Biz/Tech
(2009-11-16)
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Computer and electronic components wait to be processed by a recycling machine at the Hewlett-Packard recycling facility in Roseville, Calif.
(AP Photo/Steve Yeater)
The industry lawsuit slams what it calls "draconian" requirements in the New York City program and estimates it would cost manufacturers over $200 million a year. Rick Goss is with the Information Technology Industry Council.
"What the city has done is completely unprecedented here," he says. "They are literally directing manufacturers to pay for private third-party haulers to provide door-to-door collection for residents in a city of nine million people."
Barbara Kyle is with the Electronic Take-Back Coalition in San Francisco. She's among the environmental activists who've fought to get e-waste laws passed around the country and sees the suit as an attack on the whole concept of producer responsibility.
"This is a lawsuit that basically says that it violates the U.S. Constitution for states to do what Washington did and say, We want to give the manufacturers the responsibility for taking back and recycling these products."
Kyle's group got dozens of officials from states with e-waste laws - including Washington - to sign onto a letter asking the industry to drop the suit. Brian Sullivan is one of those officials. The Snohomish County Councilmember was among the authors of Washington's e-waste law when he was the state legislature.
"We really need to take a look at that decision, should it go against us, on how that would affect the way our laws are set up."
The ITI's Rick Goss insists that the suit is aimed solely at New York City and that the industry has no intention to try to overturn Washington's e-waste law.
"We support producer responsibility," he says. "We understand and recognize that as manufacturers we have a role to play in offering our consumers options and solutions for used products here. But we don't have the only role to play."
That point is among the grounds on which the industry suit attacks New York's law: that it places all the costs of e-waste recycling on manufacturers. But so does Washington's law. The suit uses several constitutional arguments that could plausibly be used to challenge the right of Washington and other states to impose recycling requirements on electronic manufacturers.
Officials at the state Department of Ecology say Attorney General Rob McKenna has advised them to take a wait-and-see approach.
(CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the Information Technology Industry Council's Rick Goss as being with the Consumer Electronics Association, the other major industry plaintiff in the lawsuit) © Copyright 2012, KPLU
