Consumer electronics decline as portion of municipal waste stream in 2013

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), Arlington, Virginia, citing a new report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), says consumer electronics (CE) are the fastest-declining portion of the U.S. municipal solid waste stream. The CEA says this is “evidence that the environmental footprint of the CE industry is shrinking as products become lighter and less material-intensive.”

According to the EPA’s "Advancing Sustainable Materials Management Facts and Figures" report, which was released in June, the amount of CE products generated in the municipal waste stream fell almost 4 percent from 2012 to 2013—the biggest decline of any single product category and more than twice that of the next fastest-declining waste stream—reaching its lowest level since 2007. The EPA also reports that CE recycling reached an all-time high of 40.4 percent in 2013, an increase from 30.6 percent in 2012.

“This report marks a true milestone moment for the CE industry’s impact on the environment,” says Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of Consumer Electronics Association. “We’ve gone from the fastest-growing portion of the municipal waste stream to the fastest-declining—a remarkable turnaround. Also, thanks to our industry’s dedicated focus on recycling, consumers now have unprecedented awareness and access to recycling resources. We are working to make recycling your old devices as easy as buying new ones. And those efforts drive the results shown in the new EPA report.”

The EPA also reports the amount of CE products discarded in the municipal waste stream dropped 17.6 percent in 2013. CE are among the few product categories that enjoyed a decline in discarded products from the previous year, and their reduction is more than three times that of any other product category, the CEA says.

In April, CEA announced that CE recycling under the eCycling Leadership Initiative reached 660 million pounds in the U.S. in 2014, the CE industry’s highest ever annual total. According to the fourth annual report of the eCycling Leadership Initiative—a CE industry effort led by CEA—the initiative’s annual recycling total increased by more than 6 percent in 2014, 40 million pounds above the 2013 level. The report also says more than 8,500 responsible recycling locations are now available to U.S. consumers, and nearly all (99.9 percent) of the recycling facilitated by Initiative participants was conducted in third-party-certified recycling facilities.

“The new EPA report shows our industry’s commitment to the goals of EPA’s Waste Management Hierarchy, which ranks source reduction as the most preferred approach—just ahead of recycling,” says Walter Alcorn, vice president of environmental affairs and industry sustainability for CEA. “Our research shows the average U.S. home now has roughly 21 different CE devices, so getting consumers active in the electronics recycling process is more important than ever. In addition to programs like the eCycling Leadership Initiative and resources such as our ZIP code-based Greener Gadgets recycler locator, the CE industry continues to partner with governments at all levels and other stakeholders to educate consumers about how and where they can recycle. And since 2012, CEA’s public service announcements about ecycling have been heard or seen by more than 100 million consumers.”