[00:00.000 --> 00:06.200]  ...power, so I had to shut it down, then start it up again, so... here we go.
[00:08.100 --> 00:09.440]  Okay, we're ready in a minute.
[00:09.620 --> 00:09.760]  Okay.
[00:17.820 --> 00:19.400]  Of course, the screen all changed.
[00:23.560 --> 00:25.240]  Okay, my name is John McNabb.
[00:25.360 --> 00:28.360]  I'm giving a talk on electronic take-back, which I'll explain.
[00:30.820 --> 00:32.800]  I'm an IT pro in the Boston area.
[00:32.800 --> 00:36.560]  I do tech support for a major bank that I probably shouldn't name.
[00:36.560 --> 00:37.560]  They don't know that I'm here.
[00:38.320 --> 00:51.080]  I worked on this issue for Clean Water Action in Massachusetts from 1999 to 2009 and worked on the issue in trying to pass legislation on this subject in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut and helped in national issues.
[00:51.800 --> 01:00.700]  Wrote a report for Clean Water Action that's been cited across the world because back in 2001 there really weren't that much written on the subject.
[01:00.700 --> 01:01.660]  There's a lot more now.
[01:01.660 --> 01:04.980]  I'm a founding member of the National Electronics Take Back Campaign.
[01:06.100 --> 01:22.000]  In the early 90s, the EPA tried to get a national dialogue established to get industry and governments and organizations like Clean Water Action to agree on a national strategy for having companies pay for the collection and recycling of used electronics,
[01:22.000 --> 01:23.340]  and that fell through.
[01:24.260 --> 01:27.040]  So there's no national plan, but I'll get to that.
[01:27.380 --> 01:35.200]  I've had a role in Celsure Recycling Cooperative forming it, so in solid waste, which this issue is related to.
[01:35.440 --> 01:42.640]  I work with the Mass Department of Environmental Protection, and I'm speaking DEFCON on a totally different subject on cyber terrorism and the drinking water infrastructure.
[01:44.260 --> 01:59.340]  So I don't think I'm an expert on electronics or the technical aspects of recycling or reprocessing, but I have worked for 10 years on the policy regulatory implications of disposing of electronic waste.
[01:59.760 --> 02:05.750]  So I have a lot of experience in death by PowerPoint, so I've got a complicated PowerPoint presentation.
[02:05.750 --> 02:07.910]  I won't try to read everything on every slide.
[02:08.070 --> 02:09.530]  I'll use that as a jumping-off point.
[02:09.950 --> 02:11.890]  So this is a brief outline.
[02:12.110 --> 02:28.130]  Definitions, I'll define the problem, what EPR is, give examples of how it's been approached in the European Union and the U.S., the businesses, some short stories on track record, how to discard your electronics.
[02:29.190 --> 02:31.310]  And definitions, I won't read through all these.
[02:31.770 --> 02:35.730]  E-waste, there's no universal approved definition.
[02:35.750 --> 02:36.770]  of E-waste.
[02:37.230 --> 02:41.190]  Most people talk... every organization or country uses a slightly different way.
[02:42.050 --> 02:46.290]  In Europe, they use the term W-E-E-E, we.
[02:47.270 --> 02:53.730]  And they actually... they have the best definition from a public policy standpoint, from a recycler, for an environmentalist.
[02:54.110 --> 02:59.070]  It includes everything... basically, there's like a long... it's like a page definition, but it really means anything with a plug.
[02:59.270 --> 03:00.890]  It's not just electronic, but it's electrical.
[03:00.890 --> 03:04.710]  So it's vacuum cleaners, toasters, blenders.
[03:05.770 --> 03:13.490]  But here, we're mostly concerned with electronic components and computers, but it also covers monitors, laptops, et cetera.
[03:14.730 --> 03:17.150]  And I won't read the rest of this, but you can see.
[03:18.250 --> 03:20.590]  Toxics in computers, there's a long list.
[03:20.870 --> 03:22.690]  We're familiar with mercury and lead.
[03:24.290 --> 03:29.070]  The toxic issue that got this going in a lot of states was lead in cathode ray tubes.
[03:29.350 --> 03:37.690]  That was before LCDs became predominant, because there's four to eight pounds of lead in a... in a TV or computer monitor.
[03:37.710 --> 03:39.750]  That's an LCD... that's a CRT.
[03:40.350 --> 03:43.890]  And a lot of that waste was showing up in landfill leachate.
[03:44.750 --> 03:49.970]  So there's PVC, there's mercury, there's PCBs.
[03:50.370 --> 03:58.250]  There's a very long list of toxic constituents, such that computers should be classified as hazardous waste.
[03:58.550 --> 04:02.050]  And in many cases, they haven't been, and they're thrown away in regular landfills.
[04:02.550 --> 04:03.950]  Which is the next subject.
[04:04.250 --> 04:18.010]  That even after the increase in recycling regulations and extended producer responsibility regulations and laws to require more recycling of these, still most of this goes into landfills and incinerators.
[04:19.930 --> 04:24.130]  The numbers... some of these numbers are five years old, because it's hard to get more recent numbers.
[04:24.830 --> 04:28.370]  But 133,000 PCs discarded each year as of 2005.
[04:28.370 --> 04:29.470]  It might be more now.
[04:30.150 --> 04:34.710]  Two six-point million tons of e-waste, but only 13.6% were recycled.
[04:34.890 --> 04:37.050]  Again, that was 2005, so it's probably a lot better.
[04:38.410 --> 04:44.910]  But as I mentioned earlier, 40% of the heavy metals in landfills, and this is landfill leachate, the contaminated water that leaves a landfill.
[04:46.910 --> 04:51.610]  You know, lead, mercury, and cadmium have identified as coming from electronic discards.
[04:51.750 --> 05:03.230]  So there's an environmental reason to reduce the amount of toxics in electronic components and computers, but also to reduce how much are actually landfilled or incinerated.
[05:05.190 --> 05:23.350]  And then, of course, when recycling increased, we found that a lot of it was going to third world countries, where it's called informal recycling, meaning they've got a pile of these set up in a village in Guangzhou, China, and people are pulling them apart in the open and taking out the copper wire,
[05:23.730 --> 05:30.110]  pulling out parts to melt down metal in open furnaces in the middle of the country.
