E-Waste Pickups ‘Exclusive Province’ of NYC Sanitation Workers, Union Says

The Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association has long been rumored to be upset that the city’s Department of Sanitation decided to entrust e-waste collections to CE makers through private contractors. The brief disclosed for the first time that the union has filed an “improper practice proceeding” with the city’s Office of Collective Bargaining.

Collecting residential waste, including e-waste, “is the exclusive province” of sanitation workers, the brief said. The union thinks that the department violated rules that “a public employer may not unilaterally subcontract or privatize work performed exclusively by civil servants in a particular bargaining unit,” the brief said. The union filed its collective-bargaining complaint in early August, about two weeks after CEA and the ITI Council filed the lawsuit. The city office has agreed not to rule on the complaint until after the judge decides on the injunction request, the brief said.

Defending against the lawsuit, the city and its co- defendant, the Natural Resources Defense Council, have “presented an inconsistent and distorted view” of the sanitation department’s “capacity to provide residential collection of ‘large’ e-waste,” the brief said. “At the same time, Defendants have also attempted to discount Plaintiffs’ claimed burdens under the law by suggesting alternative methods of compliance,” it said. “The connection Defendants avoid making is that these suggested methods for compliance could much more easily and cost effectively be applied to the Department than some unidentified hodgepodge of manufacturers and private carters or parcel service companies. Contrary to the Department’s obstructionist approach, there are no genuine obstacles to the Department providing e-waste residential collection at an acceptable cost to the manufacturers” in compliance with the city’s e-waste law, the brief said. Such a “municipal program” would not only “best comply” with the e-waste law’s goals, but also would “alleviate many of the burdensome aspects of the current rules complained of in this lawsuit,” the brief said.

If the law’s purpose “is to reduce the risk to workers and the public of potential exposure to hazardous materials contained within e-waste, there is no more qualified or appropriate work force to handle such items than they very men and women that have been handling it for years,” the brief said. It’s “far from a UPS or Federal Express employee’s usual task to handle, package or secure such waste,” it said. “It is not even clear they could perform these tasks without obtaining appropriate licensure.” Though many “private waste companies” operate in the city, “no one provider (nor, in all likelihood, all the providers together) could match the capacity and existing infrastructure of the Department, the largest municipal sanitation department in the country,” it said.

The union has met separately with representatives of the sanitation department and the organizations that filed the suit “to discuss its belief in the Department’s ability to efficiently implement municipal e-waste collection, with the manufacturers expressing apparent interest in its potential to lessen the burdens imposed by the law and the Department’s rules,” the brief said.

CEA and ITI met once with the union before filing their lawsuit July 24, “to understand better what services they have provided to residents in the past and what services they could continue to provide,” Parker Brugge, CEA’s vice president for environmental affairs and industry sustainability, told us in an e-mail. “We had been told by the Department that it was not feasible and not possible for the city to collect e-waste, a representation the union has thoroughly rebutted. We also asked the Department and the union to give us estimates on how much it would cost to provide this service. To date, we have not received estimates from either the Department or the union.”

The CE industry “has always been supportive of a shared responsibility approach to dealing with e-waste,” Brugge said. “Manufacturers are willing to play a role and be part of the solution, but should not be forced to take on all the burdens, and certainly not the burdens the city’s e-waste program imposes. But as we have consistently said, without knowing the costs and other details associated with having the City collect e-waste from its residents, we cannot agree to, in essence, signing a blank check.”

In states that run producer-responsibility e-waste programs, the costs for recycling run about 17-35 cents a pound, Brugge said. “Under the N.Y.C. program as it currently stands with direct collection, we estimate that the costs would be in the $1.00 to $1.50 per pound range,” he said. “The industry would be required to spend $200 million annually just in N.Y.C. This is unacceptable. In no other place in the world is direct collection a requirement. Instead, most jurisdictions require consumers to drop off their products at collection events or centralized locations or mail them back. If direct collection is offered, collectors and others are allowed to charge a fee.”

ITI and its member companies have “long said” they're willing “to discuss a rational and efficient shared responsibility approach to dealing with electronics recycling,” Rick Goss, the group’s vice president for environment and sustainability, told us in an e-mail. “This involves numerous issues, of which the scope and nature of collection activities are only a part. ITI’s focus at this time in the New York case is obtaining a preliminary injunction to spare the electronics industry, including their employees, customers, and other stakeholders, from the crushing and illegal mandates of the city’s e-waste program. We are pleased that the union and many others agree with us.”

NRDC lawyer Kate Sinding on Monday declined to comment on the union’s amicus brief, say she hadn’t had a chance to review it yet.