Ex-CRT Glass Recycler To Pay $9,180 Fine in Settlement With EPA

A former electronics recycler, Eco International, of Vestal, New York, will pay a $9,180 fine and clean up tons of e-waste at its shuttered facility, under a settlement agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA said in a Thursday announcement. EPA inspections in 2012 of Eco International’s Vestal processing facility, and the company’s Hallstead, Pennsylvania, storage facility found the company was storing 13,000 tons of lead-laden CRTs and crushed glass, the agency said. “Much of this glass had been accumulating since 2010, when the international demand for many recycled electronics began to decline.” Under the agreement, Eco International will ship the remaining glass to a “properly licensed” facility by November and clean the areas where the CRT glass had been handled and stored, it said. Eco International ceased e-waste operations in Vestal and closed the facility two years ago, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filing at the New York State Labor Department in September 2013. Though Eco International stopped receiving and processing e-waste in October, it “continued to operate at their Hallstead, PA site in order to finish properly sorting and disposing of their remaining inventory of CRT glass,” agency spokesman John Martin emailed us Thursday. Eco International representatives didn't comment.