Tag: electronics

Keeping Electronics Out of the Trash

  • Although China banned electronic waste, illegal operations still take American waste to retrieve precious metals. (Photo by Ted Land)

A lot us recycle, but what about that “less-than-smart-phone” you just replaced with the latest model? What about those batteries in the clock? As Tanya Ott reports, sometimes it’s hard to know how to recycle electronics.


Photos of where our electronic cast asides can end up


Where to recycle rechargeable batteries and cell phones


Where to recycle other electronics


Where to recycle single-use batteries

Transcript

Up to half of all Americans say they recycle common materials, like paper, plastic and glass, “all of the time.” Husband and wife Don Dickman and Kathleen McEvvit live in Laingsburg, Michigan.

“Well, we recycle glass, we recycle metal, we recycle plastic, magazines, paper. I’m trying to think if we recycle any electronics. I don’t think we have. No, not lately.”

When it comes to electronics, many of us need a little nudge… say, from the kids from the television hit Glee.

Clip from Glee: “Test, test one… oh hold on we got a dead mic (batteries clanking in trash can) you know you’re not supposed to throw batteries out, right?”


A new survey from the consumer electronics marketplace Retrevo finds that more than 60% of respondents nationwide don’t recycle their old electronic gadgets.

Clip from Glee: “Does it count as recycling if you collect old batteries to throw at clowns?”

Many people say they don’t know how to recycle electronics, or that e-recycling isn’t available where they live.

Most people recycle their old cell phones and batteries at retail outlets like Radio Shack, Home Depot and Staples. Jeff Morris owns the Cartridge World franchise in Ann Arbor.

“We take in batteries for recycling and then they get sent off. Usually I send them over to the local batteries plus store or there are some local charities that can actually make a little money with them if we send them there.”

Morris says he’s lost track of how many batteries and toner cartridges his shop recycles each year. It’s a lot.

Lisa Pollack is with the nonprofit group Call2Recycle, a free rechargeable battery and cell phone collection program in North America. Since 1994, Call2Recycle says it has diverted more than 50 million pounds of rechargeable batteries from landfills. Still, says Pollack, that’s just a drop in the bucket. Does this sound familiar?

“Often times we hoard them. We keep them in our drawers or they sit in our closets or our attics, instead of bringing them in for recycling, and the fact that they sit there means we know we’re not supposed to throw them away, but we’re not necessarily sure what we are supposed to do with them.”

For some products, like cell phones, it’s important to recycle them as soon as possible. The longer you wait the harder it is for recycling companies to make money off them, because they get outdated. If you want to find a place to recycle your phone and rechargeable batteries, Call2Recycle has a network of 30,000 collection sites nationwide, including 740 sites in Michigan.

Pollock says this year there’s been a sharp increase in rechargeable battery recycling in the American south, a place where recycling has been slow to take off. She says it’s not clear why that’s happening. Michigan is in the middle of the pack, but there’s been a very slight decrease in battery recycling, about 1%. So far this year, Michiganders have recycled just over 71,000 pounds of rechargeable batteries through Call2Recycle.

Tanya Ott, the Environment Report.

Host:The Consumer Electronics Association says the average household has about 24 different types of electronic devices. Most of these TVs, computers and cell phones eventually end up in the garbage.

Special thanks to Suzy Vuljevich for her production help on this story.

Rebecca Williams, the Environment Report.

Mining the Minerals That Power Your Gadgets

  • Molycorp's rare-earth mining pit in Mountain Pass, California. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Politicians like to show off pictures of wind turbines, hybrid cars, and other green hi-tech.
The idea is to get more of that in America, and maybe even make more of it here. Shawn
Allee found there’s a chance all of this could be complicated by the supply of key green-
tech ingredients:

Transcript

Politicians like to show off pictures of wind turbines, hybrid cars, and other green hi-tech.
The idea is to get more of that in America, and maybe even make more of it here. Shawn
Allee found there’s a chance all of this could be complicated by the supply of key green-
tech ingredients:

I don’t know about you, but there’re a whole bunch of minerals I completely ignored in
high school chemistry.

Jack Lifton knows them by heart.

“… lanthenum, serium, neodymium…”

Lifton’s a market expert on these so-called ‘rare-earth’ minerals. And he says, even if you
haven’t heard of them, you might have them – even in your pocket.

