Not All States Want In on Harmonization of E-Waste Programs

Efforts by the National Center for Electronics Recycling (NCER) to harmonize various elements of state e-waste laws have the backing of the CE industry, but not all state program managers are enthusiastic, our survey found. Regulators in states with more-established e-waste laws see integration of state e-waste rules as better suited for programs that are just getting started. NCER, through the Electronics Recycling Coordination Clearinghouse, is bringing together regulators and industry players to look at areas in state laws that lend themselves to common approaches.

There’s not a “lot of disgruntlement” with California’s e-waste program, said Jeff Hunts of California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle). Collectors and recyclers like the program because it “underwrites an industry for them,” he said. Consumers may not like it as much, because they pay for recycling when they buy new products, he said. But they are “pleased to have services” when they want to discard used electronics, he said. California was the first state to enact an e-waste law in 2003 and the only one to adopt a consumer fee-based system. The state pays for “whatever is collected and recycled,” Hunts said, and that “payment system itself is the strength that drives the program."

With 23 state e-waste laws, “trying to make all the state programs the same is going to be an impossible task,” said Miles Kuntz of Washington’s Department of Ecology. Washington’s program has “elements” that can’t be found in other states, he said. Even in areas like registration, where some harmonization is possible through a central registration location for manufacturers, Washington’s program runs in a way that “doesn’t work very well for us,” Kuntz said. “We still have to deal with them [manufacturers] individually.” So state regulators decided that rather than have manufacturers register first at some central location and then do it again in the state, “we'll just have them come here directly to us because we need to have them do that anyway.” Washington’s e-waste law was enacted in 2006 but went into effect in January 2009.

Harmonization will benefit state programs that are “still not quite on line or yet to be coming on line because they can basically start from scratch and build,” Kuntz said. But those states like Washington who have been “doing it in a certain way for a while,” will have to change their regulations and “possibly our law” to conform to a set of harmonized procedures, he said. “So harmonization is a better fit for stats that are just getting into the electronics recycling program.” A federal law to harmonize state regulations without “preempting” them is “something that could be done,” he said.

Although there is a “broad range of potential areas where we could seek some harmonization,” the enactment of 23 separate e-waste laws poses “barriers” to progress, said Garth Hickle of the Minnesota Pollution Control Authority. “But it’s something we should all be looking at.” Minnesota regulators have started conversations with counterparts in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana to look for areas of coordination in e-waste laws, because there are more similarities than differences, he said. “We are looking at it both in terms of reducing the compliance headaches for the manufacturers and in terms of reducing potentially some of the staff that are necessary to implement the program at the state level.” Minnesota’s e-waste program began in August 2007.

An area ripe for coordination among state laws is recycling standards, said Kathy Kiwala of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. Oregon adopted an early version of the Responsible Recycling (R2) standards that the EPA helped develop, she said. But now the RIOS standards from the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries and the e-Stewards standards developed by the Basel Action Network have also emerged, she said. “We have a number of standards and it would be helpful for the recyclers and the collectors and maybe even the programs that use them to have a set of standards that they could get audited to or certified to and then they would qualify across different [state] programs."

Maine officials are talking with counterparts in Rhode Island and Vermont to find areas of possible coordination in e-waste laws, said Carole Cifrino of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. “Regional states are finding that the more similar we make our programs they easier it is for manufacturers.” She would like to see some commonality in the type of products covered by the state laws, Cifrino said, but “that’s an ever evolving field.” CEA, a member of the NCER’s clearinghouse, supports the harmonization efforts, said Walter Alcorn, the group’s vice president of environmental affairs. “There are lots of harmonization opportunities up and down these electronics recycling laws and anything we can do to make these programs more efficient and reduce unnecessary costs we are happy to support.”