Expect at Least 4 State E-Waste Laws in 2007, Says Key Official
As more and more state e-waste bills emerge, they're showing a trend toward making manufacturers, not imposing consumer recycling fees, said officials we polled.
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More lawmakers want to make manufacturers pay for recycling than to charge recycling fees at the point of sale, said Adam Schafer, program dir. of the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators (NCEL). More states are considering producer responsibility legislation, said Scott Cassel, exec. dir. of the Product Stewardship Institute, which counsels states on recycling policy.
Producer responsibility got a boost when the Council of State Govts. (CSG) endorsed model legislation with that approach, said Schafer. The model finds favor with Northeast and Midwest states, he said. If Minn. passes a law “you are going to see more and more states looking at manufacturer responsibility as opposed to California’s advanced recycling fee,” he added.
Cassel expects at least 4 states to enact e-waste laws in 2007, joining Cal., Me., Md. and Wash., he said. Likeliest to move are Minn., Mass., Ore. N.Y., R.I. and Conn., “the states that have been looking at this issue for many years and are ready to act,” he said. The more state laws with divergent approaches, the more elusive is “common ground” on a federal law, Cassel said.
With a federal impasse rooted in industry’s failure to agree on how to finance recycling, states are moving “full steam ahead” with their own solutions, Cassel said: “The difficulty that would created by that is more and more different kinds of laws will be enacted and it will make it harder for federal legislation to coordinate the laws.” Any federal fix would have to enable states with e-waste laws to keep their programs as they are or make them better, he said. States generally don’t like preemption, he added.
State and local officials are talking with environmental groups about “common attributes” they want to see in any federally mandated system, Cassel said. These include financing, stakeholder responsibilities, recycling standards, exports and use of prison labor, he said. Green groups in the discussion include the Computer Takeback Campaign, Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and Washington Citizens for Resource Conservation. State govt. groups hope to have similar talks with manufacturers and retailers soon, he said.
CEA favors a system of shared responsibility, with the onus of financing not solely on manufacturers and brand owners, said Environmental Counsel Parker Brugge. About 25 states will consider e-waste bills this year, with CEA members expecting sometimes to be “battling it out head to head on legislation,” he said. CEA has problems with systems holding manufacturers responsible for paying based on products sold into a particular state. That’s because companies have a hard time tallying how many products they sell state by state, he said.