Central Registration for State E-Waste Laws a ‘Challenge,’ NCER Says

The efforts to harmonize the registration requirements of state e-waste laws for cost and administrative efficiencies will face “implementation challenges,” said Executive Director Jason Linnell of the National Center for Electronics Recycling. NCER is leading the effort through the 25-member Electronics Recycling Coordination Clearinghouse that includes 11 state agencies and several industry players. Twenty-three states have enacted e-waste laws, mostly based on producer responsibility. California is the only state to have a law that funds recycling through a consumer fee on new devices.

One of the issues the center is working on is coming up with a single “access point” for manufacturers to enter all the information that different states would require, Linnell said. States like Washington haven’t bought into the idea of a central online registration location for manufacturers. That’s because Washington law requires device makers to register with the state rather than some common point, said Miles Kuntz of the Washington Department of Ecology. So state regulators decided that rather than have device makers register first at a central location and then do it again in the state, they'll have them do it just in the state, he said.

It’s a “challenge” to come up with a central registration system, conceded Linnell, because “some states have built up their bureaucracies over the last few years.” In the absence of any coordinated effort, such states “have had to go off and implement” their laws on their own, he said. So it’s difficult to go back and change some of the structures, he said. As states see that harmonizing aspects of the state laws could over time cut costs and lead to efficiencies they will fall in line, Linnell said. Besides registration, the center is looking at integration possibilities in areas such as data on market share and return share and a way to compare performance of diverse state e-waste programs.

In Oregon, e-waste collection was 12.6 million pounds in the first half of 2010 vs. a goal of 21 million pounds for the year, Linnell said. NCER runs the state program in Oregon. There also are three manufacturer-operated programs in the state. In 2009, 19 million pounds were collected vs. a goal of 12 million pounds, Linnell said. There has been a slight increase in TV collection in Oregon after a landfill ban went into effect in January, he said: “It has been closer to 60 percent, whereas it was about 55 percent” in 2009.