Ban on electronics waste gets put on hold by agency

The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality will postpone banning electronic waste from landfills until a panel presents ideas for how the state can fund a recycling program for the potentially hazardous material, a spokesman for the regulatory agency said recently.

“ADEQ continues to work with a stakeholder group to determine the best way to fund and structure the management of electronic waste in Arkansas,” Aaron Sadler said. “We expect the group to finish work in the spring, in time to prepare possible draft legislation for the 2011session, if we determine that new legislation would be necessary to support an e-waste management program.”

In 2001, the Legislature passed the Arkansas Computer and Electronic Solid Waste Management Act, which gave the department power to prohibit such waste from landfills by Jan. 1, 2005. That deadline was deemed impractical and additional legislation changed the implementation date to Jan. 1, 2010.

Recycling programs are run by the state’s 18 regional solid waste management districts. The directors of the districts along with industry representatives havebeen studying ways to fund a statewide electronics waste recycling program.

According to the department’s State of Recycling report for 2007-2008, Arkansas recycled nearly 6 million pounds of electronics waste from July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008.

Many electronics contain elements like lead, mercury and cadmium that can be hazardous if disposed of in landfills where the chemicals can seep into the soil and groundwater. Televisions and cathode ray tube monitors contain an average of at least 4 pounds of lead and could contain more depending on size and make, according tothe department.

The state had a deal with the Texarkana, Texas, branch of UNICOR Federal Prison Industries Inc., for electronics recycling. In the arrangement UNICOR paid for shipping electronics to its recycling factory. At the factory, federal prisoners would refurbish or disassemble the electronics to salvage anything of value. However, on Nov. 1, the company stopped providing free shipping, prompting the Department of Environmental Quality to issue $584,000 in grants earlier this month to the regional waste management districts and other entities to help defray the cost of transporting the waste to Texarkana.

Sadler said there’s no real way to calculate shipping cost since each regional solid waste management district pays for transporting the waste. However, he said that the grants are meant to cover shipping costs for a year and range from $10,000 for the central Arkansas district to $85,000 for the Boston Mountain district in Northwest Arkansas.

Money for the grants comes from the Landfill Post-Closure Trust Fund - money set aside to clean up landfills once they close. The fund has a $25 million cap and any balance over $25 million can be diverted for electronics-waste disposal - at a rate of $1 per ton of waste going into landfills - until the funddrops to $15 million.

It is important that a new funding source be in place before the fund drops to $15 million, said Bill Burrough, sanitation director for the city of Hot Springs. He’s also chairman of the committee studying funding solutions.

Burrough said two options lead the discussion.

“Right now, there seems to be a lot of support for an advance recycling fee,” Burrough said. “We’re also discussing manufacturers’ responsibility fees, but theremay be something else out there that hasn’t been discussed.”

Burrough said out of about 19 states that have some sort of electronics-waste recycling fees, California is the only one that uses an advance fee. In such a system the consumer pays an additional fee when he buys electronics, similar to the disposal fee charged each time someone buys a tire.

The other states rely on manufacturers’ responsibility fees which can come in theform of requiring companies to buy and renew permits to sell their goods, Burrough said.

He said the panel’s next meeting is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Jan. 12 at the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality headquarters, 5301 Northshore Drive, in North Little Rock.

“ADEQ has made it clear that they plan to implement the ban at some point,” he said. “We’re working to make sure we have an infrastructure in place before then.”

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 19 on 12/27/2009

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