Like the automobile, electronic equipment--most prevalently, the television and the computer--is an integral part of the American landscape. But where five-, ten-, and twenty-year-old cars can still travel roads and highways with little difficulty, the pace of technology means computers become little more than expensive paperweights after just a few years. Virtually every PC owner today has one or more old machines sitting in a closet or a garage.

Certainly, the prospect of millions of computers ending up in landfills in the coming years is a logistical problem in and of itself. But compounding the problem is the fact that toxins present within these electronics have the potential to set back decades of landfill regulation.

Some estimates pinpoint at 250 million the number of computers that will become obsolete in the United States in the next five years. Along with televisions, VCRs, and cell phones, the computers are presenting a severe and substantial threat because of the lead, mercury, chromium, and cadmium bound up in the equipment.

The statistics on electronics waste, or "e-waste," are daunting:

More than 63 million tons of computer equipment will be taken out of service next year, and 85 percent of them will be dumped in landfills, according to the National Safety Council in a 2001 report.

The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition found in 2001 that more than 50 percent of computers being sent to recycling centers are in fact in good working order.

The Basel Action Network found in a 2002 report that the 500 million computers in the world contain 6.32 billion pounds of plastic, 1.58 billion pounds of lead, and 632,000 pounds of mercury. But only 12.75 million computers will be recycled in the United States this year, the network determined.

Clearly, the electronics waste issue is one that is here to stay. With constant technological innovations--for instance, major changes in television equipment--always on the horizon, electronics recycling is a matter of growing importance. Some states and companies are dealing with it now, and some are putting it off for another day. But it's an issue that no entity, government or private, will long be able to avoid--no matter where their waste ends up.

`Exporting Harm': Changing The Stakes

One of the more dramatic chapters in the e-waste story took place in February with the release of a report entitled "Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia." Prepared jointly by the Basel Action Network and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, the report revealed for the first time the extent of e-waste shipments to China, India, and Pakistan, where they are apparently processed in operations harmful to both human health and the environment.

The investigation uncovered an area named Giuyu, in China's Quangdong Province, where 100,000 migrant workers break apart and process obsolete computers imported primarily from North America. The groups' observers noted workers smashing cathode ray tubes and burning computer materials in fires that emitted carcinogenic smoke. As a result of the breakdown operations, the report contends that the water in the area is so contaminated that drinking water must be trucked in from 18 miles away.

The Basel Convention, a 1989 United Nations environmental treaty, sought a global ban on the export of hazardous wastes from industrialized nations to developing ones. But according to the report, the United States is the only developed nation that has yet to ratify the treaty. As a result, the report calls on the United States to follow Europe and Japan's example to implement the global ban, and also mandate that the electronics industry institute takeback programs.

The report had a dramatic, galvanizing effect on the electronics waste recycling industry. Governments and companies alike began taking a closer interest in where exactly their waste was going. And with the absence of enforced federal regulations for oversight, individual states have had to take up the slack to ensure that electronic waste doesn't continue to end up causing harm overseas.

State Governments: Front-Line E-Waste Management

Just as state governments have a strong voice in the direct management of solid waste operations within their borders, so too are they leading the charge in handling electronics waste. Florida was one of the first states to get involved in e-waste management, with initial strategies developed in 1998 and 1999. "We were very fortunate to get grant funding from the state Legislature to give grants to counties around Florida," says Raoul Clarke, environmental administrator for the Hazardous Waste Management section of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. "We have built up our infrastructure with the private sector; we have about 10 private companies that do total electronics demanufacturing, not just `pick-out-what-you-want' operations. We've also done some collection partnerships with companies like Best Buy, for instance."

Florida's proactive efforts at developing an infrastructure mean that the state hasn't yet had to resort to laws to force recycling. "We've tried to be pretty broad-based with regulatory guidelines and interpretations that make it relatively easy for consumers and businesses to manage waste properly without throwing it into a landfill," Clarke says. "We consider these materials products until the final destination, which is a recycler. That is the person that makes the final determination whether it can be repaired, reused, or recycled."

"The counties we give grant money to have well-established household hazardous waste programs," Clarke says. "Those counties already had the mechanism in place to collect material--they had a program that included advertising and media exposure; it's very easy for them to add an electronics component to an existing program. Well over three-fourths of the population of Florida now has access to electronics collections." The Solid Waste Management Trust Fund, a program established in 1988 that takes one-fifth of one percent of the state sales tax to help manage solid waste, funds electronics recycling in Florida.

