Last week, the City Council held hearings on Intro 104, a law designed to provide a comprehensive electronic waste recycling system for the city. The law would enact extended producer responsibility to computer and television manufacturers, requiring them to collect and recycle a specified percentage of their units sold in the city, as well as a pro rata share of "orphan" e-waste.
The percentage required to be recycled or reused would begin at 30 percent in 2010 and rise to 80 percent by 2018. Manufacturers who fail to comply will be prohibited from selling their products in the city.
The law is aimed to prevent pollution as well as conserve natural resources. Currently, e-waste is growing three times as fast as the rest of the municipal waste stream, and causes toxic substances, including lead and mercury, to enter the environment either through landfill disposal (in states NYC's waste goes to) or incineration (only 10 miles away from NYC). On the other hand, computer scrap contains 17 times more gold by weight than mined ore, and yields such recyclable precious metals with 80-85 percent less energy use.
Some computer manufacturers, like HP and Apple, have already taken steps toward take-back programs in the U.S, but only four states (California, Maryland, Washington and Maine) currently have an e-cycling law in place (30 other states have proposed legislation). Most experts agree that optimally, a federal e-waste law could sync all the state laws and provide efficiencies for manufacturers, but no federal law is expected in the near future.
Public comments at the hearing on Intro 104 were supportive, and offered some ways of altering or improving the proposed bill. The Manhattan Borough President's office noted that e-waste, even when supposedly destined for recycling, is often dumped in developing countries, and the new law should explicitly bar such dumping. The Council of State Governments, which has developed more sophistocated model e-waste legislation, argued that the percentage goals were unrealistic, noting that established programs only collect close to 30 percent of e-waste for recycling. Instead, CSG suggested, the city should use a "recycling ratio", which would also eliminate the need to separately consider orphan waste.
Whether these comments are integrated into the bill remains to be seen. Regardless, Intro 104 represents a market-based approach to encouage development of an e-recycling infrastructure and economy, and should encourage manufacturers to design their products with less toxic and more reusable elements.