“Without rare earths, we probably would not have portable computers and you
certainly wouldn’t have display screens today on anything – television or computer,
iPod, or iPhone, whatever.”

Rare earths make electronics light and they don’t need much power: just what wind
turbines and electric hybrid cars need.

There’s a problem in the rare-earth market, though. China’s the big supplier, but Lifton
says it might keep it’s rare-earth supplies for itself.

“In the next three or four years, you cannot make a device with a rare earth unless
it’s made in China and then the Chinese have made it very clear that their priorities
are to manufacture goods for their own consumer economy and keep the Chinese
employed.”

So, is the US gonna be left dry when it comes to green high tech? Well, there is a rare
earth mine in America, but it’s had some environmental problems.

The mine is trying to turn that around now.

Honan: “On the left is the overburden stock pile. Once you’ve seen one of those,
you’ve seen them all.”

Allee: “Big pile of rocks.”

Honan: “Big pile of rock.”

Mine manager Scott Honan’s driving me around the top of a mine in the middle of the
California desert.

He manages the mine for Molycorp. Honan’s showing me the mine’s waste water
ponds.

Honan: “Those two are fresh water.”

Allee: “Basically, you’re trying to recycle as much of this water as you can. Why is
that?”

Honan: “We have to confine all of our water activities on the site. We have to be
very efficient when we use water, we can’t afford to waste it.”

Gotta admit, this is not very sexy stuff, but Molycorp is crossing its fingers that
expensive water recycling and treatment investments pay off.

Molycorp uses water to process the rare-earth ore, and back in the 90s, the mining and
processing stopped for a while due to waste water leaks.

It’s desert, after all – and regulators didn’t want what little water there is contaminated by
a slurry of salts and mining byproducts.

Allee: “So where’re we heading, here?”

Honan: “The pit.”

Allee: “Is that what everyone calls it? ‘The Pit?’”

Honan: “Yeah. It’s about 55 acres if you look at the perimeter. From the top of the
high wall over there to the bottom, it’s about 500 feet.”

Honan says Molycorp will expand the mine in a few years – just in time for when China
might stop exporting rare-earths.

The company might be jumping a tad – regulators might clamp down on the operation if
Molycorp repeats some of its past water pollution mistakes.

Still…

“I think a lot of us at the mine have a big stake in the success of this operation going
forward. A lot of us feel it’s important for our country. What we produce here is
going to drive a lot of this energy efficient technology that people are anxious about.
It’s cool to be a part of that.”

And for Honan, what’s even cooler is that someone’s talking about building a wind farm
not too far from his mine.

Honan says it’d be awefully nice if his rare-earths are in those turbines.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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DIGITAL TVs MEAN ANALOG TRASH

  • Digital TV is killing the analog star (Source: Zaphod at Wikimedia Commons)

In a couple of months, television
signals will be going digital. Congress
is requiring the switch. In February, if
you have an analog TV with rabbit ears,
it’ll be useless unless you get a converter
box. And even before the official transition,
people have been buying up new digital TVs.
Rebecca Williams reports the switch to DTV
has some people worried about the growing
pile of TV trash:

Transcript

In a couple of months, television
signals will be going digital. Congress
is requiring the switch. In February, if
you have an analog TV with rabbit ears,
it’ll be useless unless you get a converter
box. And even before the official transition,
people have been buying up new digital TVs.
Rebecca Williams reports the switch to DTV
has some people worried about the growing
pile of TV trash:

(sound of guy playing guitar hero)

William Borg says he’s really bad at Guitar Hero. So instead, we’re
watching one of his teenage customers play the game on a huge flat screen
digital TV.

“And this is another reason customers are after those high definition TVs
because you can really maximize the overall picture and sound quality.”

There’s not an analog TV in the place. Best Buy doesn’t sell them anymore.
You can’t buy them anywhere actually, except maybe at a thrift store.

Digital TV is killing the analog star.

“I think the end of analog TV is here.”

Megan Pollock is with the Consumer Electronics Association. She
represents TV makers and big box retailers.

“Just like record players some people will just fall in love and keep them for
as long as they can but I think in 5 to 10 years it’ll be very, very hard to find
one in anyone’s home.”

That’s right – analog TVs are gonna be museum pieces, or, more likely,
filling up landfills.

