have a lot of gadgets, someone in your circle of friends also has a lot of electronic toys lying around which aren’t strictly useful all of the time. What better way for both (or all, if there’s more than two) of you to get a chance to try out new tools without the high cost than by organizing a gadget exchange?

Of course, there are numerous problems with such an arrangement, which is why you should make sure ahead of time that you trust the people you’re trading with implicitly, and that everyone will treat each other’s gear with respect and compensate one another for any damages that may result. It’ll still work out to be a lot cheaper than all of you impulse buying every new thing that comes out, and is a lot less wasteful, too.

Save Money

The bottom line is, the less you spend on gear, the more money you save. Believe me, if I could, I would just grab everything electronics manufacturers slap a “new” sticker on. Sadly, that’s not a realistic possibility. It’s far better to concentrate on finding “new to me” things to experiment with, and occasionally making a choice investment when one of those things actually does enhance my productivity.

Have you tried a gadget exchange program with your friends? Did is satisfy your urges to acquire shiny, new gadgets?

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What do you do with your old Macs when you upgrade to a new system? Many folks sell their old computer on eBay or locally, but that’s something I’ve rarely done. I mostly either keep them as “B-team” units, or hand them off to other family members.

My Mac laptops are tools of my trade, and I would feel pretty vulnerable if I didn’t have a spare — or two — on hand, with the most likely candidate for understudy usually being the machine most recently replaced as No. 1. For example, when my WallStreet PowerBook’s processor died without warning in August 2002, the 1.5-year-old Pismo PowerBook 2001 I’d acquired nine months earlier got promoted to No. 1 workhorse without my suffering even a day of computer-less downtime.

Even if you don’t depend on your Mac for your livelihood, it’s worth considering how much inconvenience and/or expense you’d incur if your No. 1 machine failed, needed to go in the shop or sent away for repair, or got stolen. Hanging onto old computers as “spares” is, of course, much easier if they’re laptops. Storing retired desktop rigs eats up more space than many will find acceptable.

If you don’t want to bother with the hassle of selling or storing your old machine and have no family members or friends who would be interested in taking it off your hands, either to use or as a parts mule, another potential disposal route, if it’s in respectably good condition, would be to donate it to a school, church, youth drop-in center, a day-care, or other institution that would appreciate it.

On the other hand, if the reason you’re replacing the computer is that it broke, and it’s really not worth fixing (be realistic, even if the old unit has sentimental value) try to find a disposal mode that’s environmentally responsible, rather than just tossing it in the garbage. Techno-trash has become a major global problem. For example, the average CRT monitor can contain up to 8 pounds of lead. Nova Scotia, where I live, has an environmentally sound electronics recycling program run by the government.

Apple has had free computer and iPod recycling programs since 2001. U.S. customers, who buy a new Mac through the Apple Store or Apple’s retail stores, can receive free shipping and environmentally friendly disposal of their old computer. U.S. and Canadian customers wanting to dispose of used computers or monitors at any other time may also use Apple’s recycling program by purchasing $30 prepaid shipping labels to send used units to Apple’s recycling partner. For more information on what is options are available to you, read up on Apple’s recycling initiative.

In some communities, there are also organizations that refurbish old computers for distribution to the less fortunate, either domestically or in developing countries.

So, to post the question again, what do you do with your old Macs?

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The fresh cash for Recupyl comes from new investors led by AGF Private Equity, as well as original backer Aloe Private Equity. Recupyl said INPG Enterprise, which provided seed funding for Recupyl, still holds a stake in the company, but did not disclose if INPG Enterprise participated in this latest round. INPG Entreprise is the research, development and investment arm of France’s Grenoble Institute of Technology. Recupyl was started by Grenoble Institute researcher Farouk Tedjar, who serves as CEO of the company.

Earlier this month, Flipswap and Second Rotation both pulled in funding for their recycling programs. California’s Flipswap, which targets cell phone trade-ins and recycling, raised $14 million. Boston-based Second Rotation received $6 million for its much broader gadget buyback program, called Gazelle, covering phones, laptops, MP3 players and more. And in August, Indian e-waste recycler Attero raised $6.3 million in funding, while ReCellular, based in Michigan, pulled in $15 million.

Recupyl said it currently has recycling plants in Singapore, France, Spain and the UK. The company said its hydrometallurgy system recovers metals by leaching them into a solution of acid or alkaline, using selective precipitation, as well as electrolysis.

The recycling technology goes beyond just batteries and displays, with Recupyl saying that it also handles fly ash from waste incineration, industrial effluents, and asbestos. The company said that its process for asbestos converts the material into an inert glass that can be used as a building composite. Recupyl is also looking at the recycling of fuel cells and solar panels.

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