SAN FRANCISCO — Sony plans to offer free recycling of all its products in the U.S., a move that may change the way the electronics industry deals with its trash.

Customers will be able to drop off Sony TVs, stereos, laptops and other items at centers run by Waste Management, a company that oversees garbage and recycling operations in many municipalities.

Starting Sept. 15, 75 Waste Management centers will accept Sony products free of charge. Within a year, 150 will. Sony eventually hopes to have one center within 20 miles of most U.S. residents. (Sony currently does not have a recycling center in Hawai'i)

Sony is also considering a mail-in program, says Stan Glasgow, president of Sony Electronics. It must first figure out how to handle shipping for large items such as TVs.

The program is one of the first of its kind in the United States. Sony and other electronics makers have argued that recycling electronics is too difficult and expensive. It can cost as much as $60 to dismantle and recycle an old TV.

Sony has said that the government should be in charge of recycling. It changed its position because "It's taking the (federal) government and the states forever to figure out what to do," Glasgow says. "We want to push them."

That's a "major movement" in the right direction, says Sheila Davis, executive director of Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, an advocacy group. Many electronics makers, such as Panasonic and Toshiba, sponsor take-back events. Very few accept all products, all the time, for free. Those that do tend to be companies that make small products that are relatively easy to ship and recycle. Motorola takes back all its cell phones, for example.

Davis and other environmentalists say Sony's program isn't perfect. The initial rollout of 75 locations is "rather small," Davis says. She's concerned that still-operational products will be ground up into scrap instead of being reused.

It also remains to be seen how much of the material Sony collects ends up in new products, and how much ends up in landfills, she says.