[05:30.410 --> 05:47.730]  And there's a long... the group BAN, that's the acronym, the United States, I think that's their website as well, has well documented the environmental damage and the health damage it causes to these residents who are trying to make money from the usable components in electronic waste.
[05:49.210 --> 05:58.990]  And there's millions of... 20 to 50 million tons are generated worldwide, estimated that 50 to 80 percent of the waste recycled in the U.S.
[05:59.150 --> 06:01.730]  goes to China, Ghana, some third world country.
[06:02.610 --> 06:05.690]  And that's a major issue all by itself.
[06:05.890 --> 06:12.750]  I'm not concentrating on that issue, but that's one reason why we want to have better control of discarded electronic waste.
[06:14.350 --> 06:18.510]  A problem with electronic waste is that it's not designed for the most part for recycling.
[06:18.770 --> 06:25.990]  Some vendors are getting better now, but I know from fixing them that many of them...
[06:25.990 --> 06:27.510]  they're non-standard parts.
[06:27.770 --> 06:32.850]  You know, every... even the same model of a Dell or an HP will have a different way of opening the case.
[06:33.010 --> 06:33.890]  There'll be different screws.
[06:34.530 --> 06:36.410]  There'll be screws that are non-standard screws.
[06:36.590 --> 06:37.970]  There'll be hex screws that you...
[06:37.970 --> 06:40.590]  you know, you have trouble finding the hex bolt for.
[06:40.990 --> 06:49.190]  There's a mix of plastics, which means it's... in many cases, the plastics aren't recyclable, because if it's a mix, then that just can't go through the recycling plant.
[06:50.410 --> 06:57.810]  I know that it's hard to learn how to disassemble a laptop sometimes, because they sometimes keep control over the manuals.
[06:58.370 --> 07:06.610]  But it's a well-documented problem that electronics, computers, laptops, are very... are not designed for recycling.
[07:08.230 --> 07:16.870]  There's... in many cases, there are some modular parts, but in many cases, it's made hard... it's made... it's made for a purpose...
[07:16.870 --> 07:18.670]  they're not... they didn't include recycling in mind.
[07:18.950 --> 07:26.310]  So it's hard to disassemble in an easy way, in a regular way, if you're trying to recycle the parts.
[07:26.930 --> 07:29.570]  However, there are valuable materials in them.
[07:29.810 --> 07:34.070]  It's an estimated that a metric ton of computers is more gold than 17 tons of gold ore.
[07:34.490 --> 07:43.650]  So if you're going to be mining gold, you know, get a couple tons of used computers, if you have the... and that might be cheaper to get gold than actually mining it.
[07:43.650 --> 07:55.030]  And this graph here shows a generation of electronic waste as compared to the recovery, which is a general term for recycling or reuse, whatever, going up to 2006, I believe, just for the U.S.
[07:55.390 --> 08:00.010]  So we still... even with everything that's been going on, we still haven't caught up with the generation.
[08:01.030 --> 08:02.330]  And increasing obsolescence.
[08:02.390 --> 08:05.770]  Again, I'm not saying we shouldn't improve products.
[08:06.010 --> 08:15.950]  And we're all familiar with Moore's Law, that the computing power doubles every 18 months, and the cost decreases, I think, by 50% in the same period.
[08:17.590 --> 08:28.830]  But because of that and other drivers for improvements, there's a decreasing lifespan of computers, where it's estimated now two to three years for computers.
[08:29.030 --> 08:30.590]  Some people keep them up to four years.
[08:30.790 --> 08:34.670]  But I know from fixing them, when they get to four years, they're in bad shape.
[08:35.250 --> 08:37.950]  So there's a large turnover.
[08:38.810 --> 08:42.590]  So one way to deal with the large turnover is you try to reuse them as much as you can.
[08:43.030 --> 08:47.510]  But I think a lot of us in the room know that there's not much use for 486 these days.
[08:48.290 --> 08:51.890]  Maybe a few years ago you could use it for some things, or a Pentium 1, 2, or 3.
[08:53.210 --> 08:56.030]  So there is a potential for reuse, and a lot of people do that.
[08:56.330 --> 08:58.770]  They'll refurbish it and give it to a nonprofit.
[08:59.170 --> 09:06.610]  But again, those are only good for a certain amount of time, because, as you know, the software upgrades require stronger processors and more memory.
[09:07.210 --> 09:13.190]  But that's one way to keep them in some useful mode, while keeping them out of the landfills or incinerators.
[09:14.210 --> 09:17.910]  More than 150,000 computers and televisions become obsolete in the U.S.
[09:17.990 --> 09:18.290]  every day.
[09:18.430 --> 09:20.510]  That's, again, probably a four- or five-year-old statistic.
[09:21.730 --> 09:23.150]  So it's probably more than that.
[09:24.810 --> 09:41.890]  Now this is the major issue that I've been dealing with when I was working for Clean Water Action and trying to get EPR, which I'm going to explain in the next slide, adopted, is that back in the early 1900s, most waste was not manufactured products.
[09:41.930 --> 09:43.530]  In fact, they weren't manufactured products.
[09:44.090 --> 09:47.890]  Most waste was ashes from burning in their household.
[09:48.030 --> 09:49.050]  They'd throw the ashes out.
[09:49.130 --> 09:51.230]  It'd be food scraps that they'd throw out.
[09:51.230 --> 10:05.550]  So what happened was the first municipal solid waste programs were in Philadelphia in New York, and Ben Franklin started the first one in Philadelphia, where they tried to clean up the scraps before the flies...
[10:05.550 --> 10:08.110]  the fly breeding schedule would cause more flies to breed in them.
[10:08.290 --> 10:14.590]  That actually was one of the genesis of local governments taking over paying for solid waste collection and recycling.
[10:15.750 --> 10:22.150]  Since, of course, 1900, as this top graph shows, there's been a major increase in manufactured goods.
[10:22.510 --> 10:36.290]  But as that's been happening, the local municipalities, the cities and towns, the counties, have still been picking up the tab for collection and disposal, and in some cases, recycling has been increasing of solid waste.
[10:36.290 --> 10:48.630]  So what this does economically is that the externality of the cost for the collection and disposal of recycling is borne by the local municipality and by the taxpayers.
