Resolving NYC E-Waste Impasse May Mean New Look at Sanitation Workers’ Role

The proposal was offered last summer by City Council Member Bill de Blasio, a Brooklyn Democrat, who sponsored the e-waste bill that became law two years ago. It would assign city sanitation workers to collect from homes e-waste weighing more than 15 pounds. The city would bill manufacturers the cost of the pickups. Under Department of Sanitation rules published in April, manufacturers are responsible for collecting e-waste from homes. Manufacturers have called the requirement too burdensome and sued the city July 24 to stop the program from taking effect.

Several roadblocks have kept de Blasio’s proposal from going anywhere. One was insistence by the manufacturers that they wouldn’t agree to pay the costs of collections until they knew what the costs were. But according to the manufacturers and de Blasio’s office, the city has refused to provide estimates and has rebuffed many requests by the manufacturers for discussions. And it’s unknown whether a city of New York’s size can account for the collection costs. Another complication: Some CE and IT companies have hinted that they'll oppose any requirement for them to pay the city for e-waste collections when manufacturers of discarded washing machines and refrigerators don’t have to. City sanitation workers will continue collecting the appliances long after New York’s e-waste law takes effect, at no cost to their manufacturers.

If a decision by the city to release cost estimates to CEA and ITI would be step one in reaching a compromise, step two would be for the Department of Sanitation to drop its opposition to curbside collection of e-waste. Under New York City law, any household trash left curbside is the exclusive domain of city sanitation workers. CEA and ITI officials say the curbside ban in the department’s e-waste rules was the department’s crafty way of “writing itself out of the law."

The department’s making manufacturers responsible for “direct collection” of e-waste from homes is what CEA and ITI have called “uniquely objectionable” about New York’s law. At the program’s peak, manufacturers have said, the requirement will add hundreds of truck rolls to the city’s congested streets and cost industry $200 million or more a year. But manufacturers’ reading of the direct-collection rule as requiring on-demand pickup of e-waste is “absurd,” a senior NRDC attorney told reporters last month. In fact, the council and other green groups say, the department’s rules include no such requirement. They say the rules give manufacturers maximum flexibility in meeting their e-waste targets, including by running weekend dropoff events and collecting discarded TVs and computers through reverse logistics -- so a truck that delivers a new flat-panel TV in time for Super Bowl Sunday doesn’t have to return to the warehouse empty.

"Convenient collection,” as written into the New York City e-waste law, is defined in the department’s final rules, published in April 2009, as “direct collection from a resident’s home in the City, which may include a postal or parcel service but need not include collection from inside such home.” The rules make clear that direct collection “may not include collection of electronic equipment left for collection at the curbside.” The department’s “statement of basis and purpose” says that “because of the unique characteristics of New York City, including the low percentage of citizens with access to vehicles, it is critical that convenient collection be defined in a manner that makes disposing of unwanted covered electronic equipment as easy as possible for the citizens of New York City.” Manufacturers have countered that another unique feature of life in the city is its concentration of high-rise apartment buildings with porters and superintendents who could haul the e-waste curbside if curbside collections were allowed.

The department’s stand on direct collections and its ban on curbside pickups has landed it in hot water with the city sanitation workers’ union, which last summer filed a grievance with the city’s labor relations board. Its complaint alleges that the department’s direct-collection rule violates its collective-bargaining agreement with the city and its ban on privatizing municipal workers’ jobs. A decision on the complaint has been stayed until the CEA-ITI lawsuit against the city is decided.

The department “does not have the infrastructure or equipment to collect electronic waste,” Robert Lange, director of its Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse and Recycling, said in October court papers opposing manufacturers’ motion for a preliminary injunction. The department does have a system for dealing with the hazardous gases in major appliances, he said. Department “representatives in small vehicles drain the gases from an appliance, and then the remaining equipment is picked up by compactor trucks along with other recyclable metal, glass, and plastic,” Lange said. “Such a method could not be utilized for the recycling of electronic waste. The Department would be unable to remove the various hazardous materials contained in covered electronic equipment. Moreover, the purpose of an electronic equipment recycling program is to leave the equipment intact for recycling purposes."

Not so, responded Harry Nespoli, president of the city’s sanitation workers’ union, in a December friend-of-the-court brief supporting the injunction request. “While Sanitation Workers have been handling e-waste, including televisions, for decades without apparent incident, the Union does not propose that e-waste should continue to be compacted like other waste,” he said. “Rather, like with collection of refrigerators, the Department would simply need to establish appropriate protocols for the collection of e-waste and training for Sanitation Workers, allowing the Department to quickly and cost-effectively absorb the change in handling attendant to the designation of e-waste as recyclable while at the same time generating revenue for the City” in the form of reimbursements from manufacturers, Nespoli said. Although the department is correct that it’s not “feasible” for sanitation workers to remove hazardous materials in e-waste before it’s collected, as the department does with refrigerators, “it fails to acknowledge that such removal is not necessary,” he said.

In Maine, which has had a strong e-waste law since 2006, municipal sanitation workers collect household e-waste. But manufacturers “are individually responsible for the costs of handling and recycling of all Maine household-generated televisions, computer monitors, desktop printers and game consoles managed by approved consolidators,” says the state’s Department of Environmental Protection.

Though the Maine and New York City laws are vastly different, a common thread is a requirement that e-waste collections be “convenient.” Municipalities, consolidators, manufacturers and the state “share responsibility for the disposal of covered electronic devices,” the law says. “Each municipality that chooses to participate in the state collection and recycling system shall ensure that computer monitors, televisions, desktop printers and video game consoles generated as waste from households within that municipality’s jurisdiction are delivered to a consolidation facility in this State. A municipality may meet this requirement through collection at and transportation from a local or regional solid waste transfer station or recycling facility, by contracting with a disposal facility to accept waste directly from the municipality’s residents or through curbside pickup or other convenient collection and transportation system.” Nowhere in the Maine law is convenient collection defined as direct collection from a home, as it is in New York.

Early indications are that Maine’s law has been a success, the state DEP said in a Jan. 15 report that recommended changes to streamline the program. “The amount of e-waste recycled from households has increased significantly in each of the first three years of operation,” the report said. Mainers recycled 3.2 pounds of e-waste each on average in 2006, 3.61 in 2007 and 4.06 in 2008, and they were on track to recycle more than 6 pounds in 2009, it said. “Using conservative assumptions, the DEP estimates the capture rate for household computer monitors and televisions available for recycling in 2006 at 43 and 44 percent, respectively. This capture rate increased in 2008 to 50 percent of computer monitors and 51 percent of televisions.”