Reining in e-waste

Consumers have an insatiable appetite for electronic devices,
whether it’s the powerful smartphones in their pockets, the massive television
screens on their walls, or the sleek laptops they carry with them.

The electronics industry understands that appetite well, and
it’s constantly churning out new products to render the old ones obsolete. And
every time a new phone, TV, or computer is purchased, it replaces an old one,
which has to go somewhere.

There was a time when many consumers just threw their old
electronics in the garbage. Those days, however, are gone: an electronics
disposal ban contained in the state’s 2010 e-waste law took effect earlier this
year. New Yorkers can no longer legally put their unwanted electronics out to
the curb; they have to find a place to recycle those devices, which include old
computers, video games consoles, and televisions. (Cell phone disposal and
recycling is actually addressed under a different law.)

The disposal ban was the final part of New York’s e-waste law
to take effect, and it remains to be seen whether it’ll boost electronics
recycling in the state. That’s not because the disposal bans are ineffective –
e-recycling advocates say they’re crucial for keeping electronics out of
landfills – but because New York’s e-waste law has already been very
successful.

“We’ve seen a tremendous increase in consumer electronics
recycling,” says Mike Whyte, president of Regional Computer Recycling and
Recovery in Victor.

The 2010 law helped bring e-waste issues to the public’s
attention, he says. And the amount of electronics collected for recycling
really grew after commercial trash haulers were banned from accepting
recyclable e-waste, he says. That happened under a provision that took effect
in 2012.

At Monroe County’s Ecopark, where
the public can drop off electronics for recycling, collections grew to 409,449
pounds last year, up from 324,214 pounds in 2012, says Nicole Fornof, a spokesperson for Waste Management of New York, which
operates the facility for the county. As of last week, Ecopark
had collected 273,989 pounds of electronics in 2015, Fornof
says.

Sunnking, a Brockport-based
recycler, takes in the electronics from Ecopark and
from many other drop-off sites across the region and state. In recent years,
it’s consistently collected about 24 million pounds of e-waste, say company
officials.

And statewide, e-waste collections increased from 44.8
million pounds in 2011 to 99.5 million pounds in 2013, according to the state
Department of Environmental Conservation. The department is still calculating
2014 figures, but says they’ll be available soon.

“What the law has been very effective at doing is developing
a collection network,” says Dawn Timm, an
environmental engineer for Niagara County and vice chair of the New York
Product Stewardship Council. The council advocates for laws that require
manufacturers of certain products – paint and electronics are two examples – to
pay for collecting them and either recycling or disposing of them.

But some problems have developed around the state’s e-waste
law. The New York Product Stewardship Council developed proposals to address
those issues, which it hoped state lawmakers would take up this session. But
since the legislature adjourned last week, the council is now looking to 2016
for the fixes.

The main issue with the e-waste law is how it funds
collection initiatives and events, Timm says. And the
problem is largely related to certain pervasive, hard-to-recycle items, namely
cathode ray tube (CRT) televisions and monitors.

The state’s e-waste law requires electronics manufacturers to
take back their own products for recycling, free of cost to the consumer. But
it also requires them to fund e-waste and recycling efforts across the state.
The amount each company must spend depends on how many pounds of electronics it
sold during the previous year.

The whole idea of that requirement is to give New Yorkers a
convenient and inexpensive way to recycle electronics. And many local governments
have partnered with recyclers to organize collection initiatives and events.

“We know there’s a demand for responsible electronics
disposal in the community, so we want to provide a centralized point,” says
Mike Garland, director of Monroe County’s environmental services department.

For the most part, the arrangement works well. Recyclers are
able to take most of the collected electronics, from old Betamax VCR’s to
well-worn iPads, and make some money off of them. Some recyclers will refurbish
and resell items; others will dismantle them and pull out valuable materials or
components, which they’ll sell.

When that happens, they don’t charge the governments
anything. The Town of Brighton, which holds two e-waste collection events a
year, usually makes a few hundred dollars, says Supervisor Bill Moehle. The primary reason it holds the events, however, is
to help keep electronics out of landfills, he says.

“We do it as a service to our residents, and our residents
love it,” Moehle says.

But CRT televisions and monitors change the dynamic,
especially since New Yorkers can no longer haul them out of the basements or
garages and onto the curb without getting fined. The tubes inside of the old
displays are loaded with lead and other toxic materials, and they require a lot
of processing. They also yield little valuable scrap.

Recyclers have started charging to take the CRT’s in, and
there’s not enough electronics industry money to cover those costs, Timm says. As a result, two things happen. Many electronics
drop-off locations won’t take the televisions anymore, or the places that
collect them start charging a fee. Ecopark, for
example, charges $10 per CRT television or monitor. And it does so because Sunnking charges the county for each of the items collected,
Garland says.

The New York Product Stewardship Council sees a simple way to
work through the CRT problem, and it centers on the formula for determining a
manufacturer’s e-waste funding obligation. Lawmakers should suspend the current
formula for two years, and require the industry to provide enough funding for
each New Yorker to recycle five pounds of electronics. That, combined with some
other technical fixes, would generate more funding for free collection
programs, Timm says.

“It’s about convenience and consistency,” she says.

This article appears in Jun 24-30, 2015.