[10:49.610 --> 10:52.350]  It's not borne by the people who make the material.
[10:52.570 --> 11:02.910]  So this is a general issue, not limited to e-waste that's been going on worldwide since the early 1900s.
[11:04.890 --> 11:13.850]  So if you make a product and you don't pay the cost for trying to recycle it, then you have no economic incentive for making it more recyclable.
[11:14.270 --> 11:29.630]  If you don't pay the cost for disposing of what can't be recycled and, in some cases, that it's hazardous waste that costs more to properly dispose of, you have no incentive to reduce that cost and to lower the amount of toxics being used.
[11:29.690 --> 11:30.530]  You might have other reasons.
[11:30.630 --> 11:37.930]  You might have drivers like government regulation, and that's what's happening in Europe and many other countries and slowly in the US, but you don't have an economic reason.
[11:38.350 --> 11:51.470]  And in a free-market economy, that's the best driver, most people find, for product improvements, is that the cost is passed on, not passed on to the municipality, but it's kept by the manufacturer.
[11:52.190 --> 11:55.130]  Suddenly, they've got an economic incentive to do the right thing.
[11:57.770 --> 12:15.510]  And that's what... thinking of that problem, and the problem of the increase from... of manufactured goods being picked up by municipalities, led to the concept of extended producer responsibility, which was developed in Sweden starting in the 1970s, and then by the founder,
[12:16.230 --> 12:30.430]  Thomas Lindquist, I can't pronounce his name, from Sweden, who coined the term extended producer responsibility, which means that the responsibility of the producer of a product doesn't end when it's sold to the consumer.
[12:31.530 --> 12:39.070]  That's the usual case unless there's a warranty or something special for that product, you know, which isn't in every case.
[12:39.870 --> 12:47.010]  The extended producer responsibility means that the responsibility of the producer or the manufacturer extends to the entire life cycle of the product.
[12:48.930 --> 13:04.130]  And the pure application of that means that the cost for collection of the product, recycling, hopefully, and the environmentally safe disposal of what can't be recycled is picked up by the manufacturer.
[13:04.130 --> 13:11.590]  And it applies to all manufacturers, and that's the best systems that work, is it applies to all the manufacturers of the same product.
[13:12.850 --> 13:21.990]  That's... that's the... that pure form, which we don't really see anywhere in the world, should lead to product improvements, okay?
[13:22.150 --> 13:27.090]  The goals of EPR, I didn't put on the slide, but number one should be product improvements to deal with the problems I've been talking about.
[13:28.110 --> 13:29.910]  It's not just about recycling.
[13:30.110 --> 13:33.610]  People talk about product stewardship or EPR or product responsibility.
[13:34.090 --> 13:39.690]  And there's a lot of other terms that sort of talk about something different while they're trying to talk about EPR.
[13:40.870 --> 13:42.350]  It's not just about recycling.
[13:42.930 --> 13:48.370]  It's really lifting... taking the cost off the municipalities because it's not their responsibility.
[13:49.170 --> 13:51.550]  If you follow the theory, it's the manufacturer.
[13:53.010 --> 13:56.010]  And by putting that cost to the manufacturer, they will then make the product...
[13:56.010 --> 14:01.830]  improve the product design, make it less toxic, more recyclable, and then set up a product...
[14:01.830 --> 14:04.910]  an inverse product collection chain to pick it up.
[14:06.270 --> 14:10.750]  So you see here, I have the charts of the second one here.
[14:11.410 --> 14:14.050]  I'm pointing at my screen, and that's not helping you very much, I know.
[14:14.350 --> 14:17.890]  So if you look at that middle graphic, it shows the...
[14:17.890 --> 14:21.110]  the current, you know, usual process.
[14:21.410 --> 14:23.650]  Supplier, producer, retailer, consumer.
[14:24.130 --> 14:29.710]  The government gets involved sometimes, it goes through a disposer, and then sometimes stuff gets back to the supplier.
[14:31.110 --> 14:48.410]  But in the bottom graphic, you would have... it doesn't have to be called a producer responsibility organization, but to be a group in the chain that would interrupt... that would be involved to work for the producer to handle the...
[14:48.410 --> 14:49.490]  the collection and recycling.
[14:49.990 --> 14:52.710]  And that's actually how it works in some programs in Europe.
[14:54.230 --> 15:05.150]  And when Thomas Lindquist wrote a paper on this when he was a graduate student in Sweden, he referred to the success of the bottle bill, which is one of the first applications for this in the U.S.
[15:05.150 --> 15:23.350]  and some other parts of the world, where we looked at the recovery of aluminum cans, pet bottles, and glass bottles, and the total in the bottle bill states, the few states that had bottle bills, the 11 states at that time, well, as of 2006, and then the non-bottle bill states,
[15:23.370 --> 15:26.610]  and he found it was more than... almost triple the recovery rate.
[15:27.190 --> 15:49.150]  And as you know, a bottle bill is a type of producer responsibility where the producer of the soft drink or the drink is required to impose a 5 cent or 2 cent or 10 cent fee on the can or the container as an incentive to return the can, and then they're required to recover it,
[15:49.230 --> 15:50.790]  recycle it, hopefully.
[15:51.570 --> 15:55.190]  And so that's the most common example most people are aware of.
[15:56.770 --> 16:02.410]  Now, when I started working on this in 1999, there was no chart of countries with EPR and e-waste laws.
[16:02.530 --> 16:05.990]  The only thing we had were bottle bills in many cases and people talking about it.
[16:06.050 --> 16:07.930]  But now, this actually is a little out of date.
[16:08.090 --> 16:09.190]  I couldn't find anything more recent.
[16:09.190 --> 16:12.190]  We've got more than 20 states in the U.S.
[16:14.310 --> 16:15.950]  and four provinces in Canada.
[16:16.130 --> 16:17.490]  We've got some South American countries.
[16:17.850 --> 16:22.570]  The biggest practitioner of EPR is the European Union.
[16:24.110 --> 16:29.750]  And then there's a lot of movement going on in the Far East, the Near East, Taiwan, China, South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines.
[16:32.130 --> 16:45.650]  The genesis for EPR regulation in the world, again, after bottle bills, the next example, the first application of this was the Green Dot Program in Germany, which applied to packaging.
