The advisory panels of the trade and environment ministries basically agreed at a joint meeting Thursday to establish a recycling system for home-use personal computers separate from that for commercial-use PCs.

The envisaged system is expected to be introduced in fall 2003 at the earliest.

Consumers will be required to pay recycling fees when they buy new PCs and when they dispose of PCs they purchased before the scheme's introduction.

The recycling fees will be included in the sale price of new PCs after the system comes into effect.

The cost to consumers disposing of a desk-top PC is estimated at around 5,000 yen, while that for a notebook PC is expected to be around 2,000 yen.

Under the current system, enforced since April, companies are obliged to cover recycling costs when they scrap PCs. Home-use PCs have been left out of the recycling loop, as Japan's system of waste disposal differentiates between industrial and household waste.

A PC recycling group that operates under the Industrial Structure Council, which advises the economy, trade and industry minister, and the panel that advises the environment minister on PC recycling, are expected to compile a final report on the issue by the end of March.

According to a draft of the report made available at Thursday's meeting, the government should revise relevant ordinances so that PC makers are voluntarily required to collect used PCs from households as well as businesses.

The draft also says manufacturers should be required to not charge any fee when they accept home PCs produced after the launch of the planned system, under which users are expected to start disposing of computers in the third year.

The draft says manufacturers should set up a nationwide collection system by making use of between 300 and 400 maintenance-service stations, some 2,000 express-package agencies and 380 pickup locations for recycling large home appliances.

Retailers will be asked to cooperate by providing pickup locations, among other things, as consumers usually do not ask retailers from which they buy new PCs to dispose of their old machines.

Municipalities will be called on to encourage residents to use the new system, along with other measures, as their existing waste-collection systems will continue accepting old PCs from households.

Results of the new system are expected to be periodically released for a possible review in the future.

The draft projects that some 9,000 tons of home PCs will be scrapped in fiscal 2001, more than 20,000 tons in fiscal 2006, and eight times the current amount over several decades. It estimates that 51 percent of households now have PCs.

The system may factor in the likelihood that sales of home PCs will expand in the medium term but will dwindle in the long run, as PCs may be built into home appliances or replaced by far-smaller personal digital assistants and other devices, it said.