Making Manufacturers Take It Back

  • Craig Lorch, co-owner of Total Reclaim in Seattle. His company is certified to recycle electronic waste under Washington's e-waste law. (Photo by Liam Moriarty)

It used to be that when a company
sold you a widget, they got your
money, you got the widget, and
that was the end of it. Now, that
way of doing business is changing.
Liam Moriarty reports that in Europe, and in the
US, businesses are being required
to take responsibility for their
products in new ways:

Transcript

It used to be that when a company
sold you a widget, they got your
money, you got the widget, and
that was the end of it. Now, that
way of doing business is changing.
Liam Moriarty reports that in Europe, and in the
US, businesses are being required
to take responsibility for their
products in new ways:

(sound of recycling machine)

In a huge industrial building in Seattle, forklift-loads of TVs and computer monitors are heaved onto conveyor belts. Workers go at them with screwguns and hammers.

“They’re pulling the plastic covers off of devices, they’re pulling the picture tubes out of them. They’re basically dismantling it to component parts.”

Craig Lorch is co-owner here at Total Reclaim. His company is certified to recycle electronic waste under Washington’s e-waste law.

The law requires that these old machines don’t end up being dumped, where their toxic chemicals can poison humans and the environment.

Recycling old electronics has been happening for years. John Friedrick explains what’s new about Washington’s e-waste law.

“It’s a producer responsibility law, which takes the burden of all of this off of the taxpayer.”

Friedrick runs the state-wide recycling program that’s fully paid for by electronics manufacturers. It started just a year ago, and already it’s collected more than 38 million pounds of e-junk, costing producers nearly 10 million dollars. Basically, it requires electronics companies to cover the end-of-life costs of the products they sell.

That concept – called extended producer responsibility – is new in the US. When Washington’s e-waste law was passed three years ago, it was the first to put full responsibility on manufacturers. But this isn’t a new idea in Europe.

Klaus Koegler is with the European Commission’s Directorate General for the Environment in Brussels. He tells me about a keystone of EU environmental policy – what’s called the “Polluter Pays” principle.

“That simply means whoever causes damage to the environment is responsible, also in financial terms, to repair it or to minimize it right from the beginning.”

Koegler says that gives regulators the muscle for a range of laws. One example: any car sold in the EU has to be 85% recyclable. Koegler says that creates an incentive.

“If you are responsible for the recycling, that means you will try to design a car to make your life as a recycler as easy as possible.”

And a product that’s easy and cheap to recycle is likely to be easier on the planet, too. Europeans also see making manufacturers take back and recycle their old products as a way to reclaim resources. For instance, nickel and other metals are becoming more scarce and expensive.

“So in keeping the waste here, recycling it here, and recovering these metals, we are protecting the environment. At the same time, we are helping to secure supply for our industries.”

So, the EU is moving toward setting even more ambitious goals for recycling. In the US, Wisconsin recently became the 20th state to pass a take-back law for electronics. States are also extending producer responsibility to other products – including batteries, fluorescent lamps and paint.

Now, the electronics industry is pushing back. Two major industry groups have filed a lawsuit against the e-waste law in New York City. They say it’s unconstitutional. Environmental activists see the suit as an attack on the whole concept of producer responsibility.

But Rick Goss with the Information Technology Industry Council insists it’s not.

“We support producer responsibility. We understand and recognize, that as manufacturers, we have a role to play in offering our consumers options and solutions for used products here. But we don’t have the only role to play.”

Still, the suit makes constitutional arguments that could be used to challenge the right of states to impose recycling requirements on manufacturers.

For The Environment Report, I’m Liam Moriarty.

Related Links

A Tough New Chemical Law

  • Lena Perenius and Franco Bisegna are with CEFIC, the European Chemical Industry Council in Brussels, Belgium. (Photo by Liam Moriarty)

There are tens of thousands of
chemical compounds on the market
these days. And, for the most part,
unless regulators can prove a chemical
is harmful, it stays there. Now, Europe
has turned that way of doing things
on its head, and the US is showing
signs of moving in that direction, too.
Liam Moriarty has this report:

Transcript

There are tens of thousands of
chemical compounds on the market
these days. And, for the most part,
unless regulators can prove a chemical
is harmful, it stays there. Now, Europe
has turned that way of doing things
on its head, and the US is showing
signs of moving in that direction, too.
Liam Moriarty has this report:

(sounds of a street)

Brussels, Belgium is sort of like the Washington, DC of Europe. It’s here – in the seat of the European Union – that the 27 nations that make up the EU hash out their common policies.

I’m sitting in the office of Bjorn Hansen. He keeps an eye on chemicals for the European Commission’s Directorate General for the Environment. To give me an idea of how ubiquitous chemicals are in our everyday lives, Hansen points around his office.

“Just us sitting here, you are probably exposed to chemicals, which come from the office furniture, which have been used to color the textile, which has been used to create the foam, the glue under the carpet that we’re sitting – you name it, you’re exposed.”

The big question is whether all this exposure is harming our health or the environment. The answer?

