MUCH AT STAKE AT FINAL NEPSI E-WASTE MEETING

Success in reaching an agreement would depend a great deal on accommodating the demands of leading computer manufacturers Hewlett-Packard and Dell that they be allowed to opt-out of a advanced recovery fee (ARF) side of the hybrid financing system that at some point would move to cost internalization, representatives of states and environmental groups said. However, efforts in that direction are likely to stymied by opposition of other manufacturers, mainly TV producers, sources said. Failure to come up with a national solution would mean opening the floodgates for state legislation, they said.

“It seems very unlikely that we are going to be able to come to something that we would call an agreement that’s viable,” said Scott Cassel, dir. of the Mass.-based Product Stewardship Institute (PSI) and representative of state govts. on NEPSI. Terri Goldberg, exec. dir. of the Northeast Waste Management Officials’ Assn. (NEWMOA) agreed: “I don’t think that it’s a foregone conclusion that there will be an agreement emerging.” David Wood of the Computer Takeback Campaign said that realistically there was no expectation that anything would come out of the meeting because of the “fairly strong and substantial division between some of the companies and between some of the companies and representatives of local governments.” While a Dell spokesman declined to predict the outcome of the meeting, EIA Environmental Affairs Dir. Heather Bowman expressed optimism that “we are going to work out an MOU [memorandum of understanding],” even as she conceded that much work remained to be done, adding: “There are still some divisions within the industry that I'm worried about.”

NEWMOA’s Goldberg said the 2 issues that continued to be challenging were lack of agreement on products to be covered by the ARF and HP and Dell’s insistence that they be allowed to bypass the ARF and deal with their own products. While there was “fair agreement” that CRTs in TVs and computer monitors should be covered by the fee and “some agreement” that laptops and flat- panel computer screens should be included as well, questions remained on the status of peripherals such as printers, she said: “As far as I know, there is no final list of which products will be covered.” Created by the governors of New England states, NEWMOA comprises program dirs. of the environmental agencies in Conn., Mass., Me., N.H., N.J., N.Y., R.I., and Vt.

Goldberg said NEWMOA member states were greatly concerned over the opt-out proposed by HP and Dell -- how it would work and whether it would undermine the overall system. Some states like the idea of cost internalization proposed by the 2 computer manufacturers because they believe it would lead to product stewardship, while others think it would make it difficult to implement the ARF with other manufacturers. The fee was aimed at helping meet the cost of handling e-waste in the system, she said, and if many companies chose to follow HP and Dell, it would be hard to do that. Goldberg said exempting some companies also would cause confusion among consumers who would wonder why they were paying a fee on some products and not on other similar products.

The biggest stumbling block to an agreement is the demand for an alternative to the hybrid financing system that starts with a fee on products, Cassel said: “You have companies that think that a fee on the product is most fair and other companies wanting more flexibility and wanting to take greater individual responsibility and not wanting a fee on their products.” State and local govts. have been trying to work on an agreement that would encompass HP’s and Dell’s demands, he said, but the 2 companies haven’t proposed a cost internalization system that also would meet the needs of govts. for collection costs and historic costs. “They have had ample opportunity to do so,” he said.

Asked whether environmental groups would embrace an agreement from NEPSI, Wood said they couldn’t accept a model that relied solely on ARF. Of more concern to green groups, he said, was the potential for such an agreement to foreclose options for states “to do something more aggressive or more comprehensive.” Wood said the fear of a NEPSI agreement preempting stricter state regulation was aggravated by the current national “political climate” and “what we think would be possible in Congress.” Cassel justified states discussing preemption because otherwise there would be “no basis for manufacturers to engage in a national dialog.” Preemption is one of the “negotiating levers state and local governments have,” he said, “but the states are very careful not to give up some of the aspects which they need most.”

States had held back on vigorously pursing legislative initiatives because they were interested in a national solution, Cassel said: “If a national solution is not viable, which at this point it unfortunately seems likely due to the manufacturers’ split among themselves,” states will have no option but to “put our entire focus on state legislative solutions.” Goldberg agreed that many states were delaying acting on their own legislative fixes to see what emerged from NEPSI, although legislative initiatives were under way in some states such as Mass., Me. and Vt.