Megan Pollock says sales for digital TVs go up every year. She expects 36
million to sell next year.

In February, all broadcasters are required to switch over to digital TV. If
you have one of those old TVs with rabbit ears or an antenna, you’ll have to
get a converter box. If you’re hooked up to cable or satellite, you’re fine.
You don’t have to buy a new TV.

But TV recyclers say they’re seeing more people getting rid of perfectly
good analog TVs anyway.

Linda McFarland runs a TV and computer recycling business.

“We’re really gonna start seeing these in droves.”

We’re standing in front of seven foot tall stacks of old TVs.

McFarland says of all electronics, TVs are the least valuable. And the TVs
are full of toxic stuff. Especially lead in the cathode ray tubes.

Most of the time we export our TV waste. It ends up in Asia or Africa.
There, everyone from grandparents to little kids use acid or open flames to
melt the circuit boards to get to the tiny bits of gold and silver.

“Children are working on top of these electronic heaps and breathing
cyanide acid.”

Linda McFarland says it’s easy for recyclers in the US to make deals with
importers in other countries. They sneak the TV waste in along with much
more valuable computer parts.

“You might just stick it on containers and tell the marketplace that’s buying
from you I’ll give you two good containers for every container I give you.”

McFarland says that probably happens nine out of ten times. She wants new
laws to force recyclers to take care of TVs correctly.

That’s at the end of a TV’s life. Others want to start at the beginning. They
want TV manufacturers to do more.

Barbara Kyle is with the Electronics TakeBack Coalition. She says it’s not
just the lead in old TVs, many new digital TVs have toxic mercury in them –
and that’s hard to remove too.

“I think of the LCD TV as the poster child as to how this industry is still not
thinking about how to design with the end of life of products in mind. It’s
clearly not even in their work plan.”

But – she says some companies are getting better about taking back old TVs
for recycling. She says Sony, Samsung and LG already have good
programs. Others are just beginning.

Kyle says, whatever you do, don’t throw your old TV in the trash. She says
it’ll take some work, but you can find a responsible recycler – one that
doesn’t export waste to developing countries.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Recycling Goes Postal

  • The US Postal Service is beginning an e-waste recycling program through the mail (Photo courtesy of the USPS)

Many of us just don’t know what to do
with that old cell phone or outdated digital
camera. While some companies take the devices
back, not all do. Now, the US Postal Service
says it’s coming to the rescue. Mark Brush
reports – the post office is developing a free
electronics recycling program:

Transcript

Many of us just don’t know what to do
with that old cell phone or outdated digital
camera. While some companies take the devices
back, not all do. Now, the US Postal Service
says it’s coming to the rescue. Mark Brush
reports – the post office is developing a free
electronics recycling program:

Throwing out an old electronic device is wrong for several reasons. The devices can
contain toxic heavy metals which can pollute the environment. And there are many parts
that can be reused.

The US Postal Service is piloting a recycling program in some big cities across the
country – including Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington D.C.

They’re giving people
free, postage-paid envelopes. You can stuff your old cell phone or mp3 player into the
envelope and drop it in the mail.

It’s delivered to a recycling company called Clover Technologies Group. The company
says it tries to refurbish and resell what it can. If the device can’t be resold, it’s broken
down, and the materials that can be are recycled. The other stuff is thrown in a landfill.

Critics say while these recycling programs are a good first step, the companies who
make these devices should design them so all the parts can be reused.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Autos Part 2: Carmakers Slow to Adopt New Battery

  • The powertrain of the Chevy Volt. This concept image shows the lithium ion battery pack running down the center of the vehicle. (Image courtesy of GM)

Car companies are making plenty of promises these days about future
cars that will save you gas. To make them happen,
automakers are counting on a new kind of battery. They’re called lithium ion
batteries. These batteries could bring about a revolution in automobiles.
In the second part of a two-part series on green cars, Dustin Dwyer reports it could take a while for the revolution to get
here:

Transcript

Car companies are making plenty of promises these days about future
cars that will save you gas. To make them happen,
automakers are counting on a new kind of battery. They’re called lithium ion
batteries. These batteries could bring about a revolution in automobiles.
In the second part of a two-part series on green cars, Dustin Dwyer reports it could take a while for the revolution to get
here:


Lithium ion sounds like a complicated term. And you don’t necessarily need to know
what it means. But it might help to know that you already use lithium ion batteries every
day:


“It’s being used now in video cameras, personal phones, it’s in iPods, it’s in a lot of small
electronics and in, of course, laptop computers.”