Other states have taken a more direct approach to e-waste, banning toxic materials outright. Massachusetts, for instance, was the first state in the country to enact a ban on CRTs from state landfills. And much of the major state legislative activity centering on e-waste has, of late, taken place in California, where the state Legislature recently passed a bill that requires funds be collected at the point of sale for the handling of obsolete CRTs and television. Sponsored by Sen. Byron Sher (D), the bill would establish a state program to recycle CRT devices, to be funded by the additional fee.

Another bill, sponsored by Sen. Gloria Romero (D), would establish a program to recover, reuse, and recycle what it defines as hazardous electronic scrap, which includes computers, video monitors, and notebook computers. Under the bill, manufacturers would have to label these devices as hazardous, and would set up a system to either take back obsolete devices or pay a fee to the state.

However, California Gov. Gray Davis vetoed the electronic waste management legislation that reached his desk, contending that it was "not the most efficient or cost-effective approach for California." He noted that the bill requires the state to hire 64 new people at a time when California is trying to cut 7,000 other positions. "Building a state bureaucracy to address this problem is not the best solution for managing electronic waste," Davis wrote in vetoing the bill. "We should compel industry to solve this problem."

Davis took some criticism for his veto, with some editorialists going so far as to accuse him of cozying up to Silicon Valley interests in preparation for a run at the presidency in 2004. But supporters of Davis note that he referenced the European Union's model for ensuring that manufacturers maintain responsibility for the safe recycling of the products they produce.

Davis wrote that he believes "this model, tailored to fit California's recycling and disposal infrastructure, is worth pursuing. California needs a comprehensive and innovative state law that partners with product manufacturers, establishes recycling targets, and provides for the safe recycling and disposal of electronic waste." He tied the electronic waste situation to California's recent passage of air quality laws that will reduce car emissions and improve air quality, expecting that the state can do the same for electronic waste. Most significantly, Davis closed the veto message by saying he believes "California should have a new [electronic waste recycling] law by next year."

Other states have struck up direct partnerships with industry players and major electronics manufacturers, with Minnesota being one of the most proactive of these. In 2000, Minnesota reached an agreement with Sony Electronics Inc. for a five-year agreement in which three Waste Management Inc. locations in Minnesota would accept Sony electronics and computer equipment free of charge from consumers.

Manufacturers: Liable At Both Ends Of The Life Cycle?

Perhaps the most vexing question surrounding electronic waste is the responsibility of the individual companies who created the products in question. On one hand, no one expects Ford or General Motors to pay for the cleanup of abandoned or junked cars. On the other, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and others are producing a hazardous waste--contained, certainly, but hazardous nonetheless--and some argue that the companies bear responsibility for ensuring that it is disposed of safely.

One of the major grass-roots campaigns now taking place is entitled "Electronics Take It Back!", which supports an initiative to make brand-name manufacturers of electronic equipment financially responsible for their products once they become obsolete. This principle, known as Extended Producer Responsibility, is intended to create an incentive for manufacturers of electronics to design products that are durable, reusable, upgradeable, and easy to recycle. Manufacturers such as IBM, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Gateway, and Micron all have programs to take old computers for a small fee. Most are also taking steps to ensure that they do not transfer parts to dealers who may wind up dumping the waste overseas.

IBM, for instance, offers a PC Recycling Service, in which customers can recycle any manufacturer's personal computers, plus monitors, printers, and optional attachments, for $29.99 including shipping. Customers box the system and ship it via UPS to Envirocycle, a designated recycling center. Depending on the age and capabilities of the computer, IBM will then either recycle the system or refurbish it and donate it to Gifts In Kind International, a product philanthropy organization.

And in May, Hewlett-Packard unveiled its own recycling service as part of its "Planet Partners Program." The service includes pickup, transportation, evaluation for reuse or donation, and appropriate recycling.

HP will work with Micro Metallics Corporation, a subsidiary of Noranda Inc., a Canadian mining and metals company, to develop a unique process to evaluate incoming equipment, redeploy working equipment, extract reusable parts, and recycle remaining components. The $4 million processing line at each of two facilities includes shredders to grind equipment into pieces the size of a quarter; from there, separators and magnets pull out the component metals and plastics and recycling. The facilities, located in Roseville, Calif. and Nashville, Tenn., currently process up to 8 million pounds a month of used equipment.

