By KEVIN PROFT/ecoRI News staff
Last
year Rhode Island state law required electronics manufacturers to pay for every
state resident to recycle 5 pounds of electronic waste (e-waste). It turned
out, Rhode Islanders had more computers, monitors and TVs lurking in their
closets and basements than the people who set the 5-pound target expected.
During the final quarter of 2015, manufacturers reached the target, and
abruptly stopped paying to recycle e-waste for the remainder of the year.
The
higher-than-expected demand for e-waste recycling wreaked havoc on the businesses that collect e-waste, at a time when
they were already struggling with low commodity prices for recyclables.
Office Recycling
Solutions (ORS),
the state’s largest e-waste collection business, dramatically reduced the
number of municipal collection sites at which it offers its free e-waste
collection service from 23 to six, to limit the amount of e-waste streaming in
after the state target was hit.
Without
reimbursement from manufacturers, each TV and monitor was costing ORS money to
recycle. Even computers and laptops are only worth a fraction of their former
value, because of the collapse of commodity prices. ORS ended up with a
bottleneck of low- and no-value e-waste, which it was still drawing down at the
time of this article’s publication.
Charlestown-based Indie Cycle, a smaller
e-waste collection company that focuses mostly on organizing collection events,
also was negatively impacted when last year's manufacturers’ e-waste recycling
target was reached early.
Indie Cycle relies on ORS to ship the e-waste it collects to another company, which breaks it into its components. ORS pays Indie Cycle for its services, but as ORS's take declined, so too did the amount it could pay Indie Cycle.
Residents
were left with fewer places to dispose of e-waste responsibly. Many people
likely disposed of it with their trash, despite the state’s e-waste law banning
many electronic products from the landfill, according to Phyllis Hutnak,
co-owner of Indie Cycle.
“I
didn’t realize how crucial our free e-waste collection service was to the
state, until we had to pull out from the municipal collection locations,” ORS
president Brent Mancuso said. “Everyone was kind of up in arms, and the towns
had to explain to residents that they had to change the way they were doing
things.”
This
year, the manufacturers’ e-waste recycling target — set annually by the
Department of Environmental Management (DEM) based on a recommendation from the
Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation (RIRRC) — has been raised to 6
pounds per Rhode Islander. Between the higher target and ORS’s major reduction
in municipal collection locations, it's unlikely that the state will come up
against the target again this year.
Last
year, however, revealed serious issues with Rhode Island’s e-waste management
that must be addressed.
The law
E-waste
often contains hazardous materials unfit for disposal in a regular landfill.
Computer monitors and TVs can contain leaded glass, while chemicals such as
mercury, cadmium, nickel, zinc and silver can be found in circuit boards,
according to DEM.
The
state’s e-waste producer responsibility law was passed in 2008 and implemented
in 2009. Under thelaw,
manufacturers of electronic products covered by the statute are financially
responsible to take back and recycle their products at the end of a product's
useful life. The law covers computers, laptops, and CRT and flat-screen
computer monitors and TVs from residents and public and private elementary and
secondary schools.
DEM
and RIRRC annually set a weight-based e-waste target that manufacturers are
financially responsible for recycling. Then, each manufacturer is assigned a
share of the total target proportional to the amount of e-waste its brand
generated during the previous year. This process allows manufacturers to budget
for their annual recycling responsibilities.
A
manufacturer can opt to join RIRRC’s e-waste program, or it can create its own
program — either independently or in tandem with other manufacturers — to
collect, transport, track the brands of, break down and recycle its portion of
the e-waste target.
The issues
While
the intent of the law is good, in practice, e-waste recycling has proven to be
a challenge.
The
law’s limited scope of covered electronic products means that e-waste
collectors aren't reimbursed for all of the items they collect. Items as common
as printers, copy machines and their toner cartridges, for example, aren't
covered by Rhode Island law.
Historically,
most e-waste collectors accepted anything with a plug or battery, to promote
e-waste recycling by making it easier for consumers. When commodity prices for
recyclables were high, accepting toasters, air conditioners, alarm clocks and
printers was profitable, even without reimbursement from manufacturers. When
commodity prices crashed, those items became a liability, and, in many cases,
cost companies to recycle.
Now,
companies are rethinking their strategy. Indie Cycle, for example, has started
charging for printers and non-flat screen monitors and TVs. Hutnak, Indie
Cycle’s co-owner, said she has seen a corresponding dip in e-waste. Her company
is beginning to experiment with collection events in which a municipality or
environmentally inclined company offset Indie Cycle’s expenses.
“It’s
hard to ask people to recycle when it’s going to cost them to get rid of their
stuff,” she said.
Another
issue is that the manufacturers' shares of the e-waste weight target are set
using incomplete data. RIRRC contracts a company from New Hampshire to manage
its e-waste program from start to finish.
E-waste is collected from five locations —
Johnston, Barrington, Coventry, Little Compton and Narragansett — and
transported to New Hampshire. The contracted company records the brand of each
piece of covered e-waste, breaks it down and prepares it for recycling.
Most
manufacturers operating private e-waste programs aren't reporting their brand
sampling data to DEM, according to RIRRC. Without the sampling data from
private e-waste programs, RIRRC’s task of determining the shares of the
weight-based target that each manufacturer is responsible for recycling isn't
as accurate as it could be.
Another
issue is that RIRRC’s collection program has operated at a loss in all but the
first year of the program. Each year RIRRC accepts more e-waste at its
collection locations than the manufacturers that opt into the state-run program
are responsible for paying to recycle. The e-waste collected after the
manufacturers’ shares of the target are reached is recycled using money from
the RIRRC operating budget.
The solutions
ORS
is attempting to avoid a repeat of 2015 by diversifying its business model to
include collecting from more businesses and schools, and relying less on
residential e-waste and manufacturer reimbursements.
“A
lot of businesses know, by law, they cannot throw out their e-waste, but they
don’t know how to get rid of it,” Mancuso said. “We can help with that.”
Mancuso
said DEM and RIRRC have been good partners, helping address problems built into
the state’s e-waste legislation. In December, they organized a meeting with
stakeholders to identify problems and discuss solutions.
“(The
manufacturer e-waste) take-back program is a good idea that just needs to be
amended,” he said.
A
bill is being drafted by RIRRC to remedy some of these issues and will be
introduced during the 2016 legislative session.
“We
are looking to really revamp this program to make sure manufacturers are paying
their full share, streamline the program’s administration, and restore
convenience to consumers,” said Sarah Reeves, RIRRC’s director of recycling
services.
“We are looking at a really big change. I don’t know if it will
happen, but it will start conversations, and hopefully result in worthwhile
changes."