Samsung said Thursday it received an EPA award for its Galaxy Upcycling program, which allows phone owners to retrofit the hardware and software of outdated, used Galaxy phones into new products such as closed-circuit TVs, game consoles and IoT devices. The program, created from Samsung’s C-Lab innovation hub, will launch in 2018, said the company. Samsung was also cited for e-waste collection efforts with its fourth consecutive Gold Tier award for recycling, it said. Samsung collected and “responsibly recycled” more than 118 million pounds of e-waste in the U.S., making it one of the world’s biggest collectors of e-waste, it said.

Only about 20 percent of the world’s e-waste was recycled in 2016, said an ITU report released Wednesday with the United Nations University and the International Solid Waste Association. Nearly 45 million metric tons of e-waste were generated last year, an 8 percent increase from 2014, said the report. “Experts foresee a further 17 per cent increase” to 52.2 million metric tons by 2021, it said. The assessment “highlights the significant and growing risk to the environment and human health due to increasing levels of e-waste and its improper and unsafe treatment and disposal through burning or in dumpsites,” it said. The “positive news” is that more countries are adopting e-waste legislation, it said. The report estimates two-thirds of the world’s population last year was “covered by national e-waste management laws,” a “significant” increase from the 44 percent that was covered only two years earlier.

Forty-nine percent of e-waste initiatives are carried out through U.N.-public sector collaboration, with U.N.-private sector collaboration at only 36 percent, the world body reported Tuesday. The U.N. and related entities have been involved in various stages of e-waste management, including “recycling and environmentally sound management,” cross-boundary transfer and design and standardization of information, said the report, but less attention is being paid to reduction of e-waste and to poor practices during design and production of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE). The report cited a need to engage more with the private sector to address businesses' responsibility in EEE production. The U.N. said its activities on e-waste are centered mostly in Africa and Asia, less in Europe and “significantly less” in North America, Australia and New Zealand. More attention in Africa and Asia can be attributed to “the more curative nature of many current approaches to e-waste management in these regions such as open burning and acid baths” for separating materials, it said. Africa and Asia have long been a hub for near-end-of-life and end-of life “legally and illegally imported EEE,” it said. The report suggests ways to address the global e-waste problem including focusing on repair and refurbishment activities, supporting new business models and reducing or eliminating taxes on reuse and repair operations. It pushed supporting member states and "supranational entities" such as the EU in tracking and containing precious and rare-earth metals used in EEE and efforts to identify the link between e-waste and natural resource exploitation through raw material mining and other means. It said the U.N. should play a role in informing member states about relevant e-waste issues by expanding national data collection and information-sharing on issues such as national e-waste flows and characteristics, while sharing good and bad e-waste management practices.

Comcast will market residential solar services company Sunrun's offerings, they said Thursday. Under the 40-month agreement, Sunrun is Comcast Cable's exclusive residential solar provider and Comcast will do marketing campaigns in some markets starting later this year. They said the agreement follows a one-year Comcast/Sunrun pilot. Comcast also can earn a warrant of up to 10 percent of Sunrun's outstanding common stock.

Samsung, Vizio and LG were cited by Electronic Recyclers International (ERI) Tuesday for participating in a New York City recycling effort that produced more than 10 million pounds of e-waste. New York’s e-cycleNYC recycling program is a joint effort of ERI, New York’s Department of Sanitation and “proactive manufacturers,” said the announcement. The average American household owns 28 electronic devices, and 55 percent of households in New York City have no vehicle access to unload their e-waste, said ERI, which offered the New York program as a “workable model for how such partnerships can lead to tremendous results.”

Call2Recycle is encouraging consumers in the U.S. and Canada to collect and recycle used batteries on Saturday, National Battery Day. Forty percent of North American consumers consider themselves battery recyclers, the organization said in a Monday announcement. Battery recycling is important to prevent hazardous materials from harming the environment and to reduce waste, it said. Eighty-eight percent of North Americans live within 10 miles of a Call2Recycle drop-off location, said Linda Gabor, vice president-marketing and customer service. Call2Recycle touts a network of more than 30,000 drop-off locations including community centers and retail stores such as Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowe's and Staples.

