Maine has recently passed e-waste legislation promising to reduce the environmental hazards and ultimately lower the costs associated with computer manufacture and recycling. First implemented in Europe over ten years ago, this type of legislative effort is leading edge in North America.
One result of the measure will be to reduce the extent to which Mainers who do not buy, sell, manufacture or directly use specified electronic goods are required to pay the “end-of-life” costs of such items through tax revenues. Rather than adding new costs to the necessary process of recycling a variety of specified “enclosed electronic devices”, public law LD 1892 seeks to have manufacturers, retailers and users pay a fairer share of these costs.
I just read all eleven pages of the recently passed legislation appropriately titled “An Act To Protect Public Health and the Environment by Providing for a System of Shared Responsibility for the Safe Collection and Recycling of Electronic Waste”. The law is an astonishing document that promises great improvements over what currently happens to some electronic waste.
Free market forces had their chance to adequately address the growing e-waste problem and failed. The “invisible hand” of our far from “free” market has too often mishandled unwanted electronic devices. Many computers and monitors have chased the proverbial cheapest dollar to foreign lands where, as was described in horrifying detail in a Barron’s Weekly article, toxic motherboards have been roasted over open fires in a deadly effort to recover saleable metals.
The bill places the costs of handling e-waste in the hands of those that directly benefit from its manufacture, sale and use. It manages to do this in such a fashion that there will no longer be an incentive to dump “difficult to dispose of” e-waste in a ditch at the end of a logging road. Maine doesn’t need anymore superfund sites. Everyone, certainly the manufacturers of short-lived electronics, understand that there are costs associated with “end of life management.”
This act is a good faith attempt to “internalize” these costs – to correct one of the marketplace distortions about the true cost of an item and add the cost of recycling the item onto the purchase price. Ideally, items that are more expensive to recycle would have their higher recycling costs “internalized” in the purchase price. This gives consumers cost information they need to make a more accurate decision about what device is the better deal.
As of January 1, 2005, the bill puts an “advanced recovery” fee of $6.00 on televisions sold in the state. This is not all that different than our five-cent deposit on most beverage containers. In spite of the bottle bill’s faults (the primary ones being that the deposit is too low and not in effect nationwide) the deposit law works.
States that require deposits have significantly higher recovery rates for cans and bottles than do states having no “bottle bill”. The hazardous components of televisions pose a much greater threat to the health and safety of Mainers than do aluminum cans or PETE bottles and such e-waste should be handled responsibly.
This bill takes Maine a giant step ahead of the rest of the nation to ensure that our e-waste will be properly managed. Within certain reasonable parameters, the mechanism by which manufacturers handle their devices is left largely up to them. In a letter to the Legislature supporting the bill, Hewlett-Packard, a leading computer manufacturer, explained that the bill “establishes a system that will help drive environmental improvements while keeping costs to a minimum for consumers in Maine.”
Electronics companies that design devices that are less costly to recycle will have a market advantage that will quickly be matched by other successful manufacturers. We will all benefit.
Maine’s e-waste legislation is part of a process that promises to benefit all Maine residents. Mainers can be proud that they are leading the nation toward a more equitable, healthier future.