That was tried, and what ultimately occured was disgusting.
The world was full of new computers popping up and every middle class or above person buying new ones like they do with iphones now. Companies started recycling programs, and many immediately went the route of corruption. They would pack up shipping containers full of ewaste, with 40-50% reusable items, and the rest junk, allowing them to skirt the rules. These containers would end up in 3rd world countries, with people standing over a burning pile of ewaste, filtering out reusable metals. There was, at one point, even images of children doing this work. The usable items were sold dirt cheap, with no data erasing, leading to large amounts of data theft, and being able to buy pages of active credit card numbers for a dollar.
We are talking about less critical things now, like vape pens, but its not a far throw for it to instantly become an actually bad idea to let other companies do the recycling. Make the manufacturer deal with it, or even the city/state, via public intake locations (like was mentioned of switzerland in another part of this thread)
