Best Buy is pushing back against green groups like the Basel Action Network (BAN) for accusing the chain of watering down its e-waste take-back programs by no longer requiring e-Stewards-certified recyclers and for charging a $25 fee for the take-back of old TVs to defray the rising costs of e-waste recycling. Best Buy is disappointed BAN would paint “an inaccurate picture of Best Buy's commitment to responsible recycling,” spokeswoman Paula Baldwin emailed us Monday. “Best Buy requires our recycling partners to adhere to the highest industry standards and have either R2 or e-Stewards certification,” she said. “We also require them to comply with ISO 14001 environmental management standards. We're proud to have responsibly recycled more than 1 billion pounds of e-waste since 2009 and we will continue to recycle responsibly going forward.” Best Buy has rolled back its “environmental commitments” by dropping the requirement that recyclers be certified as e-Stewards,” BAN said Monday in a blog post. “Best Buy admitted that it’s been losing money on the program, so it let go of the e-Stewards requirement to cut costs,” it said. “We absolutely sympathize with Best Buy’s need to at least break even on a voluntary program that benefits the public. However, lessening environmental and social responsibility to cut costs isn’t the way to go.” Best Buy’s goal “has always been to simply break even on our recycling program, and we’re not there today,” said Laura Bishop, vice president-public affairs and sustainability, in a Monday blog post that explained the chain's e-waste policy changes. The new $25 fees “will help cover the increasing cost of managing TV and monitor disposal through our network of stores, distribution centers and recycling partners,” she said. Best Buy is discontinuing TV take-back entirely in Illinois and Pennsylvania because those states have laws on the books barring the collection of e-waste take-back fees, Bishop said: “E-waste volume is rising, commodity prices are falling and global outlets for recycled glass, a key component of TVs and monitors, have dramatically declined. More and more cities and counties have cut their recycling programs for budget reasons, limiting consumer options even further. While providing recycling solutions for our customers is a priority, Best Buy should not be the sole e-cycling provider in any given area, nor should we assume the entire cost.”

Old electronics, when “responsibly recycled,” are “literally a gold mine,” Sustainable Electronics Recycling International (SERI), the nonprofit that runs the R2 recycling program, said in a holiday e-waste message on Monday. “Recycled electronics contain 40 to 50 times more gold, silver and other precious metals than ore that is mined from the ground,” SERI said. “Recovering the precious metals contained in electronics is becoming increasingly important as the global demand for new electronic products deplete[s] the world’s limited supply of these natural resources.” Recycling old electronics responsibly also has social benefits, including “extending the life of electronic devices through reuse,” it said. "Used electronics that have been tested and refurbished are bridging the digital divide by making affordable electronics available to more people all around the world. In addition to reusing electronic devices, many electronic parts and components can be reused to manufacture completely new and different products.”

The “infamous Chinese e-waste town” of Guiyu in Guangdong Province has “finally closed its doors” to e-waste imports, the Basel Action Network said Thursday. The Chinese government has “finally moved to place strict controls on informal e-waste recycling operations” and has also barred the entry of foreign e-waste into the Guiyu area, BAN said. Guiyu was the focus of a BAN-inspired 60 Minutes expose that led to the 2012 convictions of the two former top officials of an Evergreen, Colorado, recycling firm on federal charges they pocketed millions by illegally shipping tons of hazardous CRT TVs to China (see 1212270044). “By order of regional authorities,” all e-waste work in the Guiyu area has been moved to a large industrial park with a central receiving location where all incoming shipments are “now screened to disallow foreign e-waste,” BAN said. “While China has long had a national e-waste import ban, it was never adequately enforced in Guiyu until now,” the green group said.

Comcast will pay $26 million to resolve allegations it unlawfully disposed of hazardous waste and threw out records without first redacting private customer information, said the California Office of the Attorney General and Alameda County, California, in a news release Tuesday as they filed a proposed settlement in Alameda County Superior Court. The state said Comcast customer service centers, dispatch facilities and warehouses regularly sent various hazardous waste products such as electronics to local landfills. Comcast also threw out documents containing sensitive customer information like names and addresses without shredding them first, California said. The settlement, if approved by the court, would have Comcast pay $19.75 million in civil penalties and $3 million toward environmental and consumer protections in the state, provide CalRecycle with $2.25 million in airtime and $150,000 toward public service announcements, and spend at least $700,000 on its own environmental compliance efforts, it said. Comcast didn't comment.

