An incident 29 years ago illustrates that e-waste is not a new problem. Atari, it seems, had millions of unsold cartridges of Pac-Man, E.T., and other games to dispose of. Here's what the company did.

According to the New York Times in September 1983,

With the video game business gone sour, some manufacturers have been dumping their excess game cartridges on the market at depressed prices.

Now Atari Inc., the leading video game manufacturer, has taken dumping one step farther.

The company has dumped 14 truckloads of discarded game cartridges and other computer equipment at the city landfill in Alamogordo, N.M. Guards kept reporters and spectators away from the area yesterday as workers poured concrete over the dumped merchandise.

Ironically, the same article noted, "…Atari's plant in El Paso, Tex., …used to make videogame cartridges but has now been converted to recycling scrap."

Click on the "recycle" tag above to see more about e-waste challenges and solutions.