That’s Jim Hall. He’s a consultant to the auto industry. His company is called 2953
Analytics. Hall’s had some experience working on battery powered cars. He says lithium
ion batteries are attractive because they can store a lot more power than the batteries in
today’s hybrid vehicles, and Hall says in the race to get lithium ion batteries into cars,
there are two leading companies: General Motors and Toyota.


They have different approaches to getting the batteries ready, but they both depend on
contractors outside the company to figure out the complicated chemistry. Hall says the
problem is right now, they need a breakthrough:


“And the breakthrough could come from an entirely different source. It could be from
another company that neither company is dealing with. It could. That’s the thing with
breakthroughs. You can’t predict how and when they happen.”


As we mentioned, battery engineers have already invented ways to make lithium ion
work in small things like cell phones, laptops and power drills. But it’s not as easy to
make the batteries work for something big, like a car.


Hall says one problem is cost. Lithium ion batteries are expensive. Another problem is
heat. The more energy you store in a lithium ion battery, the better the chances that the
battery could become unstable. If it becomes too hot, the battery could explode. That’s
already been a problem in some laptops.


Bob Lutz is the Vice Chairman of General Motors. He says his company has already
solved the heat problem with lithium ion batteries by using a different chemistry than
what’s in laptops:


“We’ve cycled ’em in hot rooms, maximum discharge rate, and cut out the cooling system
to simulate a cooling system failure in the car, and we’ve had a temperature rise of maybe
eight degrees centigrade, I mean, just not enough to worry about.”


GM expects to put the batteries in test cars and start running them on roads late this
spring. The goal is a lithium ion powered hybrid car named the Chevy Volt. It will go
forty miles on battery power alone, before a gas engine has to kick in. Lutz says he has no
doubt that the Volt will be ready to go by mid-2010, but officially, GM has not
set a production date.


Toyota says it’s also shooting to have the technology ready by 2010. But no other
automaker will even mention a date for lithium ion batteries. Not Ford. Not Honda. Not
Chrysler. Chrysler President Tom Lasorda says there’s a reason for that:


“When you’re trying to predict when a technology is going to be ready for mass market,
it’s very tough. Because you don’t know what the surprises might be.”


In the next few years, you can expect auto executives to make a lot of references to
lithium ion batteries. And basically anyone you talk to in the industry says these
batteries are no doubt, the next big thing that will save you gas.


The question is when. When will lithium ion batteries actually be in your car? Maybe
2010. Maybe a lot later. No one can really say for sure.


For the Environment Report, I’m Dustin Dwyer.

Related Links

E-Waste Polluting Overseas

  • Exposed to toxic chemicals such as lead and mercury, workers stay at the scrap yards for the $130-a-month pay. (photo by Ted Land)

At your home, chances are your TV, computer and other electronic gear were made
overseas. That’s because it’s cheaper to make them there. And it’s cheaper to get rid of old
electronics overseas. Someday, your old cell phone or CD player might end up right back
where it started: in China. Ted Land visited a Chinese city where electronic waste, or e-waste, is shipped by the thousands of tons. Pollution from that waste is threatening the
health of people who live there:

Transcript

At your home, chances are your TV, computer and other electronic gear were made
overseas. That’s because it’s cheaper to make them there. And it’s cheaper to get rid of old
electronics overseas. Someday, your old cell phone or CD player might end up right back
where it started: in China. Ted Land visited a Chinese city where electronic waste , or e-
waste, is shipped by the thousands of tons. Pollution from that waste is threatening the
health of people who live there:


The city of Taizhou is in eastern China. It’s an industrial port city. A lot of the people
who travel here are here on business. Ships loaded with new products are often headed
for the United States. But it’s not just what leaves this city that makes business boom…
it’s also what’s coming in:


“I know it’s polluted here but it’s not a big deal. The most important thing is my
children, that’s the reason why I found work here.”


Liu Qinzhen works at this Taizhou scrap plant. It’s the final stop for some of the nearly
4,000 tons of scrap and e-waste that enters the port each day. Liu is one of hundreds of
workers who squat under an outdoor pavilion picking apart old circuit boards and wires.
She works 9 hours a day, 7 days a week, earning about 130 dollars a month.


