ewaste_legislation

AN ACT PROVIDING FOR PRODUCER FINANCED COLLECTION, TREATMENT, AND RECYCLING OF ELECTRONIC WASTE

FINDINGS:

WHEREAS, due to the increased sales and shorter life spans of personal computers and consumer electronics, and due to the absence of a recycling infrastructure to process obsolete and discarded equipment, substantial quantities of obsolete and discarded equipment are stockpiled in homes, warehouses, buildings, and offices in this state and across the United States;

WHEREAS, these products contain lead, mercury, chromium, cadmium, polyvinyl chloride, mixed plastics, beryllium, brominated flame retardants, and other hazardous substances, and therefore pose a threat to human health and the environment if improperly disposed of at the end of their useful life. For example, the National Safety Council estimates that between 315 million to 500 million computers that have or will become obsolete within the next five years contain 1.2 billion pounds of mercury and 2 billion pounds of lead; lead exposure causes brain damage in children and has been banned from consumer products; mercury is toxic in low doses, causes brain and kidney damage, and can be passed on through breast milk; beryllium has recently been classified as a human carcinogen; and brominated flame retardants may seriously affect hormonal functions critical for normal development;

WHEREAS, at present, brand owners, producers, and original equipment manufacturers bear none of the burden or responsibility for safely managing discarded electronic equipment at the end of its useful life, burdening taxpayers, local governments, and end users with these costs and responsibilities;

WHEREAS, the full extent of the public health threat and environmental contamination resulting from electronic equipment entering the waste stream through disposal into landfills or incinerators is unknown, but it is estimated that forty percent of the heavy metals in municipal landfills comes from electronic discards;

WHEREAS, less than ten percent of discarded computers are currently recycled, with the remainder stockpiled or improperly disposed of while large quantities of the toxic equipment intended for recycling are shipped overseas for dismantling under dangerous conditions and many domestic processors can not attest to the ultimate disposal of the materials collected;

WHEREAS, under federal law, cathode ray tubes (CRTs) found in computer monitors and televisions discarded by institutions and larger businesses (but not from households) are prohibited from disposal through the municipal waste stream;

WHEREAS, in the European Union, brand owners, producers, and original equipment manufacturers bear financial responsibility for the environmentally superior management of discarded and obsolete electronic equipment; and has mandated that brand owners, producers, and original equipment manufacturers must begin a sequenced phase-out of several of the most hazardous materials from their products to eliminate the public health and environmental threats posed by the life cycle of the product;

THEREFORE, in order to safeguard the health and well being of the residents, the environment, and the natural resources of this state, and to reduce the financial burden imposed on taxpayers, BE IT ENACTED:

As used in this Act, the following terms shall have the meaning provided for herein:

(A) “Producer” means any person or entity, irrespective of the sales techniques or channels used to sell its products, including means of distance communication, that:

“Electronic equipment” means equipment which is dependent on electric currents or electromagnetic fields in order to work properly, contains a circuit board, and contains one or more hazardous substances including lead, mercury, cadmium, beryllium, hexavalent chromium, or brominated flame retardants, and such other hazardous substances as may be determined by the <authorized regulatory official>.

(C) “Electronic waste” means electronic equipment which has been discarded, become obsolete, ceased to function, is no longer wanted by its owner or, for any other reason, enters the collection, recovery, treatment, processing, or recycling system.

(D) “Orphan waste” means electronic waste manufactured by or bearing the brand name of a company which is no longer in business as of the effective date this Act.

(E) “Historic waste” means electronic equipment which became electronic waste prior to the effective date of this Act, the producer of which is still in business.

(F) “Plan” means the plan for producer financed collection, recovery, and recycling of electronic waste as provided for in Section 2.

(G) “Recycling” means the reprocessing of the waste materials for the original purpose or for other purposes, but excluding energy recovery or energy generation by means of combusting electronic waste with or without other waste.

(H) “Re-use” means any operation by which electronic waste or components thereof are used for the same purpose for which they were conceived, including the continued use of the equipment or components thereof which are returned to collection points, recyclers, or producers.

(I) “Effective Date of Financial Obligation” means a date 24 months after the passage of this Act, or the date on which producers implement their financial responsibility Plan, whichever comes first.

Section 2. Financial Responsibility of Producers; Submission and Approval of Financial Responsibility Plan.

(A) Producers are responsible for financing the environmentally sound management of the waste from their own products, but may execute this obligation through collective or individual financing schemes.

(B) The responsibility for financing the management of orphan and historic waste equipment shall be shared proportionally to each producer’s respective share of the market, by product type, at the time waste management costs are incurred. This proportional responsibility for orphan and historic waste may be adjusted by the [state environmental agency] on an annual basis.

(C) Consumers and equipment end users may be responsible for delivering electronic waste into the collection system, as may be provided for in the producer’s program Plan, though producers are encouraged to include direct collection or reverse delivery systems in the recovery and reverse logistics systems. Consumers must be able to return electronic waste free of charge.

