How do you propose we make it economically preferable for companies to drive this change? Because that's really the only thing short of legal changes that will make them do it.
A better approach would be to add a deposit to the price of certain products which is then refunded to the consumer when they return it for proper recycling. We already do this with beverage containers so why not other items like consumer electronics? Anyone who can get $10 back on a broken DVD player won't throw it in the garbage.
By suggestion this I'm not saying that we don't need big changes nor am I suggestion we only tweak. What I am saying is that we need to actively build brick by brick onto existing methods that have worked, such as deposits. Deposits are a great way to enhance recycling and that's proven, so adding them to a wide range of other products makes a great deal of sense.
Does anyone else have other successful policies such as this that could be suggested for expansion too? We should keep actively tweaking rather than sitting on our hands debating what's a great huge step forward when the reality is that small, steady tweaks would have an astronomical effect over 10-20 years with I imagine a very low failure rate to-boot.
Its really simple, mandate sane warranty period, like in EU.
High quality products that are already longer lasting (on average) would be relatively less affected by such a tax because raw materials make up a smaller share of their cost anyway and more people would buy them.