[16:46.870 --> 16:55.190]  And they did this in Germany in the early 1900s because packaging was taking over their solid waste disposal capacity.
[16:55.190 --> 17:02.270]  30% to 40% or more of the stuff being disposed of was packaging, paper, cardboard, plastic, you name it.
[17:02.590 --> 17:04.110]  So they had to get a handle on it.
[17:04.170 --> 17:07.630]  So they said, aha, we'll require the manufacturers to pay for this.
[17:08.130 --> 17:14.490]  And so they required either the manufacturers to set up their own collection program or be charged a fee.
[17:14.490 --> 17:22.550]  And they tried to figure the fee that would be high enough so the companies wouldn't want to have to pay it, that they'd pay it themselves.
[17:22.890 --> 17:26.350]  And hopefully, them running the program themselves would lower their costs.
[17:26.630 --> 17:44.090]  So all the packaging manufacturers or the people selling packaging in Germany formed a third-party organization, a non-profit, the Green Dot Program, that set up collection vehicles that was separate from the municipal or the national collection program.
[17:44.610 --> 17:48.530]  And you knew that a product went to that if it had a green dot on it.
[17:48.890 --> 17:55.070]  So that sort of became the slogan and the logo for dealing with it.
[17:57.090 --> 18:03.110]  So from 1991 to 1995, it dramatically reduced the packaging in Germany.
[18:03.110 --> 18:06.710]  At the same time, it increased more than that in the U.S.
[18:07.510 --> 18:09.630]  And the recovery goals are still exceeded today.
[18:10.310 --> 18:16.670]  It recovers discarded packaging and reduced the packaging use because, well, they want to reduce their fees because they are paying for it.
[18:17.370 --> 18:18.750]  So how do you reduce your fees?
[18:18.830 --> 18:19.590]  You reduce the weight.
[18:20.310 --> 18:22.610]  You say, gee, do I really need a box this big?
[18:22.670 --> 18:23.790]  Maybe I can have one smaller.
[18:24.070 --> 18:26.510]  Or instead of five materials, I can only use one.
[18:27.170 --> 18:29.210]  So this is some recent materials.
[18:29.210 --> 18:34.930]  When I first learned about this in 1999, 2000, it still had, you know, good record.
[18:35.130 --> 18:40.450]  But the most recent records show that it's exceeded its goals by quite a bit.
[18:42.850 --> 18:47.150]  Now, the European Union has led the way in...
[18:47.150 --> 18:48.170]  So every European...
[18:48.170 --> 18:51.210]  As of 2004, there was a European Union law passed.
[18:51.210 --> 18:53.350]  That's the WE directive.
[18:53.670 --> 18:55.010]  WE directive.
[18:56.590 --> 18:58.210]  And I'm paraphrasing here.
[18:58.350 --> 18:59.890]  It requires producers of everything with a plug.
[19:00.370 --> 19:03.750]  There's pages and pages with the definitions, but it's everything with a plug.
[19:05.350 --> 19:06.430]  Requires each...
[19:06.430 --> 19:26.130]  Technically, it requires each member country by a certain date, which was August 2004, and some had it in 2005, to establish local laws, and they had some flexibility in how they set it up, to require all the manufacturers that sold in that country, that sold a product that met the requirements under the law in that country,
[19:26.290 --> 19:33.350]  to set up a program so the manufacturers would be financially responsible for the collection and recycling of the product.
[19:33.550 --> 19:44.390]  And I should clarify, when we talk about producer take-back, it doesn't mean that, in every case, the, you know, HP has to pick up your used laptop, or you have to take an HP facility.
[19:44.510 --> 19:46.410]  It doesn't really matter where it goes as long as...
[19:46.410 --> 19:48.010]  Well, it doesn't matter where it goes, but it...
[19:48.010 --> 19:53.470]  We want the manufacturer to pay for it, because we're talking financial responsibility, we're talking about economic incentives.
[19:54.330 --> 19:58.090]  So, there's a wide variety in the European Union of how this is done.
[19:59.430 --> 20:04.850]  Germany has very restrictive requirements that, you know, in reporting that have to be done.
[20:04.850 --> 20:11.610]  I'm not familiar with all the program requirements throughout all the countries, but there's a wide variety, which is the way we want it.
[20:11.670 --> 20:14.170]  There's no one-size-fits-all for making this work.
[20:14.430 --> 20:25.830]  The genius of a good EPR program is that the government has a law that says, you're responsible, producer, for paying for the collection and recycling of this product.
[20:25.970 --> 20:31.710]  You set it up yourself, or with the other manufacturers of similar products, whatever's, you know, your preference.
[20:31.710 --> 20:34.750]  And in Europe, they gave...
[20:34.750 --> 20:38.870]  The European Union gave all the producers of the electronic components that choice.
[20:39.010 --> 20:44.510]  Do you want to do it like in Green Dot through one third-party organization, or do you want to do it individually?
[20:45.170 --> 20:46.990]  And, surprise, they wanted to do it individually.
[20:47.750 --> 20:56.650]  And the reason I found out in lobbying on this in Massachusetts with HP and other companies is they want control, surprise, of their recovered products.
[20:56.970 --> 21:00.230]  Because some of them are worried about a reuse market that's out of their control.
[21:00.770 --> 21:02.850]  Sort of too many... which is happening now anyway.
[21:04.510 --> 21:14.970]  So they want to be able to know where it's going, even if they don't get it themselves, rather than it going to some big pot and suddenly used HP or Dell components are being sold all over the place.
[21:15.090 --> 21:16.230]  That's my theory.
[21:18.190 --> 21:26.490]  But if you're supportive of EPR and a better way to manage used electronic waste, we don't really care, as long as they're picking up the tab and they're meeting the goals.
[21:27.970 --> 21:33.050]  The other major legislation in Europe was ROHS, which you know about in the U.S.
[21:33.110 --> 21:37.170]  because you see a lot of products that say ROHS compliant.
[21:38.130 --> 21:42.170]  So even though ROHS, which prohibits the use of thousands... I say hundreds.
[21:42.310 --> 21:43.110]  It's actually thousands.
[21:43.250 --> 21:44.010]  It's almost everything.