The new service is designed to complement other HP environmental programs. For instance, its "Planet Partners" LaserJet supplies program, in operation since 1992, has helped HP customers recycle over 39 million HP LaserJet cartridges worldwide. That total represents approximately 50,000 tons of material diverted from landfills, HP officials note.

"This Planet Partners take-back program is a reflection of HP's heritage of social responsibility," says Ren‚e St. Denis, manager of HP's Environmental Business Unit. "We're giving people an easy-to-use, environmentally sound option for disposing of their used computer electronics equipment."

More recently, Hewlett-Packard launched its take-back service in Canada. There, 67,324 tons of IT equipment, including PCs, monitors, notebooks and peripherals, will be disposed in 2005, according to Canadian environmental consulting firm Enviros RIS. Pricing ranges from C$20 to C$52, and is based on the quantity and type of product to be returned. This fee covers the cost of the service only, and does not generate profit for HP, company officials noted.

NEPSI: Working Toward Stakeholder Consensus

There are efforts underway to reach a national consensus on e-waste recycling. The National Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative, a consortium of 45 industry, government, and environmental stakeholders, stands at the vanguard of electronics recycling efforts. NEPSI's avowed mission is "the development of a system, which includes a viable financing mechanism, to maximize the collection, reuse, and recycling of used electronics, while considering appropriate incentives to design products that facilitate source reduction, reuse, and recycling; reduce toxicity; and increase recycled content." NEPSI intends to develop a framework of shared responsibility among all stakeholders, and has managed to eke out some compromises in developing this system.

In a March meeting in Washington, NEPSI members agreed to work toward the establishment of a financing system designed to include the costs of managing used electronic products in the overall purchase price of new electronic products. Federal legislation would be needed to implement the plan, though NEPSI is working toward setting up some steps to be taken before such legislation would be implemented.

The so-called "front-end financing" is at the heart of the disagreements that exist within NEPSI. Front-end financing--a.k.a. an "Advanced Recycling Fee" or cost-internalization--and back-end financing, or "end-of-life" fees, are the two major options, and the "who pays" issue has dogged NEPSI from its earliest origins.

"All the stakeholders have worked incredibly hard to get to this point," says Gary Davis, coordinator of the NEPSI process, in announcing the front-end financing agreement. "Achieving an agreement on the financing system reestablished their commitment to the process."

"It is important that industry has now agreed that we need to develop a front-end financing solution to the e-waste crisis, and that it will take legislation to accomplish this," says Ted Smith of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. "But there are many difficult issues that remain, and now we need to buckle down to address them if we are to meet our goal of developing a truly effective system for life cycle responsibility for electronic products."

Several challenges remain ahead for NEPSI, including the timeframe for implementing the front-end financing system, as well as a means of making the system convenient for consumers, possible incentives for product design, and means of sharing costs among producers, retailers, consumers, and governments.

If NEPSI is unable either to come to a complete consensus or to persuade federal legislators of the necessity of a front-end financing system, it is likely that states will continue to take the initiative in setting e-waste regulations. Some smaller governments are also working hard to set their own pace. For instance, Snohomish County, Wash. is working with a New Jersey technical group on a study that will provide a model for communities to evaluate their existing recycling infrastructures and plan for future needs, including costs.

E-Waste Recycling Companies: Setting The Standard

Electronics waste recycling is a different brand of waste management than milk cartons, to be sure, but it is still subject to the same vagaries of markets and changing conditions. Companies like ElectroniCycle, which works with the state of Massachusetts to recycle CRTs, are doing well, but other companies are having difficulties based on a variety of factors that have little to do with the economy.

"It's lean times for the industry overall," says Robin Ingenthron, president of Vermont-based American Retroworks, which merged its e-waste operations with ElectroniCycle in 2001. "Those that were well prepared to handle televisions are doing all right, but it's a bad time for those in the industry who built their business around computers."

The reason, Ingenthron suggests, is the faulty assumptions made about the number of computers that would enter the waste stream. "People were coming up with huge numbers around Y2K, and there's just not that many people throwing out their computers," he says. "Windows doubles in size every two years, Intel doubles in capacity every twelve months. There's nothing making a Pentium III go out of business anytime soon."

