‘Irreparable Harm’ Looms With NYC E-Waste Law, Manufacturers Say

Sixteen sworn declarations, including statements from the top U.S. environmental executives at LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, TTE and Sony, accompanied the motion, all arguing that the e-waste law will doom small businesses or persuade others to abandon selling TVs or computers in New York’s five boroughs. The city and its Department of Sanitation have until Sept. 9 to oppose the motion, which CEA and ITI filed as a follow-up to their July 24 lawsuit that seeks to block enforcement of the e-waste law on the grounds that it would impose “crushing costs” on manufacturers (CED July 28 p2).

Denying the injunction that manufacturers seek would “have immediate and cascading economic impacts on hundreds of companies as they are forced to dedicate significant resources to develop an e-waste plan,” CEA and ITI told the court. “In contrast, temporarily enjoining the deadline for plan submissions will have no adverse impacts on the city,” they said. “The preliminary injunction would not defeat the overall purpose of the e-waste program because the ban on residential disposal of e-waste does not take effect until July 1, 2010.” Before the lawsuit, July 31 was the deadline for submitting those plans to the city and those that didn’t comply risked $1,000-a-day fines. Attorneys for the city and the manufacturers have agreed the deadline won’t be enforced for as long as the court considers the preliminary injunction motion.

The declarations from the seven manufacturers followed similar themes, but were far from identically worded. For example, Panasonic thinks it’s “unconscionable” that the e- waste law requires companies to collect unwanted electronics directly from city residents’ homes, wrote David Thompson, director of the company’s corporate environmental department. That’s because direct collections “would result in tens of thousands of additional truck rolls on New York City streets and the associated increase in greenhouse gas emissions,” Thompson said. Two years ago, Panasonic “committed to an absolute greenhouse gas emissions reduction of 300,000 tons from Panasonic factories worldwide by the end of fiscal year 2010,” he said. “That goal has already been achieved. The environmental damage of increased vehicle emissions and congestion is not offset by any significant improvement in how electronics currently are recycled and disposed of in New York.”

Michael Moss, Samsung senior manager of environmental compliance, said DSNY “appears to wrongly assume that electronics manufacturers like Samsung have logistical resources to implement this large program. To the contrary, Samsung, like most manufacturers, does not have an existing home delivery infrastructure upon which to build an efficient system for direct collection of e-waste from homes.” Samsung also fears the door-to-door collection requirement “will harm Samsung’s reputation among its customers and potential customers,” Moss said. Imagine, Moss suggested, that “if consumers are required to wait at home for hours for a collection agent to arrive, they may develop negative views of Samsung as a business, despite the fact that the company is not in the waste collection business.”

Complying with the New York City e-waste law for a year “could easily exceed” what Sony has spent running the successful Take Back program it launched with Waste Management two years ago, said Mark Small, Sony’s vice president, corporate environment safety and health. “Indeed, the excessive costs of the city’s e-waste program provides a substantial business disincentive for Sony to continue its voluntary electronics recycling efforts, especially given the confusion that two different programs will foster among consumers,” Small said. “This will have the direct opposite effect of the e-waste law’s goal, resulting in fewer, not more products, being recycled.” Sony “has spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours” to be sure its Take Back program “meets the highest standards of collection and recycling,” Small said. “Sony will lose, at a minimum, a substantial portion of this monetary and time investment in order to reshape its program and divert resources to comply with the city’s e-waste program.”

Based on the estimated installed base of Zenith-, Goldstar- and LG-branded products, LG Electronics thinks it will have to pick up as many as 60,000 old TVs and monitors from New York City residents per year under the e-waste law, said Environmental Manager Timothy McGrady. “As concerns the number of trucks required for pickups,” McGrady said, the company “can only guess at that number, since the number of products returned depends entirely on the decisions of New York City residents and has nothing to do with the number of products being sold in New York City at this time.” Were LG to “finance and develop its own collection system, it would have to purchase trucks or vans, hire employees to drive the vehicles and make collections, rent warehouse space for aggregation of the electronics, and then transport them to properly licensed recyclers,” McGrady said. The annual cost “would be high in the aggregate, and on a per-unit basis,” he said.

It would cost manufacturers $121.04 to pick up the average piece of e-waste weighing over 15 pounds, said consultant Daniel Butturini, who said he was hired by CEA and ITI for $350 an hour to write his declaration and do his analysis. The estimate assumes two-man non-union crews driving the 26-foot box trucks with lift-gate capabilities that would be required to handle items as large and bulky as big-screen TVs or projection sets weighing up to 175 pounds, Butturini said. “The total number of large units subject to collection each year will be approximately 1.29 million e- waste items,” weighing 37 pounds on average, he said. He estimates the annual cost to manufacturers of direct collection of large e-waste items will be $173.4 million, he said.

“Adding in the estimated cost to manufacturers associated with the collection of small items through mail- back and drop-off programs of $40.1 million, the total cost to manufacturers to comply with the NYC e-waste program’s collection requirements for residents will easily be $213.5 million annually,” Butturini said. “Significantly, this estimated total annual collection cost does not include the additional expense of recycling those collected e-waste items. It is also significant that my above-referenced estimate of manufacturer costs does not account for the stock piles of e-waste in storage, in closets, basements, and small business warehouses around the city. Nationally, the EPA estimates that there are 135 million e-waste units in storage, which according to my calculations would be approximately 1.89 million units in NYC. The stored e-waste items will likely flood the system in the third year of the NYC e-waste plan when residents and businesses become aware of the manufacturers’ obligation to collect such material.” - - Paul Gluckman