Green Group Wants Target to Commit to Taking Back Large Electronics

Emboldened by what it calls its success in getting Best Buy to launch a nationwide e-waste takeback program, the San Francisco green group As You Sow is expanding its campaign to other retailers, it said. It filed a annual shareholders’ meeting proxy proposal with Target Stores, “which currently takes back small electronics, but not large devices like computers, and has not committed to bar improper export of collected products,” it said.

"As part of its campaign to encourage more electronics recycling, As You Sow is asking Target for the first time to report on its electronics recycling program,” the group said. Its proxy proposal seeks a report from Target “on policy options, above and beyond legal compliance, to minimize the environmental impacts of its electronics recycling activities by promoting reuse of working equipment” and preventing e-waste exports to developing countries, the green group said.

As You Sow is “building on our success over the past eight years in reducing the amount of electronic waste and the number of beverage containers sent to landfill, and evolving this practice into a broader program on Extended Producer Responsibility,” the group said. “This process began by engaging HP, Dell, and Apple with proposals to offer take-back recycling for their electronics. Through dialogue over many years, these manufacturers integrated the programs into their core practices. Once the manufacturing sector embraced the benefits of recycling, the program expanded with a proposal filed with Best Buy to take back electronic waste. The company agreed, and in 2010 over two million units weighing 85 million pounds were collected."

Target representatives didn’t respond to requests for comment. But on the “corporate responsibility” section of its website, Target said it launched “a comprehensive guest-facing recycling program” for small electronics last year. “The purpose of our new recycling program was to bring our commitment to recycling out of the backroom and into the forefront,” it says. “By making our recycling programs easily accessible to both our guests and our team members, we're working together to make an even bigger impact."

Customers “can now easily recycle cans, glass, plastic bottles, plastic bags, MP3 players, ink cartridges and cell phones right in their local Target store,” it said. E-waste “is collected by a national vendor who resells them for reuse, refurbishing or recycling,” it said, without identifying the vendor. “Anything that can’t be reused is scrapped by companies that dispose of the materials responsibly. It’s too early to know exactly how much waste we will divert from landfills with the recycling program, but we anticipate that we could eliminate at least 6 million pounds of plastic bags, glass, plastic, aluminum beverage containers and electronics each year.”