Planning to buy a new big screen television or computer monitor? Get ready to pony up to the state, at least in California.
Golden State residents may soon be among the first in the nation to pay up to a $30 recycling fee when they buy new computer monitors and televisions under a bill that is nearing final action in the Legislature later this month. Equipment retailers would send that fee to the state, which would use the funds – projected to total up to $240 million a year – to support recycling programs for the devices.
As the legislative session winds up in Sacramento, the battle over the fee, which already has been approved by the Senate and is pending in the Assembly, pits environmental groups, cities, and human rights activists against the electronics industry, much of which is centered in the Golden State’s own Silicon Valley.
Spurred by concerns over the health threat posed by improper handling and disposal of the five to eight pounds of toxic lead in the average television and computer terminal, the state banned dumping the devices in landfills last August under emergency regulations. However, the rules allowed businesses and households to stockpile the devices until state environmental officials could develop permanent regulations.
Final rules are pending issuance late this year and municipalities, the state’s primary waste collectors, are worried they will be stuck with the tab for proper disposal of a flood of electronic waste if the bill -- S.B. 1523, sponsored by Sen. Byron Sher (D-Palo Alto) -- fails.
“Local governments cannot afford to be deep pockets when it comes to the recycling and disposal of millions of tons of electronic waste hitting our streets,” said San Francisco Supervisor Sophie Maxwell this morning. “We will act to protect our governments and local taxpayers from these huge new costs.”
At a press conference at San Francisco City Hall, Maxwell was joined by San Jose City Council Member Linda LeZotte and other municipal officials who promised to introduce city ordinances that would require electronics stores to take back and recycle worn out televisions, computer terminals, and other devices at their own expense unless state lawmakers approve the recycling fee this month before adjourning to hit the campaign trail.
The fee would be another in a series of recycling and disposal charges Californians pay to the state for everything from soda cans and beer bottles to car batteries and tires. Moreover, state officials say that if law makers approve the electronic-waste recycling fee, it likely will eventually apply to a wide array of products.
“The suspicion is that most of the electronic waste will be hazardous when it’s tested,” said Charles Corcoran, chief of waste identification and recycling for the state Department of Toxic Substances Control. Cellular phones and ink jet printers already are considered hazardous wastes under federal rules, he noted.
Aside from lead – which has been banned from paint and gasoline because of its affects on the nervous system, including causing long-term learning disabilities in children – electronic devices contain a number of other highly toxic materials, such as, polychlorinated biphenyls, cadmium, mercury, and arsenic, according to the Integrated Waste Management Board.
The Electronic Industries Alliance has warned that California’s economy could suffer under the measure as consumers balk at paying higher prices for new products. This would hurt businesses and decrease sales tax revenues, the alliance maintains.
A survey of “on-line” California households by the alliance earlier this year showed that consumers would be increasingly unlikely to purchase new electronics if faced by recycling charges. A fee of $20, the survey found, “would decrease the likelihood of buying” among 74% of those surveyed. Yet, 78% of those surveyed said they considered it “important” to recycle electronic waste.
The Washington, D.C.-based trade group favors a voluntary approach to recycling. “We need to ensure that any solution addresses the needs of the consumer,” said Heather Bowman, director of environmental policy for the group.
Environmental groups counter that a voluntary approach would not adequately protect health in a state where so many have their eyes glued to the screen.
Last year, says the state’s Integrated Waste Management Board, state residents bought some 3.3 million new televisions and almost 5.4 million computer monitors.
The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition estimates that the average California household may have up to three obsolete computer devices at home. The price tag for recycling and properly disposing of stockpiled devices and those discarded over the next five years could be up to $1 billion.
To avoid the expense of proper recycling in the United States, recyclers have been shipping discarded electronic equipment to China and other nations abroad, where laborers, including children, making $1.50 a day rip it apart without protective equipment to salvage metals and then burn the remains, according to a report by the Basel Action Network and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition released earlier this year.
Establishing a recycling fee will help internalize the cost of disposing of electronics, says Jim Puckett, coordinator of the Basel Action Network in Seattle, and provide an incentive for manufacturers to develop products with fewer toxic materials. “Until you close off the dirty escape valve, there is nothing driving upstream changes,” said Puckett.
Environmentalists and human rights activists hope that the California recycling fee measure will prevent recyclers receiving state money from shipping discarded electronic equipment abroad for disassembly or disposal. Such a requirement, they point out, would be in line with the Basel Convention, a 1989 treaty never ratified by the United States that seeks to prevent wealthy countries from exporting their hazardous waste to poor nations.
One organization poised to disassemble and recycle electronic waste in California is UNICOR, the federal prison industries corporation.
In June, UNICOR opened its first full-scale electronics recycling plant at the federal penitentiary in Atwater, Calif., outside Merced, according to Larry Novicky, general manager of UNICOR’s recycling business group. Since then, 168 inmates have been disassembling 2,000 computer monitors and televisions a day.
Novicky said that the facility hopes to process 5,000 units by the end of the year and open a second facility when a new federal prison is completed in Victorville, Calif., which lies in the high desert outside Los Angeles.
Inmates working for UNICOR earn about $40 a month, according to Global Exchange, a San Francisco Bay area international human rights and economic justice group.
However, Novicky says that by working, inmates are learning valuable job skills that will help them lead productive lives when released from prison.