HP (HPQ) has announced plans to extend its recycling service in China from big enterprise clients to medium and small enterprises, as well as individual users.

From now on, users can place any unwanted HP brand equipment at the HP Gold Service Centers in 31 major cities across China. HP will collect and recycle HP branded printers, scanners, fax machines, laptop computers, or desktop computers, monitors, handset devices and related peripheral equipment like data lines, mouse and keyboard for free.

According to the plan, HP's recycling program will cover 31 Chinese cities in the first stage and it will expand the service to more cities next year and in the meantime increase the number of sites for collecting the used electronic products.

Jean-Claude Vanderstraeten, environmental supervisor for HP Asia Pacific and Japan, said that with the increase of technology products and people's awareness of their impact on the environment, it has become urgent to dispose waste IT equipment in a manner responsible to the environment. The recycling program HP launched this time is to help consumers participate in the environmental programs in a simple way and make their contributions to the sustainable development of the environment.

Apart from the recycling service, HP also provides product life expectancy management services, including donations and trade-ins for business clients. At present, HP runs recycling programs in more than 40 countries and regions across the world.