“We, by far, do not know what chemicals are out there, what the effects of those chemicals are, and what the risks associated with those chemicals.”

In the European Union, that uncertainty led to a new law known by its acronym, REACH. That’s R-E-A-C-H. REACH requires that tens of thousands of chemicals used in everyday products in the EU be studied and registered. If a substance cannot be safely used, manufacturers will have to find a substitute, or stop using it. REACH has, at its core, a radical shift: it’s no longer up to the government to prove a chemical is unsafe.

“The burden of proof is on industry to demonstrate safety. And by demonstrating the safety that they think, they also take liability and responsibility for that safety.”

Even for industries accustomed to tougher European regulations, REACH was alarming.

“There were very, quite violent opposition in the beginning.”

Lena Perenius is with CEFIC, the European Chemical Industry Council.

“In the EU, we already had a very comprehensive set of regulations for ensuring safe use of chemicals. And the industry saw that this was putting an unreasonable burden on the companies.”

Corporations may not have liked it, but the measure had strong public support. After several contentious rounds of negotiations, Perenius says the industry feels it got key concessions that’ll make the far-reaching law workable. Now, she says, the industry has come to see the up-side of REACH.

“Now, when we have the responsibility, that gives us a little bit of freedom to demonstrate, in the way we believe is appropriate, how a substance can be used safely.”

Here in the US, there are signs of political momentum building around taking a more REACH-like approach to regulating the chemicals in everyday products. New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg recently said he’d introduce a bill that would shift the burden of proof for safety onto chemical manufacturers.

“Instead of waiting for a chemical to hurt somebody, it will require companies to prove their products are safe before they end up in the store, in our homes, and in our being.”

Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson recently told a Senate committee that – out of an estimated 80,000 chemicals in use – existing law has allowed the EPA to ban only 5, and to study just 200.

“Though many of these chemicals likely pose little or no risk, the story is clear – we’ve only been able to effectively regulate a handful of chemicals, and we know very little about the rest.”

More than a dozen states from Maine to California have already moved to toughen safety standards for chemicals. Even the American Chemistry Council has agreed to support more vigorous regulations to assure consumers that the chemicals in the products they use are safe.

As always, the devil is in the details. But the coming reform is shaping up to look a lot like what Europe is already putting in place.

For The Environment Report, I’m Liam Moriarty.

Related Links

European Cap-And-Trade Example

  • Europe was the first to do carbon cap-and-trade, four years ago. (Photo courtesy of NASA)

Congress is haggling over a climate
bill that includes a carbon cap-and-
trade system. In many ways, it’s
similar to the one the European Union
put in place several years ago. Liam
Moriarty looks at what
the European experience has been and
what the lessons for the US might be:

Transcript

Congress is haggling over a climate
bill that includes a carbon cap-and-
trade system. In many ways, it’s
similar to the one the European Union
put in place several years ago. Liam
Moriarty looks at what
the European experience has been and
what the lessons for the US might be:

Slashing greenhouse gas emissions is hard. Our economy is powered mostly by fossil fuels. Switching to clean fuels will be disruptive and expensive, at least to start with.

So how do we get from here to there? The approach that’s proving most popular is what’s called “cap-and-trade.” It works like this – first, there’s the cap.

“We’re going to put an absolute limit on the quantity of carbon-based fuels that we’re going to burn. And we’re going to develop a system to make sure we’re not burning more fossil fuels than that.”

Alan Durning heads the Sightline Institute, a sustainability-oriented think tank in Seattle. He explains that once you put the cap in place…

“Then, we’re going to let the market decide who exactly should burn the fossil fuels based on who has better opportunities to reduce their emissions.”

That’s the “trade” part. Companies get permits to put out a certain amount of greenhouse gases. Outfits that can cut their emissions more than they need to can sell their unused pollution permits to companies that can’t.

The cap gets ratcheted down over time. There are fewer permits out there to buy. Eventually even the most polluting companies have to reduce their emissions, as well.

The goal is to wean ourselves off dirty fuels by making them more expensive. And that makes cleaner fuels more attractive.

Europe was the first to do carbon cap and trade, four years ago. And things got off to a rough start. They set the cap on emissions too high and way overestimated the number of permits – or allowances – that companies would need.

“We have too many allowances. Simple supply means that the prices of those allowances crashes. They don’t have much value, and therefore the price went down to close to zero.”

That’s Vicki Pollard. She follows climate change negotiations for the European Commission. She says the whole system got knocked out of kilter.

For the first two years, European carbon emissions actually went up. After the collapse of Phase One, big changes were made. The next phase of the trading system has a tighter cap, more stringent reporting requirements and enforcement with teeth.


Today, Europe’s on track to meet its current emissions target. But environmentalists, such as Sanjeev Kumar with the World Wildlife Fund in Brussels, say those targets are still driven more by politics than by science.

“We have a cap that’s very weak, i.e. that means that it doesn’t mean that we’re going to achieve the levels of decarbonization that we need within the time scale.”