The work is dangerous. She and the other workers are exposed to harmful chemicals
from e-waste such as lead and mercury. The 23-year-old moved here for this job because
she needed to support her two kids:


“I used to work in a shoe factory but then I had a baby and it’s not convenient to have a
baby there so I moved here even though the pay is the same. I come from the countryside.
You can’t earn money on a farm.”


The plant where she works is considered safer than scrapping these materials in the
countryside where families work in their front yards and in their homes. They melt
circuit boards and burn wires to extract bits of valuable copper and gold.


Environmental organizations have documented evidence that what’s left over after the
valuable metals are retrieved is dumped into local rivers and streams:


(Land:) “I noticed when we arrived they shut down the other door of that other shop?


“They are doing the same kind of e-waste, but they are afraid of being discovered by
others.”


Afraid, says Taizhou resident Chen Yijun because what they’re doing is illegal. Chinese
law forbids the import of e-waste, yet piles of foreign electronics litter the countryside
and pour into scrap plants daily.


Yijun is a teacher at Taizhou #1 High School, where students are concerned about what
the e-waste industry is doing to their environment. They’ve been testing the water in
local streams, looking for signs of harmful chemicals:


On this day they draw several gallons from a stream. The banks are littered with piles of
electrical cable. Chen Zhengyan has been working on the project for years:


“The frogs here are different from frogs in other places because sometimes they have
extra limbs. We are sure the pollution is from e-waste because in this area there is no
other industry.”


Chen and her colleagues say this pollution is harmful to people, too. They tell local
government officials such as Liang Xiaoyong that something has to be done to improve
the situation. But, Liang says there’s only so much the government can do to combat an
illegal industry that so many residents make their living off of. He says cutting off the
imports is difficult because sometimes e-waste is hidden in with other scrap. He doesn’t
deny the waste industry is a big business here:


This industry generates a lot of tax money for us in the form of tariffs. So, if this industry
doesn’t exist, the Taizhou harbor won’t survive.


Jim Puckett is coordinator of the Basel Action Network, a Seattle based group that
confronts toxic trade issues around the world. He says it’s not that the Chinese
government is unwilling to stop imports, it’s simply unable to stop them.


“They’ve banned the import, the problem is they can’t control that flow, it’s just coming at
them container load after container load through various ports and they can’t possibly check every
single one.”


American waste is literally fueling the fires burning electronics that dot the countryside in
China. And many of the original owners of this gear had taken it to be recycled, and
thought they’d done the right thing. But, often it ends up on a ship, headed for scrap
yards overseas.


About seven thousand miles away from Taizhou, practically the other side of the globe,
there’s a warehouse in Springfield, Illinois stacked with old electronic gear.


The Illinois State Department of Central Management Services, or CMS, disposes of old
state property, including old copy machines, computers, and monitors. In 2005, CMS
was contacted by the Basel Action Network with some disturbing information. The
group was finding State of Illinois computers dumped in developing countries around the
world. Curtis Howard is manager of CMS state and federal surplus property:


“It hit me pretty hard, the fact that, not realizing, you know I always look at it, these guys
were here, they come in, they bid on our property, you know I’m maximizing the return on
the state’s investment, I’m doing a good job, I never really thought about the tail end of
the dragon.”


Basel Action Network coordinator Jim Puckett says if the Chinese are unable to stop the
imports, then it’s up to the United States to control what they export:


Other countries have laws forbidding it, laws controlling it, but in the United States, we
don’t even have a law to control this export.


The U.S. is one of only a handful of countries that have not signed and ratified the Basel
Convention, an international treaty that bans hazardous waste exports. That means if
anything is going to be done to stop electronic waste from polluting countries overseas,
it’s going to be up to the States to take action.


It starts with buying electronics from companies that make products that are more easily
recycled, and ends with making sure old electronic gear is getting into the hands of
responsible recyclers who don’t simply ship the e-waste to scrap yards overseas.


For the Environment Report, I’m Ted Land.