CTA is teaming with Best Buy, Dell, HP, LG, Samsung and Vizio on a yearlong e-waste disposal “pilot program” in Nebraska, where consumer awareness of e-waste recycling options is lower than the national average, said the association in a Monday announcement. The pilot “will offer a range of recycling opportunities not only in Nebraska's larger urban areas, but also in smaller communities,” the group said. Manufacturers of consumer electronics are funding the program, it said. At the end of 2017, CTA “will analyze the results and produce a report summarizing the pilot process, deliverables and recommendations for future action,” it said. E-waste generated from homes is not regulated as hazardous waste in Nebraska, says a "guidance document" issued by the state's Department of Environmental Quality. The department "encourages, but does not require, households to recycle or reuse their electronics and computers rather than dispose of them in the trash," the document says.

Cox Enterprises will spend $25 million under the Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to Action to shrink its environmental impact, the company said in a news release Monday. The company said it will look for ideas through its Corporate Strategy and Investments and its Cox Conserves teams, with the aim of eliminating 3,000 tons of landfill waste and cutting its carbon footprint by 20,000 tons. Cox Enterprises said it has a 2024 goal of generating no landfill waste and a 2044 goal of being carbon and water neutral.

With little fanfare, Best Buy began imposing a $14.99 TV haul-away fee for customers who buy a new replacement TV at Best Buy and take the retailer's free home delivery option. Best Buy began imposing the $14.99 fee in late March, two months after it began charging a $25 take-back fee to customers who carried an old TV to a Best Buy store for recycling (see 1602010053), spokeswoman Paula Baldwin confirmed in a Tuesday email. The $14.99 haul-away fee, like the $25 take-back charge, is to help cover the increasing cost of responsible TV disposal in light of the drastically declining commodity prices of recycled CRT glass, Baldwin said. For the $14.99 charge, Best Buy places “no size or weight restrictions” on the TVs it hauls away, Baldwin said. “However, the service is available only to customers who are taking delivery of a replacement TV purchased at Best Buy.” Best Buy doesn’t know for sure what proportion of the TVs it hauls away through the home delivery option are bulky, old CRT TVs, she said. “We track recycling by weight and product type, not by in store or haul away stream, so that’s difficult to estimate,” she said. In setting the $14.99 haul-away policy, “we wanted a simple, easy way for our customers to know that it will cost $14.99 any time we haul away anything from their homes,” she said, noting that the $14.99 charge “is consistent with our appliance haul away program.” Best Buy continues “to recycle hundreds of items for free in-store,” she said.

The green group As You Sow lists itself as the “lead filer” of an Amazon shareholder proposal asking the Amazon board for a report on the company’s e-waste recycling practices, the group said in its annual Proxy Preview 2016, published Tuesday. The e-waste proposal at Amazon is one of 314 “pending shareholder resolutions” against dozens of companies across a spectrum of issues, including the environment, political activity, human and labor rights, and employee diversity, the report said. The As You Sow proposal at Amazon seeks a corporate accounting “on the company’s policy options to reduce potential pollution and public health problems from electronic waste generated as a result of its sales to consumers, and to increase the safe recycling of such wastes,” the report said. Amazon challenged the proposal at the SEC and wants the proposal struck from the agenda of its next annual meeting, “arguing it concerns ordinary business since it relates to the recycling of customers’ waste, not its own, and thus is a matter of customer relations, and that it is moot since the company already offers e-waste recycling options,” As You Sow said. Amazon hasn’t yet filed even preliminary proxy statements at the SEC but customarily has done so in April for annual meetings it typically holds in mid-June in Seattle. Amazon representatives didn’t comment. As for its e-waste recycling practices, Amazon “supports the responsible disposal and recycling of electronics products,” the company says on its environmental page. But Amazon doesn’t run an e-waste take-back program of its own, offering links to about two dozen nationally and state-based e-waste programs.