CE, IT Groups Seek ‘Reasonable’ Alternative to NYC E-Waste Collection Mandate
CEA and the Information Technology Industry (ITI) Council want to work with the New York City Sanitation Department to explore ways to resolve the e-waste standoff, a CEA official said. “We have been trying to set up meetings and have discussions with the Sanitation Department to hopefully agree on something more reasonable,” said Parker Brugge, CEA’s vice president of environmental affairs. The trade groups have filed a lawsuit challenging the city’s e- waste rules (CED July 27 p1).
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CEA and ITI had suggested to the city that “setting up a totally new collection infrastructure just doesn’t make sense,” said Brugge. “It would add to the traffic and the environmental impact on the city by putting new trucks on the street.” The industry thinks it would make “some sense” to make use of the city’s infrastructure “in terms of collecting refrigerators and large appliances, which it’s already doing, he said. The groups have sought information from the city on how much it would cost, he said “We haven’t received any of that information yet.”
Brugge said the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) at one stage had offered to support manufacturers paying the city to collect covered electronics. “For us without knowing what that cost is we certainly couldn’t agree to that,” Brugge added. The NRDC has “always said we would be open to a scenario where manufacturers paid the City to do the collection but the city Sanitation Department has been dead- set against that approach,” said Kate Sinding, a senior attorney at NRDC. “Bottom line is manufacturers have to bear the costs of collecting and handling the spent electronics they produce,” she said. The NRDC has pro bono counsel assisting it in the e-waste suit, she said. “We are not going to oppose NRDC intervening in the case,” said Brugge.
Brugge said he expects a hearing on the case in November or early December. The industry did not oppose a request by the city for extension of time to file their response to the lawsuit, he said. U.S. District Judge William Pauley last week gave the city an extra month to file opposition papers (CED Aug 25 p5).
Meanwhile, the Electronics TakeBack Campaign called the industry lawsuit “an attack on producer responsibility.” The industry is “challenging the constitutional nature of the states’ ability to legislate” on e-waste, said Barbara Kyle, the group’s national coordinator. “While PR-wise they talk about it being about the collection issue, when you look at the papers that is not it at all,” she said. Calling the lawsuit a “full scale national attack” on producer responsibility, Kyle said it was “unfortunate because some of the same companies lobbied for producer responsibility.”
Contrary to the Electronics TakeBack Coalition’s claims, the industry’s “goal in filing this lawsuit remains to challenge the legality of the New York City law and its regulations,” said Brugge. The city’s regulations are so onerous that they “actually redefine the concept of producer responsibility,” he said. The regulations not only require that manufacturers go door-to-door to collect products from residents, but also mandate that “they bear the responsibility and costs for collecting their competitors’ products,” he said. “There is no city, state or country in the world that has taken producer responsibility to such an extreme.” In addition to working with state and local governments to comply with various state recycling mandates, CE makers have created voluntary national recycling programs for consumers, he said.