(D) Within 18 months following passage of this Act, producers of electronic equipment sold in this state shall submit to the <state environmental agency> for approval a program Plan designed to meet their responsibilities under this Act. In order to be approved, such a Plan must, at a minimum, provide for the following:

(E) Along with the Plan, producers shall submit a fee of <recommend a fee sufficient to offset costs to the department of reviewing and enforcing the Plans> to the Department, to ensure that costs for program evaluation, enforcement, or for the management of orphan and historic waste are not borne by taxpayers.

States may include a budget appropriation in lieu of or, in addition to, a fee program. States may also wish to require producers to post a bond to ensure that costs related to this Act, including the management of orphan and historic waste, are not borne by the taxpayers.

(F) Within 12 months following approval of their Plan, producers, as defined herein, shall be responsible for implementing their approved program Plan.

(A) Electronic equipment and electronic waste covered by this Act may not be disposed of in landfills, incinerators, cement kilns, or other forms of energy recovery or energy generation dependent on combustion of waste.

(B) This ban on disposal shall apply to whole units of electronic waste as well as to the constituent sub-units and/or materials from which the units are made.

(A) Electronic equipment sold in this state must be clearly marked and/or labeled, or informational materials provided with the new product, providing consumers and end users with information relating to the following:

(B) As part of an approved program Plan, a producer selling electronic equipment in this state must take appropriate steps to implement a consumer education plan that is designed to help consumers and users of electronic equipment understand:

(C) Within 24 months following implementation of the producer’s Plan, each producer must demonstrate that it has achieved a level of 60% public awareness of the program for each of its covered product categories through independent public polling. Producers may collectively undertake such a demonstration of public awareness so long as the polling instrument is designed to identify public awareness of a majority of producers’ programs or a majority of the electronic equipment types covered by this Act. The design, protocols, and implementation plan for the opinion polling required in this section must be approved by the <state environmental agency>.

(D) As part of an approved program Plan and, in order to facilitate the correct and environmentally sound treatment of electronic waste, producers must demonstrate adequate measures to provide information to recyclers and processors for their electronic equipment. Within one year after new electronic equipment enters the market, producers shall provide new information to recyclers and processors regarding the end of life treatment of the new product relating to disassembly, material content, and safety concerns.

(A) Equipment recovery and recycling.
[Note: several models have been suggested for measuring performance of the producer financed recovery and recycling systems. Suggested here are a hybrid approach and an alternative that may be adapted to suit the needs of rural and/or non-metro areas.]

Level of service and convenience: Producers selling electronic products in this state under an approved Plan for producer financed collection, recovery, and recycling of electronic waste must provide:

(B) Worker health and safety protections. All persons collecting, recovering, and recycling electronic waste as part of an approved producer financed Plan must protect the health and safety of their workers and contractors by:

No Plan for producer financed collection, recovery and recycling of electronic waste may include reliance on prison labor.

No Plan for producer financed collection, recovery, and recycling of electronic waste may include reliance on prison labor unless all incarcerated workers involved in the processing and recycling of electronic waste are provided with compensation equivalent to market rate wages for the work performed, and are afforded the protections of state occupational safety and health laws and regulations, as well as the additional worker safety and health protections required by this section.

(D) Ban on Hazardous Waste Export. In order to be approved by <state environmental agency>, a producer’s program Plan for financing the collection, recovery, treatment, processing, and recycling of electronic waste must forbid the export of electronic waste to non-OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. As part of their annual program reports to <state environmental agency>, producers must document that the program has not resulted in the overseas export of electronic waste to any non-OECD country.

(A) Program Plans required under Section 2 shall be submitted to, reviewed by, and approved by <state environmental agency>. Plans will be evaluated based upon their sufficiency in light of all the required elements; the <state environmental agency> shall develop a means for scoring initial submissions and providing feedback to producers for integration into their final Plans. The <state environmental agency> shall review program Plans in a timely manner, and shall complete review of a program Plan with six months of its submission date.

(B) Reports detailing performance of the producer’s financial responsibility program and detailing compliance with all the requirements set forth above must be submitted annually to the <state environmental agency>. All such reports are to be reviewed within six months of their submission and notices of deficiency or non-compliance provided by <the state agency> to producers by the end of the following quarter.

(C) Annual reports required under this section and all other reports outlining the results of producer’s program for the current year and two prior years must be made available to the general public through the internet, on the producer's web site as well as the state environmental agency’s website.

(D) The state may establish a multi-stakeholder Oversight and Advisory Committee to oversee program Plan implementation, review annual reports, and recommend additions or modifications to, or deletions from, the requirements of this Act.

(A) If any provision of this Act, or the application thereof, to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the invalidity shall not affect other provisions or applications of this Act which can be given effect without regard to the invalid provision or application and, to this end, the provisions of this Act are severable.