[21:44.010 --> 21:56.830]  You know, it's ramping up, but it started out with like 1,200 substances and says by certain dates, you cannot make a product with this substance or you have to prove to the European Council, whatever, your environmental agency, why you can't.
[21:57.210 --> 21:58.690]  And you have to get a safer alternative.
[21:58.950 --> 22:01.190]  Now, in many cases you can, like lead-free solder.
[22:01.450 --> 22:05.190]  There's a major movement across the world for lead-free solder, which is good.
[22:05.390 --> 22:08.370]  Though there may be... there's probably many applications where you can't do that.
[22:08.370 --> 22:10.270]  So that's taken into account.
[22:11.810 --> 22:16.490]  So that applies almost worldwide because anybody who's selling to the European market is selling to the U.S.
[22:16.490 --> 22:18.510]  and probably Japan and almost everywhere else.
[22:18.970 --> 22:22.330]  So that's been a big driver for a lot of the improvements that have been made here.
[22:24.390 --> 22:25.870]  So I already covered these other points.
[22:28.210 --> 22:32.450]  So the European Union is what led the way for a lot of what we're trying to get done in the U.S.
[22:32.810 --> 22:51.210]  Now, in the U.S., again, when I started this in 1999, I wrote a bill in Massachusetts when I was working for Clean Water Action, a very general bill saying basically the concept that all companies who sell computer products in Massachusetts have to set up a program approved by the state to collect and recycle their used waste.
[22:51.750 --> 22:57.510]  And since then, the bill hasn't passed, but it's gotten much more complicated because we've seen what's happened in Europe.
[22:58.110 --> 23:09.090]  And since then, companies have actually gotten on the bandwagon after a lot of political pressure from Clean Water Action and the National Electronics Take Back Campaign, Greenpeace, other groups.
[23:09.770 --> 23:13.470]  And Dell and HP and even Apple came in later.
[23:15.630 --> 23:28.830]  Almost every manufacturer now has some sort of free program, and they support to some extent, in general anyway, state laws requiring them to pay for the collection and recycling.
[23:29.350 --> 23:38.450]  So now we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
[23:38.550 --> 23:39.970]  20 states in California.
[23:40.910 --> 23:44.090]  California is in a different color because it's not an EPR law.
[23:44.250 --> 23:45.210]  I'm going to get to that in a minute.
[23:46.990 --> 23:49.210]  And Massachusetts still hasn't passed the bill yet.
[23:49.390 --> 23:50.330]  That's a whole other story.
[23:52.050 --> 23:56.230]  Very strong lobbying by somebody because all the industries are now in favor of it.
[23:56.730 --> 23:59.850]  So no one's opposing it, but we still can't get the damn thing passed for some reason.
[24:04.570 --> 24:08.570]  So there's a standard bill now that's being proposed in all the states.
[24:08.790 --> 24:20.590]  One of the arguments against having the states do it and not have a national program that we hear, or we heard when only one or two states had it, is you're going to get a patchwork of different state regulations, which we are.
[24:21.890 --> 24:30.770]  But the environmental groups and the state environmental agencies and the EPA and the companies have all basically agreed, let's try to make them as similar as possible.
[24:31.110 --> 24:32.650]  So there's a couple model bills.
[24:32.830 --> 24:33.870]  Dell has a model bill.
[24:34.350 --> 24:35.490]  HP has a model bill.
[24:36.990 --> 24:40.470]  The New England Regional Council of Governments has a model bill.
[24:40.670 --> 24:47.090]  And they're all pretty good, but they're all different and very key issues that would take a whole other talk to go over.
[24:47.790 --> 24:50.890]  But the good news is there's movement in many other states.
[24:51.690 --> 24:56.630]  And so during the last Republican administrations, we stayed away from trying to get something done federally.
[24:58.810 --> 25:01.050]  I'm still not too sure if we want to do anything federally.
[25:01.950 --> 25:08.430]  But it would be a good idea to have a federal law that set at least a minimum standard so it would be the same everywhere.
[25:09.050 --> 25:17.550]  Because you don't want companies picking and choosing, you know, where they can have locations for recycling or other things, depending upon the different state laws.
[25:18.450 --> 25:20.330]  But at least we're getting progress.
[25:21.730 --> 25:26.130]  Okay, California was the first one to pass a e-waste collection law.
[25:27.230 --> 25:29.450]  And it's not an EPR law.
[25:29.690 --> 25:31.150]  It's a recycling law.
[25:31.730 --> 25:36.450]  And part of the reason that passed is that people think producer responsibility is recycling.
[25:36.630 --> 25:40.090]  Hey, the problem with electronic waste is we want to recycle more of it, isn't it?
[25:40.090 --> 25:41.970]  Well, that's one of the problems.
[25:42.150 --> 25:51.230]  The main problem is that we want the manufacturers to be financially responsible so that they'll improve the product and the municipalities are out of the, you know, don't have to pay for it anymore.
[25:51.910 --> 25:57.670]  But they got out of that in California and they established an ARF, an advanced recycling fee of $6 to $10.
[25:58.410 --> 25:59.710]  That's the usual range.
[26:00.350 --> 26:05.570]  It's for computers and CRTs, you know, monitors and TVs.
[26:05.570 --> 26:09.070]  And the larger fee comes with the larger TVs.
[26:11.130 --> 26:14.110]  And I believe it used to include laptops as well, but I'm not sure.
[26:14.270 --> 26:19.230]  When they write these laws, there's all these games that go on very specifically excluding certain things.
[26:20.490 --> 26:24.710]  It included to phase out of hazardous materials based on EU, which is good.
[26:24.970 --> 26:27.550]  So if we want to have an effort in the U.S.
[26:27.650 --> 26:37.650]  to phase out the use of toxic materials, which is a form of producer responsibility that's government mandated, you can just... the best thing to do is just look at what's happening in Europe and follow it because it's very good.
[26:38.470 --> 26:44.410]  But the California system is not an EPR system because what... the manufacturer's not involved at all, really.
[26:45.510 --> 26:49.130]  So the consumer, when you buy a product, pays a fee.
[26:49.710 --> 27:08.270]  The fee goes to the state of California and pays for a bureaucracy to, you know, hire people, run offices, manage local recycling programs, review proposals for the local recycling programs, and do regulation as well as running the program.
