Industry Asked to Focus on Boosting E-waste Collection in States Without Mandates

The CE industry must concentrate on boosting e-waste recycling efforts in the states that don’t have e-waste laws and “bring them up to the collection rates” in the 25 states that mandate electronics recycling, said Sego Jackson, principal planner of Snohomish County, Wash. Jackson, who represented local governments on the EPA-led National Electronic Product Stewardship Initiative, was commenting on the CEA’s launch of an industry-led national e-waste initiative that aims to collect 1 billion pounds of used electronics by 2016.

"The states with mandates are by far the areas where most e-waste is collected,” Jackson said. And CE makers are taking credit for “what appear to be voluntary efforts when in fact the results come from legislated programs,” Jackson said. States with laws can benefit from “additional efforts” from industry, he said, but “shouldn’t they really be putting effort out where mandates don’t yet exist and electronics recycling is minimal?” he asked by email.

The CEA said the one-billion-pound collection target includes e-waste collected in the states that mandate it. Referring to the industry’s plans to bolster the number of collection sites by working with state and local governments and others, Jackson said that if it’s an industry-led initiative, “why aren’t the collection sites industry provided and private sector, such as through retailers or industry-sponsored collection depots."

The CEA’s “strategy” in announcing the initiative is to stop states from passing e-waste laws, said Barbara Kyle, national coordinator of the Electronics TakeBack Coalition. That was the “first step toward convincing states that industry will set up on its own, so no need to keep passing those pesky state e-waste laws,” she said. “Then they intend to make this program the basis of national takeback legislation,” Kyle said: “But with no details provided on CEA’s program, it seems unlikely that legislators contemplating an e-waste law will be convinced that industry is on the verge of solving this problem."

The industry initiative is the “U.S. version of producer responsibility for the consumer electronics industry,” said Walter Alcorn, CEA vice president of environmental affairs. That’s an “approach championed” by some non-governmental organizations as the “preferred approach to recycling electronics,” Alcorn said. The effort is a “very public affirmation” of the need for a national e-waste system as “a more rational alternative to the inefficient, state-specific program silos that have emerged during the past decade,” Alcorn said. CEA companies are working on the new initiative with “willing collectors of all stripes, public and private,” including local governments, he said. Besides issuing an annual report on the progress of the initiative, his group will report on the “capacity and performance of recycler third-party certification systems,” including eStewards and R2 certification, Alcorn said.