Interagency Task Force to Draft National Strategy On E-Waste Handling

The EPA said a task force was formed to develop a “national strategy” for “responsible electronics stewardship,” including improvements to federal procedures for managing used electronics. The task force will be co-chaired by the EPA, the General Services Administration (GSA) and the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). The move came as President Barack Obama drew attention in an America Recycles Day proclamation to the “challenge of protecting human health and the environment from potentially harmful effects of the improper handling and disposal” of electronics.

The task force operated by the three federal agencies will also take steps to ensure that hazardous e-waste collected for recycling is not exported to developing countries that “lack the capacity to manage the recovery and disposal of these products in ways that safeguard human health and the environment,” the EPA said. Most of the e-waste that’s collected in the U.S. is landfilled, creating “potential health and environmental hazards” throughout the country, and a “significant part of the rest” is shipped to developing countries that don’t have the proper capacity to safely manage the waste, the agency said.

Obama urged American businesses, governments and citizens to “work together to manage these electronics throughout the product lifecycle” from design and manufacturing to their eventual disposal. The interagency task force is being set up to ensure that the federal government “leads as a responsible consumer,” he said. The EPA has made the “handling of used electronics and e-waste one of our top priorities, and through this task force the U.S. can become the world leader in sustainable electronics management,” said Administrator Lisa Jackson. She said “cost-effective and potentially profitable” methods exist to manage e-waste without health and environmental dangers in the U.S. and abroad.

Being the largest consumer of electronics, “we plan to make the federal government the most responsible,” said GSA Administrator Martha Johnson. “Not only will we reduce the federal government’s footprint, we will model behavior for private consumers and use our position in the marketplace to drive the development of sustainable electronics and recycling solutions.” Recycling electronics helps conserve materials, prevents air and water pollution and reduces greenhouse gas emissions, the EPA said. For every 1 million cellphones recycled, 75 pounds of gold, 772 pounds of silver, 33 pounds of palladium and more than 35,000 pounds of copper can be recovered, the agency said.