[27:09.110 --> 27:17.850]  That money could, in my view, would be better spent reducing the price of the product by having the manufacturer pull up the cost.
[27:17.970 --> 27:21.150]  There's an extra cost here and have the government run a program that it doesn't need to run.
[27:21.570 --> 27:23.290]  So I say that's not how to do it.
[27:23.290 --> 27:25.530]  And I have some statistics coming up.
[27:25.970 --> 27:29.890]  Now, Maine passed the first EPR law in 2004.
[27:31.230 --> 27:34.590]  It's not quite the pure model that I would like, but it's Maine.
[27:35.030 --> 27:35.990]  I mean, every state's different.
[27:36.270 --> 27:39.690]  And so in Maine, they had an issue of... and I like Maine.
[27:39.770 --> 27:40.610]  I went to college in Maine.
[27:43.370 --> 27:46.030]  There's large rural areas where, you know...
[27:46.030 --> 27:49.090]  I worked in Skowhegan for a little while and if you...
[27:49.090 --> 27:49.930]  Ah!
[27:50.830 --> 27:52.550]  And I grew up in Massachusetts.
[27:52.570 --> 27:55.510]  So they say if something's right down the road, they mean it's like 40 miles away.
[27:55.650 --> 27:57.590]  Or 20 miles is right next door, you know?
[27:58.750 --> 27:59.110]  Not...
[27:59.110 --> 28:01.790]  So anyway, so they had distances to deal with and stuff.
[28:01.790 --> 28:06.170]  And Alaska might be the same case or Midwestern state that has a lot of empty space.
[28:06.350 --> 28:07.950]  So they had a shared responsibility model.
[28:08.110 --> 28:11.890]  Well, the towns will pay some of the cost for just having a collection point.
[28:12.490 --> 28:21.910]  And then the companies pay the larger cost for having trucks that pick them up there and bring them to a collection center where they do all the processing and they calculate the numbers and so on.
[28:22.750 --> 28:23.710]  So it's reasonable.
[28:25.950 --> 28:34.330]  Now, one of the few studies that have come out looking at the effectiveness of EPR for electronic waste showed...
[28:34.330 --> 28:35.670]  Compared the two programs.
[28:36.670 --> 28:39.210]  And Alberta had a California-like program.
[28:40.130 --> 28:47.970]  And so the first graph here is the processing cost, which you can see is much higher in Alberta and California than it is in Maine and Maryland.
[28:48.650 --> 28:50.310]  Maryland isn't quite apples to apples.
[28:50.530 --> 28:53.610]  It was a small... it only dealt with a smaller amount of products.
[28:55.890 --> 29:01.290]  But talking about Maine, we can see that Maine's, which is pure EPR, had lower processing costs.
[29:01.430 --> 29:03.270]  And they tried to equalize this as much as possible.
[29:04.410 --> 29:08.290]  And the system management costs, I mean, the bureaucracy to run it.
[29:08.470 --> 29:14.750]  So even in Maine, you know, the companies run the program with the municipalities, but the state government still has to regulate it.
[29:14.830 --> 29:17.650]  That's the proper role in my mind of what the state government should do.
[29:17.650 --> 29:18.670]  So it shouldn't run the program.
[29:18.850 --> 29:21.210]  It should regulate it to make sure it meets the goals.
[29:21.650 --> 29:24.970]  So again, California was... costs were higher than Maine.
[29:25.130 --> 29:26.690]  And I don't know what's going on in Alberta.
[29:27.070 --> 29:28.470]  I mean, that's... that's bizarre.
[29:31.330 --> 29:35.930]  So... so we see... and then we see the adjusted non-scientific per capita results.
[29:36.230 --> 29:37.190]  And that's very hard to read.
[29:40.050 --> 29:43.350]  I think... I think California... so that's a different study.
[29:43.490 --> 29:46.350]  I was just trying to show the two studies that I found, and that shows it's more equal.
[29:46.350 --> 29:51.450]  So there's some argument, but what I hear from the people in Maine is that it's being...
[29:51.450 --> 29:52.430]  it's being very effective.
[29:55.190 --> 29:56.990]  Businesses have gotten on the bandwagon.
[29:57.150 --> 30:10.770]  Since I started this in 99, and we formed the National Computer Take Back campaign, and Greenpeace got involved in it, and all the environmental groups got involved in it, and the state government's gotten involved in it, and we tried to the NEPSE, the National Electronic Product Stewardship Initiative,
[30:11.070 --> 30:15.930]  to get a national dialogue together that didn't succeed.
[30:15.950 --> 30:20.110]  But since then, virtually every manufacturer has set up some sort of program.
[30:20.830 --> 30:21.710]  Now, why?
[30:21.970 --> 30:29.430]  Well, it's good corporate... you know, if it's not greenwashing, and I wouldn't say that any of these are greenwashing, where they're saying they're doing environmental things, but they really aren't.
[30:29.830 --> 30:35.350]  It's great PR, because everyone these days sees the value of recycling and reducing wastes.
[30:36.510 --> 30:39.670]  But in many cases, I've talked to the people at HP and Dell.
[30:39.950 --> 30:44.190]  They want to do the right thing, if it meets their business model, you know?
[30:44.190 --> 30:49.050]  So, in many cases, it was through political pressure.
[30:49.210 --> 30:53.010]  Dell resisted it for years until the local Texas...
[30:53.530 --> 31:04.910]  Michael Dell and Dell is based in Texas, until they sent thousands of postcards to Michael Dell at his house, with his picture on it, saying, Michael, why won't you help the dude, you know, recover his computer?
[31:05.950 --> 31:07.590]  Based on that ad they had at the time.
[31:07.830 --> 31:20.890]  And so, suddenly he turned around, and it now has a free program, and they're supporting their... they wrote up a bill, and they're not opposed anymore to local laws requiring manufacturer take-back.
[31:21.890 --> 31:25.350]  Same thing happened with Apple, which surprised us that they weren't on there first.
[31:26.890 --> 31:30.250]  But a lot of pressure on Steve Jobs individually.
[31:30.390 --> 31:33.810]  That's how political pressure works, to do something.