Related Links

China to Stop Imports of Junk Electronics

  • What happens to electronics when people don't want them anymore? The economics and environmental impact of e-waste disposal weighs heavily on minds all over the globe. (Photo by Michael Manger)

China is banning the import of scrap electronics. That eliminates one place where some U.S. companies were selling broken computers and electronic junk under the guise of “recycling.” The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

China is banning the import of scrap electronics. That eliminates one place where some U-S companies were selling broken computers and electronic junk under the guise of “recycling.” The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


Each year, more than 60-million desktop computers are taken out of service in the U.S. About 85-percent of them end up in landfills. But some people take their old computers, electronics and appliances to be recycled. Unfortunately, that sometimes simply means being shipped to China and other Asian countries where the electronic gear is burned to retrieve the metal such as copper and steel. Burning the electronic gear releases all kinds of toxic chemicals. Now, China’s main English language newspaper, CHINAdaily, reports the government there is banning the imports of scrap electronic goods. The newspaper reports this marks a change in the Chinese government’s policy of always putting economic conerns in front of less tangible needs such as the environment.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Report: E-Waste Piling Up

As electronic devices are becoming faster, smaller and cheaper, many consumers are opting to scrap their old, outdated computers and televisions for the latest technologies. But as a recent report shows, as people throw out these products, a new legacy of waste is piling up. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erika Johnson reports:

Transcript

As electronic devices are becoming faster, smaller and cheaper, many consumers are opting to
scrap their old, outdated computers and televisions for the latest technologies. But as a recent
report shows, as people throw out these products, a new legacy of waste is piling up. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erika Johnson reports:


Electronic waste – or e-waste – is what ends up in landfills when people throw away electronic
devices such as computer monitors and television sets. The report by the Silicon Valley Toxics
Coalition tracked the amount of e-waste that ends up in landfills. Researchers found there’s more
e-waste than waste from beverage containers and disposable diapers. Electronic products can
threaten human health because they contain toxic heavy metals.


Sheila Davis headed up the Coalition’s report:


“People are starting to sit up and take notice and especially when you start having large volumes
of the material. So many states are taking notice. For example, California, Massachusetts,
Minnesota and Maine have all banned these products from landfills, e-waste from landfills.”


Yet Davis says many people in other states end up pitching their used electronics because many
recycling programs are often inconvenient and expensive.


But for now, Davis suggests people contact their local governments for more information on
where to take their used electronics.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erika Johnson.

Related Links

Epa Asks Shoppers to Look for Energy Star Label

The Environmental Protection Agency wants holiday shoppers buying electronic gear to look for the Energy Star label. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency wants holiday shoppers buying electronic gear to look for
the Energy Star label. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


The U.S. EPA predicts that if all home electronics sold in the U.S. this year were ENERGY
STAR qualified, the air pollution rate would be reduced by 27 billion pounds of pollutants over
the life of the products. The EPA’s ENERGY STAR program was started in 1992 as a voluntary
program. Manufacturers can get an ENERGY STAR label for their consumer electronics by
meeting certain energy efficiency goals. The EPA indicates that 75-percent of all energy used to
power home electronics is used when the products are turned off or in a stand-by mode. When
turned off, ENERGY STAR qualified equipment uses up to 50-percent less energy than
conventional equipment. The EPA says last year that six of the top seven most popular home
electronics products sold during the holidays were available in ENERGY STAR qualified
models.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Epa to Pull Out of Computer Recycling Program?

The U.S. EPA recently threatened to pull out of a proposed national electronics recycling initiative. A meeting in Chicago this week will try to sort out some of the disputes between the negotiating parties. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach explains:

Transcript

The U.S. EPA recently threatened to pull out of a proposed national electronics recycling
initiative. A meeting in Chicago this week will try to sort out some of the disputes between the
negotiating parties. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach explains:


The ‘National Electronics Product Stewardship’ initiative is trying to maximize the collection,
reuse, and recycling of used devices like old computers. The nearly four dozen stakeholders of
the group are debating four different ways to foot the bill. But the EPA recently said it would
pull the plug on the initiative if the members don’t reach a financing agreement soon.


Garth Hickle is with the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance. He advises some group
members and he’s optimistic about a potential deal. Hickle says computer manufacturers that
want a level playing field realize some states are looking at writing their own laws.


“So I think the whole notion of trying to go forward with a national federal approach rather than
an individual state approach has a little more traction than it did.”


Hickle hopes an electronics recycling subcommittee will soon narrow the number of financing
options, so the EPA stays on board.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Chuck Quirmbach reporting.