Leading climate scientists say we have to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by the middle of this century to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Business still has concerns about the EU cap and trade scheme. Folker Franz is with BusinessEurope, sort of the European version of the US Chamber of Commerce. He says companies worry about the additional cost of carbon emissions putting them at a competitive disadvantage.

“If you produce one ton of steel, you emit roughly one ton of CO2. So any ton of steel produced in the EU is right now some 17 dollars more than outside the European Union. And that makes a difference.”

But, Franz says, European businesses accept the need to take prompt action on climate change and are on board with the stricter cap and trade rules coming over the next few years.

Americans have watched Europe struggle with carbon cap-and-trade. The Sightline Institute’s Alan Durning says we can benefit from Europe’s willingness to break new ground.

“It was a big advance when they started it, because nothing like it had ever been done. But, it’s not the be-all-and-end-all. In fact, the United States now has an opportunity to learn from their mistakes and leapfrog ahead to a much better climate policy.”

Durning says an American cap and trade system could avoid the costly stumbles that’ve hampered Europe’s carbon reduction efforts.

For The Environment Report, I’m Liam Moriarty.

Related Links

Saving the Orcas

  • Mother-calf pair of "Type C" orcas in the Ross Sea. (Photo by Robert Pitman, NOAA)

For many people orca whales are very
familiar. Think Shamu. We’ve even given the wild
killer whales of the Pacific Northwest individual
names. But there’s still a lot we don’t know, like
where the whales go and what they eat. Now that they’re
listed as endangered, those have become important
questions. Liam Moriarty accompanied a research
crew trying to get answers:

Transcript

For many people orca whales are very
familiar. Think Shamu. We’ve even given the wild
killer whales of the Pacific Northwest individual
names. But there’s still a lot we don’t know, like
where the whales go and what they eat. Now that they’re
listed as endangered, those have become important
questions. Liam Moriarty accompanied a research
crew trying to get answers:

Killer whales are sloppy eaters, so one way to study their diet is to
scoop up the leftover crumbs. Robin Baird says another way is to
study what comes out the other end.

“And so we basically follow behind the whales and pick up whatever
they leave behind, so either bits of fish if they’re actually catching
prey, or fecal material which we can use to look at what they’re
feeding on using genetic analysis.”

Baird is a biologist with Cascadia Research in Olympia, Washington.

(outboard motorboat sounds up)

On this morning, Baird, biologist Brad Hanson, and several other
researchers are piled into a 19-foot inflatable boat. We’re heading out
from Friday Harbor, north of Seattle to look for whales. We head
toward the Canadian border, keeping our eyes peeled. A while later,
we locate a group of more than a dozen whales.

(boat slows down)

Now comes the tricky part. The game plan is to pick an animal to
follow, and hope it leaves a specimen in its wake.

Baird: “We’ll come along side this one, get an ID then we’ll start a
flukeprint on her.”

Whales are surfacing and diving all around us.

(whale exhalation)

Researchers call out sightings, directions and distances …

“Multiple targets. Two animals. (How far?) 100 meters.”

Robin Baird maneuvers the boat into the wake of a passing whale.

“Oh, fish in mouth! Eleven’s got … the male’s got a fish in mouth!”

Researcher Greg Shorr stands in a pulpit at the bow of the boat with
a long handled pool net, looking intently into the water for the telltale
glitter of fish scales.

“OK, dip!”

He dips the net and comes up with a few scales and bits of tissue.

(whale breath)

Soon we’re tracking other orcas.

Hanson: “Chase! Underwater chase, 12 o’clock! Another target up,
125 behind us at 5 o’clock … might be chasing something … Yep!
Definitely chasing something! Two animals back there, three
animals!”

We spend over an hour tailing whales and dipping pool nets that
mostly come up empty.
(whale breath)

Getting this up-close and personal with the whales would get anyone
who doesn’t have a federal research permit ticketed for whale
harassment … But this kind of work is one important way to get
information that could help save the orcas from extinction.
Eventually, the whales move on. We make the long trip back.

(boat motors up, fades)

(brewpub noise)

That evening, in a dockside brewpub, Brad Hanson and Robin Baird
reflect on the day’s work; twelve hours on often-choppy seas. Baird
says that’s what it takes to get close to the whales.

“If we want to be able to really understand what they’re doing, we
have to be able to see the fine details of their behavior. And the only
way we’re going to se those fine details is if we’re actually close
enough to see whether a whale has a fish in its mouth when it comes
up to the surface.”

Hanson says that approach is paying off.

“Some 30 years we’ve known all these individual animals and people
have spent a lot of time looking at them, but we are seeing things in
the last couple of years that other people have not seen.”

For instance, orcas sometimes play with their food or share prey with
each other. Analysis of fecal samples has pinpointed what kinds of
fish the whales eat, and when. Observations like these have given
researchers a better picture of how the animals interact with their
habitat. And that fills in a few more pieces of the puzzle they hope will
lead to recovery for the Pacific Northwest’s endangered killer
whales.

For The Environment Report, I’m Liam Moriarty.

Related Links