[31:34.630 --> 31:41.430]  So, this comes from... I'm not an expert in what all the programs are, but some of them have completely free take-back programs for their own products.
[31:42.110 --> 31:43.490]  You have to look at the fine print.
[31:43.870 --> 31:49.610]  But a lot of times, you'll see an ad in the paper for a pick-up day, and it'll give you the parameters.
[31:49.670 --> 31:55.070]  And you go to a Staples, or go to this collection center, or go to this recycling center, and you can drop off your products.
[31:55.350 --> 31:57.710]  And the best ones, of course, are ones that are free.
[31:57.990 --> 32:00.430]  Not just because they're free to you, but because that's...
[32:01.230 --> 32:08.690]  If they charge five or ten dollars, that's not an incentive for you to, you know, go there and get rid of... and properly dispose of the product.
[32:10.230 --> 32:14.570]  And some require consumers must pay, and some, I guess, don't.
[32:14.710 --> 32:16.010]  Acer and CEC.
[32:16.970 --> 32:18.070]  So, there's still...
[32:18.070 --> 32:18.870]  Toshiba?
[32:21.190 --> 32:22.690]  Yeah, Toshiba's under the completely free.
[32:24.830 --> 32:29.110]  But take everything I say here with a grain of salt, because you have to, you know...
[32:29.110 --> 32:33.050]  This is what's been advertised, and what I've been reading in the literature on it, but...
[32:33.050 --> 32:35.870]  And I think I got this from the computer take-back campaign website.
[32:36.410 --> 32:40.770]  So, if they said anything wrong in the take-back website, and someone calls them on it, they're gonna get in trouble.
[32:40.770 --> 32:45.670]  So, the good news is, there are programs out there that are sponsored by the manufacturers.
[32:46.290 --> 32:55.290]  Now, the question comes up, well, if the manufacturers are doing these for free, and they're setting up these programs, why do we need state laws to require, you know, them to take them back?
[32:55.450 --> 32:58.650]  Well, the answer is, because if they're voluntary, they could stop at any time.
[32:59.210 --> 33:15.770]  The other answer is, unless... and a lot of the companies agree with this, unless all the companies have to meet the same requirements, then you get into economic disparities over, well, I'm doing a better job... why should I do a better job in collecting and recycling my discarded products when it's gonna cost me X,
[33:15.830 --> 33:18.430]  Y, and Z when my competitor isn't doing the same thing?
[33:18.750 --> 33:19.890]  And they say they are.
[33:20.870 --> 33:31.470]  So, when we have to have lobbying discussions and arguments with these companies over a table, and they're being honest, which happens sometimes, that's what they'll tell you.
[33:31.610 --> 33:40.130]  And they'll agree that, no, we'll have a program, you know, but we want a state regulation, is what I've heard from some of these people, because then we know everybody has to do the same thing.
[33:40.950 --> 33:43.630]  And the other thing that you want to avoid is what we call free riders.
[33:44.350 --> 33:47.070]  So, you've got the two biggies, Dell and HP.
[33:47.390 --> 33:55.870]  So, what if they pay for a program that's not required, but Lenovo and Toshiba and some other companies, their stuff gets dropped off there.
[33:56.370 --> 33:59.370]  And so, they're getting a benefit of a program that the other companies are paying for.
[33:59.570 --> 34:02.430]  So, as a for-profit company, that's not a good idea.
[34:05.650 --> 34:17.830]  Now, one of the reasons for EPR is to encourage or require, well, encourage actually, greener PCs, better environmentally safe PCs.
[34:18.350 --> 34:31.570]  And there's a limit to that, obviously, because you've got semiconductors, you've got probably, you've got soldering of some sort, you've got various chemicals involved in the process that I'm not that familiar with.
[34:31.570 --> 34:34.190]  And so, certain engineering requirements.
[34:34.730 --> 34:38.050]  But within those limits, there are better things you can do.
[34:39.130 --> 34:46.390]  Like not use PVC, which is very dangerous if it's burned an incinerator, releases hazardous materials.
[34:46.810 --> 34:50.150]  BFR, brominated fire retardants.
[34:50.230 --> 34:51.330]  I thought I was going to get that right.
[34:51.570 --> 34:57.710]  Which is used as a, you know, fire insulation in like CRTs, monitors, TVs.
[34:58.190 --> 34:59.770]  And that causes fumes.
[35:02.210 --> 35:07.750]  So, those are toxic materials that can be phased out in most cases, or all cases.
[35:07.970 --> 35:09.370]  And are required, I believe, in Europe.
[35:09.870 --> 35:11.150]  Use recycled plastic.
[35:11.370 --> 35:13.190]  And again, the plastic mix is very important.
[35:13.310 --> 35:15.410]  Because some plastics are very recyclable.
[35:15.550 --> 35:19.650]  But some, if you mix it with another plastic, you can't do anything with it.
[35:19.710 --> 35:19.990]  You're done.
[35:21.130 --> 35:22.010]  Energy efficiency.
[35:22.550 --> 35:24.190]  Everyone seems to be on that bandwagon.
[35:24.430 --> 35:26.350]  So, we want them to be energy efficient.
[35:26.570 --> 35:31.510]  And these are all from Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics, which I won't go through the whole thing on.
[35:31.910 --> 35:42.290]  But it's, there's some, there's a scientific basis and there's a rating scale, where you can look and you can see for any manufacturer on Greenpeace's page where they relate.
[35:42.290 --> 35:45.230]  And you can see that Nokia's up at number one.
[35:46.990 --> 35:48.270]  I keep pointing at my screen.
[35:48.550 --> 35:49.590]  And Sony's number two.
[35:49.970 --> 35:51.270]  And then there's a big gap.
[35:51.270 --> 35:54.630]  You get the Philips, Motorola, Apple in the middle.
[35:54.990 --> 35:56.690]  Lenovo and Nintendo way at the end.
[35:57.630 --> 35:59.470]  So, they're bad and they need to get better.
[35:59.790 --> 36:08.530]  So, when an environmental group does this, they're, you know, they're trying to encourage through publicity, but also information and working with the company.
[36:08.910 --> 36:11.390]  So, if the company says, no, that standard doesn't make sense.
[36:11.390 --> 36:13.030]  I can't replace X with Y.
