Survey Shows Recycling Managers Divided on Electronics

"Passage of another state bill will add to the domestic and international pressure on electronics makers to ensure recovery of their products," comments publisher Michele Raymond, who spoke at a legislative panel at the National Recycling Congress in mid-September. "Electronics makers already have three sets of take back mandates to comply with in Europe and Asia—there are laws on packaging, batteries and now electronics products."

"There were 52 e-waste bills introduced in 26 states this year, and many of them moved," Raymond notes. "If California blinks, other states often follow suit."

Raymond observes, "The California bill started out as a complex 'shared responsibility' concept, but it has been amended into a 'government-handle-all' bill, creating another potentially big government program.”

California's SB 20 cleared the Assembly and was sent to Governor Davis Sept. 12. Like a previous bill that was vetoed in 2002, SB 20 places a $6 to $10 fee on electronics with lead-based cathode ray tubes, but it also phases out heavy metals and requires manufacturers to report, label and provide public education, according to State Recycling Laws Update, published by Raymond Communications (www.raymond.com) in College Park, Md.

Industry is concerned that if no national take back plan is agreed upon, (at the National Electronics Product Stewardship or "NEPSI" talks,) they will end up with a costly patchwork of state fees and take back laws.

Preliminary results of  Raymond's annual survey of state recycling managers found only a slight majority —13 of 32 responding—felt the NEPSI process will succeed. Eleven said it will fail, two said "maybe," while four were not familiar with the NEPSI process at all.

The survey, which is slated to be published in late September, also found little agreement among state managers over how management of electronics waste should be accomplished.  Only three felt industry should finance and handle all collection; 12 felt government should set up drop off centers with industry handling the rest; nine favored fees on new electronics with industry handling the system; and 14 felt that for future waste, preliminary recycling fees should phase into cost internalization for industry. Only one respondent thought government should handle the whole system using fees, while 10 managers checked "Other" with comments.

The annual Raymond Survey also found that the current economy is taking its toll on recycling programs:

• 22 of 32 states responding said the economy has affected their programs;
• 13 states expected cutbacks in recycling budgets;
• 17 expected budgets to remain the same - only one had an increase this year; and
• 6 managers did not know what would happen with their budgets.

The Raymond survey did find that the poor economy has not had much impact on state bottle deposit programs.

A survey of landfills and material recovery facilities conducted by Chartwell Publishers this year finds that recycling in the U.S. has been flat at 24 percent since 1999, though the rate went up to 25 percent in 2002. Waste generation has continued to grow steadily, however, rising from 412 million tons in 1998 to about 460 million tons in 2002.

Raymond Communications publishes the newsletters State Recycling Laws Update and Recycling Laws International and organizes the annual Take it Back! Conference.  The next conference will be near San Francisco in March 2004.