Waste News, March 14, 2005
National E-Waste Initiative Folds
By Joe Truini

The first multi-stakeholder electronics recycling dialogue officially is done.

Catherine Wilt, the University of Tennessee facilitator of the National Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative, notified stakeholders that the talks are finished.

"I´m officially declaring the collective stakeholder work of NEPSI over," she said in an e-mail.

The project´s aim was to address the rising tide of electronic waste and its accompanying environmental concerns such as the leaching of lead and mercury from components into groundwater after disposal.

NEPSI will be in a closure phase until April 15, though that date won´t necessarily close the lid on the effort.

"If at any point any stakeholder or stakeholder group wants to bring a proposal back to this group with a request to resurrect the NEPSI dialogue, nothing prohibits that action," Wilt said in the email.

"It was a very ambitious process," said Sheila Davis, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition in San Jose, Calif. "To get all those players to actually come to an agreement would´ve been difficult."

There was hope for substantial progress in February 2004 when the NEPSI group charged the Electronic Industries Alliance, which represents manufacturers, to agree on how to finance a national electronics recycling system. But deep disagreements between manufacturers on a visible fee at the point of sale or a system that would allow them to internalize costs created an impasse.

"I'm not surprised at all that NEPSI is dead," Davis said. "It was actually, in our opinion, dead last year at this time."

The Product Stewardship Institute, which represented local governments in the dialogue, is recommending state agencies look at ways, including legislation, to address electronic waste. California and Maine already have passed laws requiring manufacturers and retailers to fund recycling.

"It is good to have some definite closure, however, it´s somewhat anti-climactic," said Scott Cassel, Executive Director of the institute. "Manufacturers are missing a huge opportunity to develop electronics legislation that is consistent across the country."

Now it´s back to the drawing board for the industry, environmental groups and local governments to come up with a system to recycle electronics.

Though they couldn´t agree on a financial mechanism, manufacturers realize they have a role in developing recovery programs, said Richard Goss, director of environmental affairs for the EIA.

NEPSI stakeholders met for the first time in June 2001 with the goal of developing an electronics collection, reuse and recycling system that included a viable financing mechanism. Representatives from the groups met several times over the last four years and held numerous conference calls in an attempt to hammer out a consensus.

The popularity of electronics and its resulting waste continues to grow. In 2002, more than 50 percent of U.S. home owned a computer, with 46 million units sold that that year alone. However, only 10 percent of discarded computers are recycled, according to an environmental group.

Contact Waste News reporter Joe Truini at (330) 865-6166 or jtruini@crain.com