NRDC Says It Would Welcome N.Y.C. E-Waste Settlement Talks With CE Makers
Since e-waste collection problems won’t go away no matter how the New York City e-waste lawsuit is decided, the Natural Resources Defense Council wants to be a part of any settlement talks between the city and CE makers, Kate Sinding, a senior NRDC attorney, told reporters in a briefing Thursday. The briefing was held to summarize the position of groups that oppose CE makers in the lawsuit days before the U.S. District Court in Manhattan was to have heard oral argument. But the court late Wednesday postponed arguments from Jan. 19 to next month, probably Feb. 10, Sinding said. It was at least the third time that the argument has been postponed.
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Because NRDC intervened in the case only to defend New York City’s e-waste law and not the city Sanitation Department’s program rules, the city, the main defendant, and the CE maker plaintiffs would need to initiate any settlement talks, Sinding said. “However, we would very much welcome the opportunity to participate in those discussions because no matter what happens here, assuming as we do that product stewardship will ultimately survive this challenge, even if we end up with a New York State law that preempts the city one, we're going to have to deal with those collection problems. So, again, we very much look forward to participating in conversations about how to address them.”
CE makers have “always threatened” lawsuits in states that have enacted e-waste laws, said Barbara Kyle, national coordinator of the Electronics Takeback Coalition. She was replying to our question about whether manufacturers’ complaints about direct-collection mandates in the New York City e-waste lawsuit are a cover for trying to kill producer responsibility-based e-waste laws in all states.
“Ever since Maine passed the first one back in 2004, they said they were going to sue in Maine, they said they were going to sue in Washington State, they talked about suing in Minnesota” and even filed discovery requests there, Kyle said. “They have always threatened that,” but New York City “is the first place they have actually done it,” she said. “Clearly, they're looking for any kind of a strategy where they can sidestep any kind of a meaningful commitment to take back their products.”
Sinding chimed: “Obviously I don’t disagree with anything Barbara said.” But “I do think, though, in fairness, that it was the direct collection requirement that finally pushed them over the edge in New York City,” she said. “Clearly they've been making noises about this all along. Clearly there are significant elements within the industry who don’t like this approach and in other industries who don’t want to see this approach adopted for regulation of their products. But I do think it is fair to say that it was the direct collection requirement that led them to finally do it in New York City.”
All sides in the e-waste controversy “recognized from the get-go that New York City presents particular collection challenges,” Sinding said. For example, it has the highest population density and lowest rate of car ownership in the country, she said. “This is precisely why we have favored an approach” that would impose minimum collection standards on manufacturers instead of direct collection, she said. NRDC wants to “leave to them the flexibility and creativity to figure out how to get their products back,” Sinding said. “They're very good at figuring out how to get them into our homes, notwithstanding those same challenges. That’s really the reasoning behind performance standards.”
The New York City Council “at the last minute,” and at the urging of manufacturers, swapped out the minimum standards for the direct collection requirement, she said. So “onerous” do CE makers now consider direct collections that the industry is lobbying New York state to enact minimum collection standards in its e-waste bill, she said.