American Retroworks is one of a growing number of full-service e-waste recyclers, also participating in consulting efforts. For instance, the company has been working with New Deal Software, a Massachusetts-based company which has developed programs to run Windows-type applications on slower computers. American Retroworks has worked with New Deal to locate slower computers, such as 286s, 386s, and 486s, before they are destroyed.

Other companies are likewise staking out territory as the need for e-waste recycling grows. United Recycling Services, for instance, operates a 300,000-square-foot facility in West Chicago, Illinois where the company tests products for resale, recovers chips, and recycles whatever remains. "Whatever we can't sell or salvage goes through our shredding and separation systems," says Lauren Roman, vice-president of marketing for United. "We can take everything from monitors to mainframes, but them through our system, and out the back comes clean steel, clean aluminum, precious metals, and other products. One hundred percent of what comes out the back end is recycled." United Recycling works with counties throughout Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Iowa, and also hosts meetings at its facility for local, state, and federal environmental officials.

The percentage of reusable materials in a given waste stream depends entirely on the source of the material, Roman notes. "If it's coming from a county collection program, there's almost no reuse. People don't throw things away unless they're broken, or so old that even if they're not broken, nobody wants them. But then we have other clients who are in competitive industries--they keep their IT systems up to date, and turn over equipment every two or three years. When we get shipments in from them, they're probably 85 percent sellable. But on the whole, there's probably more that goes to shredding and recycling than resale."

Ingenthron agrees. "If you're honest with people, only about 20 percent [of most waste streams] can be reused," he says. "People who say they can do more are either bidding on very high-end takeouts, or they're sending toxics along for the ride to other companies." Still, he notes, one refurbished television that sells for $50 is worth more than ten televisions taken apart for raw materials.

"TVs are still down in about the 1 percent recycling range," Florida's Clarke says. "Anecdotally, it's because TVs last longer than computers. They're now coming into recycling streams a little more rapidly because prices have come down so far--people don't repair them, they just go out and purchase a new one. But basically, TVs last 15 to 17 years. Computers turn over much more frequently because technology changes so quickly--people ant the latest, the greatest, and the fastest, and prices have come way down."

The Effects Of `Exporting Harm'

Company and government officials agree that the final destination of electronic waste continues to be an ever-more-important concern, a trend that `Exporting Harm' kicked into high gear. "After the whole `Exporting Harm' report came out, a lot of people out there are taking a hard look at recycling and saying, `is this really being recycled, or am I exporting an environmental problem?'" Roman says. "We do credit that for some of our growth this year."

"There's more awareness about the illegal exports," Ingenthron agrees. "Our biggest competitors are often people with a cell phone doing business out of their bedroom. We used to have to answer a lot of questions from clients who'd say, `why are you charging us a recycling fee, when this company will take the material for free?' We'd have to explain to them that if somebody's just having an international shipping container loaded up, we can't compete with that, paying 30 employees. But now, people understand right away. Some don't care; some still go for the lowest cost; but it's a more knowledgeable market."

Florida, for one, has tried to take a closer look at exactly what its recyclers are doing with its residents' waste. "We've told the counties that their contracts with recyclers have to require certain things of the recyclers," Clarke says. "They have to document, in some fashion, their end markets. We've also required them to demonstrate that they're being paid a fair-market value for materials that they ship. That's our due diligence--we're trying to be certain the materials aren't just being shipped overseas. In `Exporting Harm,' most material is put in shipping containers and sent overseas; most of our recyclers tear these products down to their component parts."

But attempting to put a halt to all exports is not just unrealistic but impossible. "There will be exports, there's no way around that," Clarke says. "Circuit boards contain a high degree of copper. The only way to get the copper out is to smelt it, but there are no copper smelters in the United States. We take the position that we cannot ban exporting material; we just want to control the way it's exported."

The key to establishing a proper e-waste recycling system, all sides agree, is to get an agreement on both its necessity and its proper operation. "Awareness is still growing," Roman says. "In my day-to-day marketing efforts, I still talk to people that either don't understand why this stuff doesn't belong in the trash, or because it's not regulated, think they still have a window of opportunity to throw it out for as long as they can." And it's that window that has many industry observers concerned.

