GAO Reports on Export of Used Electronic Waste

According to GAO, the Environmental Protection Agency regulates the management of used electronics that qualify as hazardous waste. EPA’s efforts include (i) enforcing its January 29, 2007 final rule on the recycling and exporting of cathode-ray tubes (CRTs), which contain significant quantities of lead, and (ii) partnership programs that encourage voluntary efforts among manufacturers and other stakeholders.

This summary focuses on the export of used CRTs for recycling, as well as EPA’s efforts regarding legislation.²

2007 Rule Excludes Used CRTs as Solid Waste if Exported for Recycling

To encourage the recycling and reuse of used CRTs, EPA amended its hazardous waste regulations in January 2007 to exclude exported CRTs from the definition of solid waste, if certain conditions are met, and thereby from the regulations that apply to the management of hazardous waste.

The conditions include a requirement that exporters of used CRTs for recycling (i) notify EPA of an intended export before the shipments are scheduled to leave the U.S. and (ii) obtain consent from the importing country.

(In contrast, the 2007 rule allows exporters of used, intact CRTs for reuse to submit a one-time notification to EPA and are not required to obtain consent from the importing country.)

Enforcement of 2007 Rule Was Lax Until 2009

GAO reported in August 2008 that some companies had appeared to have easily circumvented the CRT rule, and that EPA had done little to enforce it. In particular, GAO posed as foreign buyers of broken CRTs, and 43 U.S. companies expressed a willingness to export these items, with some companies willing to bypass the regulations.

Since GAO’s prior report, EPA has initiated investigations and taken several enforcement actions against companies that have violated the notice-and-consent requirement for export of CRTs for recycling. For example, in December 2009, the agency issued an order seeking penalties of up to $37,500 per day to a company that failed to properly manage a shipment of waste CRTs. According to EPA, the company did not provide appropriate notice to the agency or to China, the receiving country, where customs authorities rejected the shipment. Similarly, in December 2009, EPA announced that two companies that failed to notify the agency or receive written consent from China of a shipment of waste CRTs for recycling entered agreements with EPA, with one company agreeing to pay a fine of over $21,000.

GAO Says a Number of Issues Still Need to be Addressed

Despite steps to strengthen enforcement of the CRT rule, issues related to CRT exports and to exports of other used electronics remain. These include:

Broken CRTs exported for reuse. As GAO reported in August 2008, exports of CRTs for reuse in developing countries have sometimes included broken units that are instead dumped.

EPA’s CRT rule does not allow such exports and requires that exporters keep copies of normal business records, such as contracts, demonstrating that each shipment of exported CRTs will be reused. However, the rule does not require exporters to test used equipment to verify that it is functional. Moreover, according to EPA, the agency has focused its investigations under the CRT rule on companies that have failed to provide export notifications altogether. In contrast, the agency has not yet conducted any follow-up on notifications of exports for reuse to protect against the dumping of nonworking CRTs in developing countries by ensuring that the CRTs companies are exporting are, in fact, suitable for reuse.

Cell phones need to be addressed. CRTs are the only electronic devices specifically regulated as hazardous waste under EPA’s Resource Conservation and Recovery Act regulations. Many other electronic devices, however, contain small amounts of toxic substances, and according to EPA, recent studies have shown that certain used electronics other than CRTs, such as some cell phones, sometime exceed the act’s regulatory criteria for toxicity when evaluated using hazardous waste test protocols. These other electronic products should be addressed.

Toxicity of complying exports. Because one of the purposes of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act is to promote reuse and recovery, EPA’s rules under the act exclude used electronics and disassembled component parts that are exported for reuse from the definition of “solid waste” and, therefore, from hazardous waste export requirements, regardless of whether the used electronics exceed the toxicity characteristic regulatory criteria.

GAO Recommends Regulating More Used Electronic Exports, Legislation

GAO discusses two recommendations from its August 2008 on how EPA can strengthen the federal role in reducing harmful exports, and EPA’s current views, as follows:

Regulating other used electronics. GAO had recommended that EPA consider ways to broaden its regulations under existing Resource Conservation and Recovery Act authority to address the export of used electronic devices that might not be classified as hazardous waste by current U.S. regulations but might threaten human health and the environment when unsafely disassembled overseas. For example, GAO suggested that EPA consider expanding the scope of the CRT rule to cover other exported used electronics and revising the regulatory definition of hazardous waste.

EPA officials told GAO that the agency is taking another look at its existing authorities to regulate exports of other used electronics.

Legislative proposal. GAO previously recommended that EPA submit to Congress a legislative proposal for ratification of the Basel Convention, a multilateral environmental agreement that aims to protect against the adverse effects resulting from transboundary movements of hazardous waste.

In May 2010, the EPA Administrator called for legislative changes to address exports and for taking steps toward ratification of the Basel Convention. EPA officials have cited a number of benefits of ratifying the Basel Convention, such as the ability to fully participate in convention decisions on issues related to the environmentally sound management of used electronics. For example, according to EPA officials, upcoming convention decisions on guidelines for environmentally sound refurbishment and repair will impact parties’ export of used electronics for reuse, which is regarded by refurbishers as environmentally preferable to recycling but also raises concerns about the dumping of used electronics in developing countries.

Basel Convention working groups on environmentally sound management are open to a range of participants that do not represent parties to the convention, including EPA, electronics manufacturers, electronics recyclers and refurbishers, and environmental groups. However, given that the U.S. is a signatory but not a party to the convention, the U.S. does not participate in the final decisions on issues such as environmentally sound management. EPA officials said they anticipate a number of such decisions in the next few years, especially regarding the transboundary movement of used and end-of-life electronics.

¹The report was provided to the Chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology.

²See report for details on national and state recycling efforts

July 28, 2006 EPA final rule available here.

(GAO-10-626, dated July 2010)