Oregon Eyes 25-45 Percent Hike in E-Waste Registration Fees
Oregon regulators are proposing a hefty registration fee hike for electronics makers to deal with growing deficits in the state’s e-waste recycling program. The Department of Environmental Quality has set up a committee comprising device makers and others involved to advise it on “options for revising the registration fees and developing a proposed fee structure that will cover DEQ’s costs for administering Oregon E-Cycles.” The department is looking at an increase of 25 to 45 percent, “depending on where we land with the committee in discussions,” Kathy Kiwala, E-Cycles program lead, told us.
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The proposed rise in registration fees would cover manufacturers that run their own e-waste program and device makers in the state-run program, Kiwala said. Revenue from the registration fee in the first three years of the program was “insufficient to cover start-up costs and on-going operations,” the department said in a document listing reasons for the fee increase. Proceeds from the fee in 2011 are not enough to meet the program’s operating costs, it said, leaving a total projected deficit in June 2012 of $294,105.
The E-Cycles program has been borrowing from other solid waste programs so far. “The way our law is written is that the registration fees are supposed to cover the administration costs and they never have,” said Kiwala. “So we have been running through loans from other funds in the solid waste program.” The DEQ is proposing the fee increase not only help to pay back the loans over a five-year period but also make the e-waste program “self-sustaining” in the future, she said. “So we would not get any supplemental support from the other fees like we are now."
The yield from registration fees fell from $388,000 in 2008 to $287,000 in 2011, with the number of registered manufacturers falling marginally from 172 to 169 during the same period, the DEQ said. The state has a four-tiered approach to charging the fee depending on the market share of manufacturers. The fees range from $15,000 for device makers with a market share of more than 1 percent to $40 for those with a market share of less than 0.01%. Expanding the number of tiers is among proposals on the table, Kiwala said.
At the first advisory meeting Tuesday in Portland there seemed to be support from manufacturers to base the registration fee on the market share weight of products sold in the state rather than the current market share units sold. That makes sense because the state sets collection and other goals based on pounds, said one executive. It’s not clear if the DEQ would have to get legislative assent for such a change, said Kiwala. The law specifies that the registration fees should be based on the number of units and “so we would have to go back and check with our attorney” to see if the DEQ could do it by regulation, she said.
Oregon’s funding problems are in contrast to California’s, where regulators approved a decrease in the recycling fees on new products that funds the state’s e-waste program. The fee reduction that took effect in January was proposed because the state had a substantial reserve fund. California was the first of 25 states to enact e-waste laws and the only one that adopted a consumer fee-based system to fund collection and recycling. The states use two different systems with different fee structures - Oregon’s is a producer responsibility model based on manufacturer registration fees and California’s on consumer fees.