Erica Calder's old computer will lie in the garage until a system of recovering IT equipment is up and running in the Dublin area, she tells Fiona Murdoch

When she received a new computer for Christmas, Rathfarnham mother- of-two Erica Calder was faced with the question of what to do with her old one.

She knew it would be impossible to sell since its age (eight years) meant it was positively a fossil in these hi-tech times when today's newest model is tomorrow's antique.

The simplest way to get rid of it would have been to shove it in the wheelie bin, but her keen awareness of the environment meant she could not even contemplate that.

For some years now, Calder has tried to leave as little as possible for the bin lorry - the vast majority of her household waste is either recycled or composted.

However, while she can put paper, cardboard, aluminium cans and food tins in her green wheelie bin and take glass, plastic, clothes and batteries to her local bring centre in Rathgar, she did not know where to recycle her old computer.

The obvious thing to do was to ring the local council. Having explained her dilemma, Calder was told by a girl on the switchboard to "just dump it".

When she was put through to environmental services, however, she was given the number of a recycling company. But it turned out the company in question did not, in fact, accept electronic goods.

Despite feeling increasingly frustrated at the difficulty in getting information, Calder persisted in her search. "It would have been so easy for me just to have thrown the thing in the wheelie bin because I was dying to get it out of the house, but I just wouldn't do that," she says.

A friend gave her the number of Balbriggan-based company, Fingal Recycling, who assured her she was doing the right thing by not dumping the computer.

"They told me it was now illegal to put computers into landfill because they are non-degradable and that there is a whole lot of stuff in them, like mercury vapours, that's really dangerous," Calder says.

"They told me that computers can be broken down and the plastic, chips and various kinds of metal can be totally reused."

She discovered Fingal Recycling was, in fact, spearheading a Euro Life project for the recovery of IT equipment which would be up and running within the next 12 months. Three of the four Dublin council areas had agreed to organise drop-off points where people would be able to leave their computers for recycling at a nominal charge.

So the computer is left sitting in Calder's garage until the scheme gets under way. Not one to be easily put off her eco-friendly ways, the young mum continues with her recycling and composting, encouraging her four-year-old son, Cian, to help her.

Baby Tom (13 months) is too young now, but it is only a matter of time before he, too, will learn that orange peel and apple cores go in the compost bin while paper, cardboard, plastic and glass all have their separate containers under the kitchen sink.

"Cian knows by now where the different things go," says Calder. "He knows that fruit and vegetable peelings go into the compost bin and, when I emptied out the bin last summer, he got his spade and helped me dig the compost into the ground.

"When we brought our Christmas tree to the park, he wanted to know what was going to happen to it.

"I explained it would be chopped up, made into mulch and spread on the ground so that the goodness would go back into the soil and help other plants to grow."

Bringing up her boys to be eco-friendly is an important aspect of Calder's parenting: "I want to bring them up to see that recycling and composting is normal - that this is how to deal with waste.

"I do think that how each one of us lives has an impact on the environment. I don't like the idea of incineration and we can't just keep on dumping our waste."