NRC CONVENTION: Doing Your Best

Kate Krebs, executive director of the National Recycling Coalition, moderated a session on the topic at the organization’s 22^nd Annual Congress and Exhibition. Cara Clore of the Clinton County, Michigan, Department of Waste Management, Pat Nathan of Dell and Katherine Kaplan of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made up the panel.

Kaplan’s role in the EPA’s Plug Into Recycling program and Product Producer Environmental Responsibility Team is aiding in the development of an e-cycling infrastructure. In addition, she is helping to determine how to equitably split financial responsibility for e-cycling among all those who benefit from the products.

Currently, the goal of the Plug Into Recycling program is to educate and motivate the public to recycle electronics, Kaplan said, and to create opportunities for electronics recycling. The program, a partnership among the government, retailers, manufacturers and recyclers, provides better results than the individual stakeholders see when working alone, she said.

Data will be collected from four pilot programs in the Northeast, Minnesota, the Mid-Atlantic States and the Pacific Northwest, and fed into a national summit in September 2004, Kaplan said. Kaplan said the pilots draw manufacturers and retailers into the idea of cost sharing, providing flexibility for everyone involved.

Each pilot will approach e-cycling in a slightly different manner. For instance, the program in the Northeast pairs Staples with the Product Stewardship Institute and focuses on providing value to the customer, asking the electronics manufacturers to provide financial support and transportation. The program in the Mid-Atlantic States will focus on a region-wide, government-managed system that is assisted by manufacturers and retailers. The Minnesota program involves episodic parking lot collections with manufacturer assistance, while the program in the Pacific Northwest works with the Take It Back Network to examine the viability of government collections with a retail focus and creative ways to overcome transportation issues.

Dell’s Nathan said that Dell got involved with e-cycling at the EPA’s urging. Just four years ago, the company’s only collection was of leased machines. Now, the company seeks to build an awareness around electronics recycling, she said.

According to Dell’s data, 75 percent of general consumers do not know that recycling is available for electronics, while 68 percent of consumers at the business and public level are unaware that electronics are recyclable.

Nathan said she believes consumers want to do the right thing, but that a public/private partnership is going to be essential to the success of any electronics recycling program.

While Nathan said Dell would like to move away from branded collection events, the company does want to share the knowledge accumulated from the events it has sponsored, ultimately initiating a grant program that would help communities to sponsor events. Dell is currently working with the NRC to develop a guide to best practices in electronics recycling.

Clore, who works with the REAP² (Recycling Electronics and Pollution Prevention Project), said the project seeks to harmonize market forces to turn the problem of electronics waste into a market advantage. Michigan seems like an unlikely candidate for the establishment of an e-cycling infrastructure; however, Michigan’s Oakland County has the third largest concentration of electronics industries in the U.S., known as Automation Alley, Clore said.

Clore also expressed the importance of partnerships to e-cycling. The project is made up of a consortium of 60 participants that use grants to fund pilot projects to facilitate a state-wide collection infrastructure. REAP²’s goal is to remove impediments to and the inefficiencies in e-cycling and to target toxicity in volume not in product types, she said. The project focused on data collection from 33 collection programs in 2002, developing consistent terminology, cost benchmarks and cost categories, she said.

REAP² used the data to produce a guide featuring best practices for e-cycling, Clore said. Additional information on the project is available at www.co.oakland.mi.us/reap2/partners/index.html or by contacting Martin Seaman, manager, Oakland County Waste Resource Management Division, at 248-858-1352 or seamanm@co.oakland.mi.us.

The National Recycling Coalition Congress & Exhibition was held in Baltimore Sept. 15-17.