Texas Producer Responsibility Bill for TVs Introduced by Republican Lawmaker

Texas may move again to require mandatory manufacturer collection and recycling of used TVs, after the state enacted an e-waste law covering computers in 2007 that took effect the following year. Environmentalists cited the introduction of the TV bill (HB-88) by Rep. Byron Cook, the Republican chairman of the House Environmental Regulation Committee, as evidence that the e-waste issue is bipartisan and will maintain momentum in states despite heavy Democratic losses. A similar TV bill was vetoed by the Texas governor in 2009.

HB-88 suffers from “some of the same problems” as the computer law, said Robin Schneider, executive director of the Texas Campaign for the Environment. The bill should have “more clear goals and convenience measures,” she said. “Otherwise we are going to be back a few years later with the same very poor data in terms of per capita collections” that the computer law produced, Schnieder said. Flaws in the computer law included the absence of per capita or market share goals manufacturers had to meet, she said. The law also didn’t ban the disposal of electronic gear in landfills, she said.

The Texas TV bill would require manufacturers to submit to the state a recovery plan to collect, transport and recycle covered TVs. They would have to pay the state a registration fee of $2,500 each year and report the total weight of TVs they sold in the state or the total TVs they sold nationally and the total weight of used devices they collected and recycled a year. By Feb. 15 each year, the state would have to set a recycling rate by “computing the ratio of the weight of total returns of covered television equipment” in the state to the “total weight of covered equipment sold” in Texas in the preceding year, the bill says.

Schneider said her group is talking with recyclers, manufacturers, local governments and others about “how to improve the computer law and including TVs within an unified law” that would treat the products differently but “solves the problem that were uncovered” with the computer law. The reasons cited for vetoing the TV bill in 2009 was that it wasn’t modeled more closely on the computer law, she said. “But that was before we knew what the results of the computer law were.” Schneider said environmentalists are hopeful that the Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, will “act responsibly” with HB-88 to “make sure that Texans have programs that are comparable to what these companies are making available to people in other states."

E-waste hasn’t been a partisan issue, said Schneider, vice chairman of the Electronics TakeBack Coalition, when asked about 2011 prospects for e-waste laws in other states in light of Republican gains in state legislatures. Texas’ computer law was passed unanimously by the Legislature, she said.