Best Buy Testing Free E-Waste Recycling Program

San Francisco Best Buy Co. is testing a free program that will offer consumers a way to ensure millions of old TVs, computers and other unwanted gadgets don't poison the nation's dumps.

The trial, expected to be announced Monday, covers 117 Best Buy stores scattered across eight states that will collect a wide variety of electronic detritus at no charge, even if the retailer didn't originally sell the merchandise.

The pilot stores are in Best Buy's Northern California, Minneapolis and Baltimore markets, as well as in parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Depending on how the test goes, the company may expand the recycling program to all of its 922 stores in the United States.