New York State Passes E-Waste Bill, ‘Negating’ City Lawsuit, NRDC Says
The Natural Resources Defense Council, which hailed passage Friday by New York’s Legislature of the country’s 23rd state e-waste law, said it “effectively negates a nearly year-old industry lawsuit challenging New York City’s 2008 e-waste recycling law.” A statement Tuesday by CEA and ITI didn’t say whether they plan to withdraw their challenge. It also stopped short of saying whether they would support the state e-waste law.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
The legal challenge, filed last July, “achieved its overarching objective” by preventing the city’s “onerous and excessively burdensome” e-waste program from taking effect, CEA and ITI said. “We applaud the state legislature for including a provision in the new law that preempts all local laws like New York City’s that attempt to impose electronics recycling programs. The enactment of a preemptive statewide program is in part a recognition that the City went too far in its program. We are reviewing the details of the new state law to assess how it will be applied and implemented, and look forward to working with New York State and City officials to help build an efficient, fair and successful electronics recycling program for all New Yorkers.”
The state measure requires a manufacturer by Jan. 1 to file a registration statement with the Department of Environmental Conservation and pay a $5,000 fee. E-waste collections begin April 1, the date it becomes illegal for retailers to sell products whose manufacturers haven’t registered with the state or gotten their collection plans approved. The department will calculate manufacturers’ share of the e-waste they must collect based on sales, similar to the way other states do.
Unlike in Minnesota, which asks retailers to provide sales information, much of the data under the New York measure will come from manufacturers themselves. New York’s goal is to collect 3-3/4 pounds of e-waste for each resident in the first calendar year, growing to 4 pounds in the second year and five pounds in the third. Beginning in 2014, manufacturers that collect more than their required share of e-waste can earn credits for that surplus. A manufacturer will be free to bank those credits or sell them to other manufacturers.
New York City Sanitation Department rules defined “convenient collection” as direct pickup of e-waste from a resident’s home, but the New York state measure doesn’t require that. It empowers the Department of Environmental Conservation to draft convenience rules, though NRDC has said it deems it unlikely the department will require direct pickups. The measure defines these collection methods as “reasonably convenient": (1) Mail- or ship-back return programs. (2) E-waste events held by manufacturers, including through local governments or private bodies. (3) Fixed acceptance locations such as dedicated dropoff sites run by a manufacturer or its agent. (4) E-waste collection facilities provided under agreements with a local government, retail store, sales outlet or not-for-profit group. “At a minimum, the manufacturer shall ensure that all counties of the state, and all municipalities which have a population of ten thousand or greater, have at least one method of acceptance that is available within such county or municipality,” the state law said.
NRDC senior attorney Kate Sinding called the measure “arguably the most progressive electronics recycling law in the country.” New York joins 22 other states “in mandating that manufacturers bear the responsibility for taking back their toxin-containing used electronics from consumers for responsible recycling,” she said. “This approach not only gets these dangerous products out of our landfills and incinerators where they can contaminate water and air, it also removes the burden of handling this fastest-growing part of the waste stream from municipalities and taxpayers. Equally importantly, by shifting the costs of end-of-life waste management to the manufacturers, it encourages them to design products in the first instance that are easier -- and hence cheaper -- to recycle in the first place."
New York Governor David Paterson, a Democrat who fought for the bill and is expected to sign it into law, said in a statement that recycling e-waste “is great for the environment, presents tremendous economic opportunities for business growth and benefits the consumer.” The state “must set high standards for how e-waste is disposed,” he said. The law takes “a significant step toward protecting our environment by properly regulating the disposal of hazardous materials, and is both pro-consumer and pro-business,” Paterson said.