NYC E-Waste Lawsuit Not Challenge to Producer Responsibility, CEA, ITI Say
Though they filed a lawsuit to stop New York City’s e- waste program from taking effect, neither CEA nor the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) “is challenging the concept of producer responsibility,” CEA President Gary Shapiro and ITI President Dean Garfield said in a joint statement Thursday. They were commenting on a letter that 50 local and state government officials from 18 states sent the trade groups earlier in the day asking them to withdraw their lawsuit against New York City’s e-waste program. The lawsuit is “a direct challenge to state and local government efforts to protect public health and the environment,” the letter said.
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Governments “can little afford to cover the recycling or disposal costs of each product brought to market,” the letter said. “In bringing forth this lawsuit, we believe the industry is not meeting its fiscal responsibility” and is shifting the burden to taxpayers, it said. “In this respect, and given that some of your members have publicly supported producer responsibility, we feel you are out of step with the policy direction clearly emerging in the U.S., and one that already exists in much of the developed world.
Of the 50 officials who signed the letter, 15 were from California, which doesn’t have producer-responsibility e- waste recycling, but charges consumers fees at the point of sale to cover the costs of e-waste disposal. “We the undersigned” are from states that have already enacted producer responsibility laws “or hope to adopt” them, the letter said.
But CEA and ITI responded that “finding an efficient and sustainable solution” to e-waste “is a priority to our organizations. We look forward to working closely with all interested parties to develop a program of shared responsibility that effectively addresses our country’s recycling needs.” The CE and IT industries “have a proud record of initiating environmentally sound practices and supporting reasonable and workable state and local recycling initiatives in dozens of jurisdictions,” Shapiro and Garfield said. Industry “recycles hundreds of millions of pounds of obsolete electronics per year” through voluntary takeback programs and complying with e-waste laws in many states, they said.
But New York City’s “onerous new collection law is unique in the nation, and in our court challenge we seek to ensure that New York City residents can recycle responsibly without the burden of an unconstitutional and environmentally harmful regime,” they said. The “private door-to-door pickup obligation” in New York City “is unprecedented, disastrously expensive and will harm the environment by putting more trucks on the streets,” they said. New York City “has violated the law by attempting to mandate direct collection of electronic goods from homes, impose steep penalties associated with unreasonable performance standards, and enforce illegal requirements to take back and recycle ‘orphan’ products made by competitors who are no longer in business.”