With America Recycles Day coming around on Monday, it's a good time to consider the impact of digital technology on waste.

It doesn't require too much imagination. Just visualize the obsolete cell phones, computers, TVs, modems, and tangle of wires sitting somewhere in your home--I suspect many of us have electronic stuff that's basically just baggage. The EPA estimates that nationwide there were 2.25 million U.S. tons of PCs, peripherals, TVs, and phones discarded in 2007, and e-waste is the fastest growing category of waste.

Now, think about what this tech equipment is made of. More than 1,000 materials go into the making of electronics, some of which are nasty chemicals, according to the Electronics Takeback Coalition. Heavy metals, including lead, mercury, and cadmium, are standard fare for the insides of TVs, computers, and other electronics, as well as brominated flame retardants in computers.

There are health risks during the production of these goods, but the greatest potential health impact is at the end of life, according to ETC. So to avoid getting these toxins from leaching at landfills or being burned at incinerators, it's important to recycle or donate them.

So what do you do The first step is to collect and recycle the electronics you already have. That's getting easier to do, with more drop-off locations and online tools. But a lot more can be done, both to keep bad stuff out of the landfills and to reclaim valuable metals. In 2007, about 18 percent of TVs and PCs were recycled, and about 10 percent of cell phones were, according to the EPA.

The Electronics Takeback Coalition last month released its annual report card on how different consumer electronics and computer companies fare in their efforts to take back and recycle electronics. No company in any category got an "A" grade, and with the exception of Hewlett-Packard, printer companies in particular have a long way to go, it said.

Get the e-junk out Cell phones are probably the easiest thing to donate or recycle, since many manufacturers will pay for shipping to return old phones and many stores now offer drop-off bins. Recellular will pay for your old phone and has handy instructions for how to erase personal data. Here is a list of few places where you can donate old phones.

If it's too old to be refurbished, you can drop it off for recycling at stores, such as Radio Shack, Best Buy, Office Depot, and Staples. You can also try Call2Recycle, which lists places to recycle cell phones and batteries.