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.