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09.06

Stakeholders Endorse Uniform National System of Electronics Recycling

By Barton REppert

Stakeholders including manufacturers, retailers, recyclers and environmental organizations, whose views are presented in a recently released Commerce Department report, agreed that a uniform national system of electronics recycling is preferable to a patchwork of differing state systems.

Unfortunately, stakeholders have not been able to come to a consensus on the financing for a national system, said the report, compiled by the Technology Administrations Office of Technology Policy (OTP). The result is that states are experimenting with a variety of financing systems from an advanced recovery fee (ARF) paid by the consumer at the time of purchase to producer responsibility in which manufacturers of televisions and computer monitors are responsible for paying for the recycling.

In releasing the report on 18 July, Commerce Under Secretary for Technology Robert Cresanti observed in a speech to a Washington, D.C., meeting sponsored by the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Inc., that recycling of electronic products has become an issue for communities around the world as concerns over waste management have grown.

More than 10 countries have laws on recycling discarded electronics and other nations are currently developing legislation, Cresanti noted. In the United States, five states have banned the disposal of cathode ray tubes from television and computer monitors in landfills, while four states have passed statewide electronics recycling laws each with different requirements for manufacturers, retailers, local government and consumers.

How our electronics waste solutions are developed, and who is involved in the decision process, will affect the manufacture, marketing and business models of U.S. companies, the top Commerce technology official said. Industry is now facing a patchwork of international and state laws. Disparate requirements can lead to uncertainties, inefficiencies and high compliance costs for companies.

Cresanti emphasized that first and foremost, the various stakeholders who participated in an OTP-conducted roundtable discussion held in September 2004, and then responded to a Federal Register request for comments agreed that they want to strive for one uniform, national system rather than a patchwork of differing state systems. Parties differed on how to achieve this, with the choices being either through voluntary stakeholder consensus, uniform state legislation or federal legislation.

Commenting on the report, Brad Allenby, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Arizona State University, Tempe, and a senior member of the IEEE Computer Societys Technical Committee on Electronics and the Environment (TCEE), said: By and large I think its a very fair and responsible report, and its encouraging that the administration is looking at this issue.

Overall, Allenby said in an interview with IEEE-USA Todays Engineer Online, on the question of electronics recycling, including bans or possible bans on use of certain materials in manufacturing, I think its a good idea for the United States, Europe and large producers like China, Korea, Taiwan harmonize their requirements. Because otherwise you have the potential for trade barriers that are unhelpful to either consumers or manufacturers.

The 290-page Commerce Department report, Recycling Technology Products: An Overview of E-Waste Policy Issues, does not make recommendations in favor of one recycling system over another, but instead summarizes stakeholders views and analyzes the range of collection and financing systems for electronics recycling.

According to the report, stakeholder recommendations with regard to electronics recycling also included:

• Embrace product stewardship as a goal: those in the product lifecycle should share responsibility for reducing the environmental impacts of products. Materials have a value and that value should be captured, preserved, and returned for use in commerce.

• Provide flexibility for local and regional solutions in collection methods, such as using collection incentive payments, not mandates or a centrally prescribed collection process.

• Treat residential and commercial electronics waste the same.

• Set environmentally sound management guidelines for recycling such as EPAs guidelines for the Plug-In to eCycling program and provide a system of auditing to ensure that dismantlers and recyclers are evaluated against these guidelines.

• Agree on one financing mechanism to apply across the country.

• Establish procedures to oversee and enforce the system to ensure fairness and uniform participation, regardless of the financing system chosen.

• Standardize product labeling requirements, product literature requirements, information on packaging requirements, and reporting requirements so producers face only one set of requirements for compliance across the country.

• Include industry in the development of any design standards or material bans, if they are part of any legislation.

• Use the federal governments leverage as one of the countrys largest information technology buyers to drive design improvements, manufacturer participation in recycling solutions, and end-of-life services.

Electronics recycling legislation which has been introduced in Congress, although not yet enacted, includes a bill sponsored by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Jim Talent (R-Mo.) that would provide an $8 tax incentive to companies that recycle electronic devices and $15 to consumers for turning in a TV or computer.

Growing mountains of e-waste are clogging our nations landfills and posing great risks to Americans health and to our natural environment, Wyden said in introducing the legislation in March 2005. As technology improves and folks get newer and faster computers, they need a safe and easy way to get rid of their old machines. This legislation gives consumers, recyclers, retailers and manufacturers alike incentives to recycle old computers responsibly.

Also, Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) has introduced the National Computer Recycling Act (H.R. 1165), intended to promote a national infrastructure for computer recycling. Under this legislation, the program would be funded by assessing a fee of up to $10 for all retail sales of individual desktop computers, monitors and laptops.

Hearings on the electronics recycling issue have been held by the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Environment Subcommittee on Superfund and Waste Management.

Allenby, who formerly served as ATTs vice president responsible for handling environmental issues, told TE Online: I would liked to have seen, and I would still like to see, a review of the real risk posed by electronic waste. The assumption in the [Commerce Department] report, and the assumption clearly in most of the public dialogue, is that electronic waste is indeed hazardous. And Im not sure thats true.

He added: I dont think anyone would argue that if you can economically recycle these products, that it isnt worth doing. That seems to me to be a slam dunk. I think the real question is, if it is costly to recycle the products and costly not just in terms of the fee to the manufacturer or the consumer, but in terms of, for example, the effects of making electronic products more expensive, in terms of effects on innovation, competitive effects, those kind of things I dont know that anybody has really looked at that balance in a non-ideological way.

TCEE held its most recent International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment, and Electronics Recycling Summit, in San Francisco, Calif., on 8-11 May 2006, in conjunction with the International Association of Electronics Recyclers. The technical conference included 15 sessions, with presentation of more than 60 papers. The Summit track featured four sessions, including several interactive forums with industry leaders.

We tried to put recycling into the context of the evolution of electronic technology and what it means, for example, for design teams who by and large dont connect with the recyclers, Allenby said about the conference.

He added that TCEE recently has not adopted any official policy statement with regard to electronics recycling. We generally dont do policy statements on specific issues, in part because the IEEE is such a large tent that its difficult to issue a policy statement that reflects what we would consider a true IEEE consensus, Allenby said.

Another IEEE organization that deals with electronics recycling issues is the Technical Committee on Green Electronics, Manufacturing, and Packaging (GEMP), a subunit of the IEEE Components, Packaging, and Manufacturing Technology Society. The committee is chaired by Hansjorg Griese of the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM, Department of Environmental Engineering, Berlin, Germany.

The scope of the GEMP technical committees attention includes the reduction of hazardous materials, energy consumption and material use, as well as the reuse of equipment and reusable components of production wastes.

Since environmental issues of global dimensions, the TC-GEMP supports the globalization of CPMT, the technical committees Web site says, adding: Together with other IEEE technical committees, TC-GEMP will contribute to a sustainable development of electronics.

Barton Reppert is a freelance science and technology writer specializing in S&T policy coverage. He previously worked for 18 years as a reporter and editor with The Associated Press in Washington, New York and Moscow.

Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.