"The biggest problem that our industry has, as far as awareness goes, is that the state and federal EPA people aren't doing any enforcement on electronics," Roman says. "All it would take is a couple big companies to get their wrists slapped and fined for having electronics in their waste stream--which is a violation of RCRA. We don't need any new laws; we just need to enforce what's out there. And it's not happening."

The infrastructure is already present, Roman says, for just such an enforcement plan. "Hopefully they'll realize that it wouldn't cost a lot of money," she says. "Enforcement people are already in the field, and it would just take a little bit of extra training."

On the consumer awareness front, there appears to be reason for optimism. "Survey after survey has shown that 80 percent of consumers would prefer to pay $5 to see their TV reused or recycled than have it taken away or thrown away for free," Ingenthron says. "So it's a price point. As long as we can maintain this price point--for cities it's about 15 cents a pound--cities and towns like this service."

The Future: Is An E-Waste Flood Imminent?

One of the primary concerns for e-waste recyclers is whether there will be sufficient capability to handle the ever-growing numbers of electronics leaving productive use. "I think there's sufficient capacity for computers and CRT glass now, which were big concerns five years ago," Ingenthron says. "Televisions are the next big wave. When the FCC auctions off analog signals in 2007, the television companies are counting on people needing to move to digital TV. That's when there's going to be a lot of electronic material to recycle, which isn't going to have the gold in it that creates demand in China."

"If someone were to say, `no TVs and no monitors could be thrown in the trash,' we think we could handle it," Clarke says. "The infrastructure, I believe, is there for recyclers. It's not a large capital outlay to gear up. You need more warehouse space, a couple more workers. I feel comfortable that if everything suddenly came out of storage, we could handle it."

"The EPA held a meeting on the issue a few weeks ago," Roman says. "An EPA official had said that if the United States ratified Basel and stopped exporting everything [electronic] that we're now exporting, the U.S. recycling industry would never handle all that volume. But at the EPA's meeting, a recycler stood up and asked how many recyclers in the room were full to capacity and don't want any more material. Nobody raised their hand. When asked, `how many of you would love to have more material flowing through your door?', everybody raised their hand.

"The bottom line is," she continues, "if materials are coming through the door, people are going to expand their operations. I don't think there's any looming crisis, where we have all these electronics and not have anywhere to put them."

More resources:
Basel Action Network (BAN) is a global network of toxics and development activist organizations that work to discourage the trade in toxic wastes from developed countries to developing countries in the name of environmental justice. www.ban.org

Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) is a grassroots coalition that researches, advocates, and organizes initiatives to influence public policy on environmental and human health problems caused by the rapid growth of the high-tech electronics industry.: www.svtc.org. Some industry statistics: www.svtc.org/cleancc/pubs/sayno.htm

US Federal Environmental Agency (EPA) National Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative (NEPSI) seeks to establish a national financial infrastructure to encourage the reuse and recycling of used TVs and personal computers. www.epa.gov/epr/products/electronics.html

National Recycling Coalition's (NRC) Electronics Recycling Initiative. This project is made possible with support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Postal Service. The goal of the NRC's Electronics Recycling Initiative is to promote the recovery, reuse and recycling of obsolete electronic equipment, and to encourage the design, manufacture and purchase of environmentally responsible electronic equipment. www.nrc-recycle.org/resources/electronics/.

The EIA Consumer Education Initiative (CEI) is a web-based information resource that provides consumers and others with information on recycling and reuse opportunities for used electronics. www.eiae.org/about.cfm.

The Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA) is a national trade organization that includes the full spectrum of U.S. manufacturers, representing more than 80% of the $550 billion electronics industry. www.eia.org/

The International Association of Electronics Recyclers, Inc. (IAER) is a trade association for the electronics recycling industry. The IAER seeks to help in the development of an effective and efficient infrastructure for managing the life cycle of electronics products. www.iaer.org. Electronic Product Recovery and Recycling (EPR2) Baseline Report; May, 1999, sponsored by the US Environmental Protection Agency: www.iaer.org/communications/EPR2study.html.

The National Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative has been created to bring stakeholders together to develop solutions to the issue of electronic products management. http://eerc.ra.utk.edu/clean/nepsi/, www.nepsi.org.

Many of the various state environmental regulatory agencies have various programs to regulate, offer education, and sometimes offer grants and educational materials to encourage electronics recycling. As an example, Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Electronics Recycling Program: Offers grants to encourage recycling of electronic components. www.dep.state.fl.us/waste/categories/electronics.