New York City’s Department of Sanitation (DSNY) re-branded its NYC Zero Waste municipal recycling program, reflecting the program’s goal of sending zero waste to landfills by 2030, the department said in a Thursday announcement. Common household trash “goes into landfills, where it decomposes -- sending methane, carbon dioxide and toxins into our air, soil and water,” DSNY said. The new program, dubbed 0X30, will minimize that, DSNY said, in part through the e-cycleNYC e-waste takeback initiative, which recently expanded to drop-off locations in each of the city’s five boroughs (see 1512040019).

Verizon joined the Obama administration's American Business Act on Climate Pledge and committed to reducing its carbon intensity by 50 percent from its 2009 baseline numbers by 2020, the company said in a news release. Verizon is one of 154 U.S. companies that have signed on to the pledge, it said Friday. "Verizon's commitment to [the American Business Act on Climate] is more than a single pledge," said Chief Sustainability Officer James Gowen. "This commitment allows us to continue to assess how we are becoming more energy efficient even as our business expands."

Many e-waste recyclers are “on the brink” of financial ruin because they lack the resources to “responsibly manage” junked electronics and stay profitable, the Basel Action Network said Thursday in a blog post. BAN cited the example of a former e-Stewards recycler, Global Environmental Services, which was found to have buried trashed CRT TVs in a big hole dug behind its warehouse in Lexington, Kentucky. “While these acts are inexcusable choices by private companies, it is critical for waste generators to understand that increasing incidents of abandonment, illegal dumping, and burning, are occurring now within the context of a larger problem,” BAN said. The recent “devaluation” of copper, steel and plastics “commodities” has left many e-cyclers holding the bag for “the nation's consumer and corporate e-waste,” it said. "It's easy to point fingers at individual recyclers to lay the obvious blame, when in fact we have a larger systemic problem that must be addressed at once," it said. "Everyone, including those running state e-waste programs, must realize that things have changed -- recycling is a service that must be well paid for." As the “commodity value” of e-waste “no longer funds its responsible management, state programs, companies and all of us who use electronics, must step up and be willing to adequately fund responsible care of these devices at the end of their useful lives,” it said.

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.

New York tech retailer Tekserve plans a free July 18 electronics recycling event, its second since a New York state law went into effect banning the dumping of electronics curbside. The event is being co-hosted by the Lower East Side Ecology Center, which works “exclusively" with e-Stewards- or R2-certified recyclers, a Tekserve spokeswoman said. It became illegal in New York state Jan. 1 to discard electronics in the trash (see 1412120035), and New York City’s Department of Sanitation no longer collects discarded electronics left at the curb since then. “With the new state law that prohibits electronics from being discarded in the trash, events such as these are more important than ever for all NYC residents, small businesses and not-for-profits that want to properly recycle their old, non-working and unwanted electronics,” said Albert Garcia, Tekserve retail store director, in a statement. Items accepted for e-cycling include products designated under the New York State Electronic Equipment Recycling and Reuse Act: computers, monitors, printers, scanners, fax machines, copiers, networking gear, PC components and peripherals, chargers and cables, tablets, e-readers, components (hard drives, CD-ROMs, circuit boards, power supplies, etc.), TVs, VCRs, DVRs, DVD players, set-top boxes, portable music players, AV equipment, video games, cellphones and telephones. Appliances such as toasters and microwave ovens aren’t accepted, the Tekserve spokeswoman said. Since the New York law went into effect, Tekserve has seen a significant increase in recycled products at its events, led by CRT TVs, which jumped 241 percent in number this year from spring 2014, the spokeswoman said. Overall, Tekserve has seen a 43 percent increase in tonnage collected year over year and a 20 percent increase in attendance at the spring recycling event, she said. Tekserve said it collected five and a half tons of electronics at its spring event. As incentive for consumers to shop for new electronics at its store, Tekserve is offering eWaste event participants coupons good toward purchases in the store: $10 off a $50 purchase or service at Tekserve or $20 off a $100 purchase or service, it said. Shoppers who check in at Tekserve on Facebook can shave another $5 from their tab, Tekserve said.

Verizon said as it achieved a goal set in 2010 to collect by the end of 2015 2 million pounds of electronic waste in communities it serves. The 2 million pounds collected for recycling over the past five years is equivalent to the weight of 500 average cars, or roughly 50,000 cathode ray tube computer screens, it said Thursday. The company has set another five-year goal to collect 2 million more pounds of electronic waste by 2020. Verizon adheres to a zero-landfill objective for e-waste with all materials it collects reused or recycled so they don't end up in a landfill, the company said. Its recycling rallies also benefit Verizon's HopeLine program, which donates working mobile phones from recycling programs to domestic violence prevention and support organizations. More than 9 million wireless phones have been collected through the program since 2001, it said.