A new law, signed last month by Governor Ehrlich, imposes a $5,000 annual fee on all computer makers who do business in Maryland to help recycle their products. U.S. consumers discard some 50 million computers and 130 million cell phones each year. In Maryland, this amounts to 60,000 tons of “electronic waste” each year.

This fee is touches on a very “green” idea–to include the ecological costs of consumption in the price–in this case the cost of disposing or recycling the tons of refuse of the information highway. As long as environmental problems are considered free by the marketplace, they will continue to multiply.

Imagine if this philosophy were applied to our other highways–if the environmental costs of gass guzzling, pollution spewing cars and trucks were included in their market price. How many more bicycle lanes would we have? How many more transit lines? How much more sensible would our urban planning be?

This law is a perfect opening for Greens to make bigger points about building a green economy.