Electronics Recycling Summit: Tracking the Industry

Attendees of the 2006 Electronics Recycling Summit, an event sponsored by the International Association of Electronics Recyclers (IAER) and the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Electronics and the Environment, heard panelists of the session titled “Industry Data and Trends” present information on the current state of the electronics recycling, including statistics on the electronics recycling industry, data on collection efforts and an update on California’s efforts at implementing the state’s electronics recycling law.

Matt Leary of the California Integrated Waste Board indicated that the state “had had a lot of problems with illegal dumping,” prior to enacting the Electronic Waste Recycling Act of 2003. He said the practice still continues, however, “because of insufficient infrastructure in some places.”

Since the law went into effect in January 1, 2005, Leary said the state’s Board of Equalization has approved $21.5 million in payments to recyclers, who receive 48 cents per pound of material they recover, passing along 20 cents per pound to the approved collectors they work with. Under the law, the payments are limited to recycling activities that occur within California. These payments represent 44.5 million pounds of material, according to Leary. Since Jan. 1, 2005, the state has collected nearly $73 million in advanced recovery fees from the sale of covered products (devices containing cathode ray tubes, such as televisions and computer monitors; LCD desktop monitors; laptop computers with LCD displays; LCD televisions; and plasma televisions).

Leary said the Board of Equalization has been “fairly successful in collecting information form Internet retailers,” who he said have been “very helpful.”

It’s “almost impossible for us to tell” the amount of covered devices that state residents have stored in their homes, Leary said, adding that most of the material that has been recovered so far has been from businesses in California. He said the residential collection infrastructure for electronics is not as established as the corporate collection infrastructure.

Leary said one of the foremost challenges for California in implementing the law is allowing undocumented but eligible waste to enter the system without becoming a “dumping ground” for these devices.

A sunset provision in California’s Electronic Waste Recycling Act would allow the state to adopt a federal law regulating the disposal and recycling of electronic devices in the even that such legislation is passed.

John Powers, president of Integrated Solutions and Services, Somers, N.Y., and a founding member of the IAER, presented a snapshot of the electronics recycling industry courtesy of the 2006 Electronics Recycling Industry Report, which the IAER published in partnership with publishing company Resource Recycling.

Powers said that there are 7,500 electronics recycling operations—a 10 percent increase from 2003 figures—in the United States, employing 19,000 and generating $1.5 billion in revenue.

He said that most electronics recyclers are concentrated around large metropolitan areas, with many having been in business for five years. Many of these companies have fewer than 20 employees and their revenue is typically less than $5 million, according to the IAER’s statistics. The average company processes 2 million to 5 million pounds of material per year.

Among the challenges electronics recyclers face, as outlined by the IAER study, are operation costs and legislative and logistics issues.

Jason Linnell of the National Center for Electronics Recycling (NCER), Wood County, W.Va., provided an update on electronics collection activity. The organization is trying to get information out about its Centralized Data Repository (CDR), a project that compiles a set of data to be used for electronics collection events from MARCEE (Mid-Atlantic Recycling Center for End-of-Life Electronics) Project, EPA’s Plug-In to eCycling Partners and the Polymer Alliance Zone of West Virginia (PAZ). The CDR “is an open, collaborative public/private data sharing project which is addressing the need for up-to-date information on the collection and recycling of electronic waste,” according to the NCER Web site. Currently, the CDR has information from 43 collection events, three of which are national.

The NCER will also be launching a Brand Data Management System in June that will allow user to sort information based on multiple scenarios and conditions, such as number of units vs. weight of electronics collected, Linnell said. So far, the organization has identified 682 desktop brands, 436 television brands, 65 laptop brands and 674 monitor brands.

Walter Alcorn of Alcorn Consulting, Portola Valley, Calif., said that a lot has changed in the electronics recycling industry since 2001, specifically the diminishing of the glass-to-glass market and the strength of China’s presence in the secondary commodities markets.

Alcorn said that e-waste collection volumes are higher as a result of regulations in states like California. As regulations in Maine, Maryland and Washington come into effect, the volume of electronics collected for recycling should grow even more. He added that the regulations affecting businesses, such as the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, are also driving volume growth, as companies look for safe ways to dispose of information stored on hard drives at the end of their useful lives. However, he said that a number of details remain unknown, such as reuse patterns, the number of devices in storage and how many units currently go to export markets.

According to Alcorn, the real question is how many units are actually available for recycling. He said there are two ways to determine this number: a projection based on historic sales or a count of the actual devices that have been recovered for recycling. The actual returns amount to less than half of the projected amounts based on sales data, however, Alcorn noted, saying that exports and reuse could account for this difference.

Clare Lindsay of the EPA Office of Solid Waste, said the agency is currently looking at a number of issues related to electronics use and recycling, such as the number of devices sold, the length of time consumers store the devices prior to looking for a disposal option and domestic vs. oversees processing. She said the EPA has released a baseline report that looks at these issues for stakeholder review. The baseline report has been designed to be easily updated periodically, Lindsay added.

Also from the EPA Office of Solid Waste, Bob Tonetti announced that the EPA’s CRT Rule, which has been eight to 10 years in the making, is nearing completion. He said that under the rule a CRT that is going into reuse or recycling will not be considered a hazardous waste and that designation will also be true of export.

Tonetti also addressed certification and best management practices for electronics recyclers. He said a number of best management practices are already available, citing programs from the IAER and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc. as well as guidelines from the EPA’s Plug-In to Recycling program. The EPA will be focusing on helping stakeholders and technical experts work together to develop best management practices that build on existing information and processes.

Perhaps most importantly, Tonetti clarified that the EPA does not and will not certify electronics recyclers, despite claims to that effect from some electronics recyclers. He said that an EPA ID should not be confused with certification.

The Electronics Recycling Summit was May 8-11 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport in Burlingame, Calif.