[36:13.250 --> 36:16.630]  You look at it and you go, okay, well, what can you replace it with?
[36:17.030 --> 36:23.350]  And there's a lot going on in that with people more technical than me to try to figure out what are the safer alternatives.
[36:23.550 --> 36:25.790]  And if there is one, that's what the company should go to.
[36:26.610 --> 36:39.850]  And again, a driver in this is, again, if the companies have to pay for it universally, which they don't, it's a patchwork right now in the world, in the US, then we'll be seeing more of them voluntarily doing the right thing.
[36:40.610 --> 36:45.430]  Hewlett Packard made an estimate of what it would cost for a better design for the environment.
[36:46.610 --> 36:49.830]  And there are, there are green PCs marketed out there.
[36:50.590 --> 36:59.410]  I haven't read the fine print, but the Parmate Echo and IM Echo of Dublin, biodegradable components, less toxic materials.
[36:59.710 --> 37:03.810]  So, it's a good question, you know, how far can you go for electronic components?
[37:03.810 --> 37:05.330]  And the answer is, well, you can do something.
[37:06.250 --> 37:07.170]  You can't do everything.
[37:07.330 --> 37:11.950]  It's not going to be wood, you know, or totally biodegradable, obviously.
[37:12.230 --> 37:13.510]  But you want to go as far as you can.
[37:14.030 --> 37:17.250]  And the good news is there are improvements that can be made.
[37:17.490 --> 37:20.670]  And you can see there's a lot of room for improvement with all the companies that aren't there yet.
[37:22.570 --> 37:27.030]  So, for all of us in the field, you know, how do we safely discard your used electronics?
[37:28.750 --> 37:30.070]  Don't throw them in the trash.
[37:32.090 --> 37:40.870]  There's a great statistic, and I can't remember the number, but even non-technically savvy people like us in the room, or at the conference, know because it was valuable.
[37:40.870 --> 37:46.210]  When computers cost a lot of money years ago, and then it was obsolete, they didn't want to throw it away.
[37:47.210 --> 37:54.770]  So, there were tens of thousands of computers, you know, 486s, 386s probably, you know, sitting in people's basements and garages.
[37:55.810 --> 38:00.190]  Not only because they don't want to get rid of it, but they have a vague idea that it's something, you know, it's probably toxic.
[38:02.010 --> 38:09.850]  So, at some point, when these programs really get rolling across the country, there's got to be a call to get rid of all these properly.
[38:10.270 --> 38:12.210]  But none of us should throw them in the trash.
[38:13.110 --> 38:14.550]  Donate for reuse if possible.
[38:14.730 --> 38:16.750]  Again, if it's not that old, there's...
[38:16.750 --> 38:25.730]  Almost anywhere you go in the country, there's a place that refurbishes used computers and gives them or donates them to non-profits if they don't use them themselves.
[38:26.010 --> 38:28.350]  And again, a 486 probably won't do them much good.
[38:28.410 --> 38:37.070]  But if you've got a P4 that you're replacing with, you know, a dual core or something, that can still have a useful use.
[38:37.710 --> 38:50.270]  There's an e-Steward program that I'm not that familiar with, but that's where this map comes from, where there are recyclers who have been certified by some national group to do the proper way.
[38:51.230 --> 38:53.750]  That's not exclusive, but that's something to keep in mind.
[38:54.590 --> 38:58.110]  You can try the manufacturer's recycling, free recycling programs.
[38:58.350 --> 39:04.230]  Again, you have to read the fine print, and some of them aren't free, even if they say they're free.
[39:06.630 --> 39:10.970]  But Best Buy and Staples, I know Staples has been trying to do a lot more on this.
[39:11.070 --> 39:24.730]  We had a meeting when I was at Clean Water Action with them in Massachusetts five years ago, and they were seriously considering setting up a massive collection program to say, hey, bring your used computers to Staples, and we'll recycle them for free.
[39:25.490 --> 39:26.990]  And they decided not to do it.
[39:27.090 --> 39:29.970]  I mean, they still... I think they support...
[39:29.970 --> 39:35.210]  It was a business decision, the VP explained to us, you know, because it's space in the stores.
[39:35.210 --> 39:41.010]  But the reason to do it business-wise is, you know, people would be coming to the stores disposing electronics.
[39:41.210 --> 39:42.450]  Maybe they could be buying more electronics.
[39:42.910 --> 39:45.530]  So there's still potential movement that way.
[39:46.230 --> 39:47.970]  And I'm getting ready to wrap up here.
[39:49.090 --> 39:50.350]  EPR does work.
[39:51.390 --> 39:57.190]  The EPR programs, extended producer responsibility for e-waste, are still relatively new.
[39:58.790 --> 40:01.970]  2004, the requirements started to go into effect in Europe.
[40:02.910 --> 40:04.450]  The laws in the U.S. are less than two years old in most of the states.
[40:08.130 --> 40:12.430]  Maine and California, well, are the oldest, Maine anyway.
[40:13.490 --> 40:16.190]  And so I looked very carefully for any studies.
[40:16.590 --> 40:28.330]  And I asked the people I used to work with in various national groups on this issue, you know, what studies exist on showing how effective it is?
[40:28.390 --> 40:29.230]  And there's a handful of them.
[40:29.370 --> 40:30.350]  There's like five studies.
[40:31.210 --> 40:44.590]  There's that one comparing Maine and California that just looked at, to the best extent they could, the per capita recovery, which actually was even, but then looked at manufacturing costs and processing costs, which showed that Maine was doing much better.
[40:46.050 --> 40:52.330]  But then Thomas Lindquist, the guy who founded this back in the early 90s, is still working on the issue.
[40:52.330 --> 41:10.090]  And he and some academics from Japan and other countries have done a series of studies where they've looked at the question, has EPR requirements, where they have existed for more than a few years, for electronics and other products, have they met their goals?
[41:10.810 --> 41:17.050]  One key goal being drive product improvements, more recyclable, less toxic, et cetera.
[41:18.150 --> 41:21.770]  And one finding I pulled out is that Japanese...
[41:21.770 --> 41:24.310]  Japan has a mandatory...
[41:24.310 --> 41:33.170]  I don't know how long it's been in effect, a mandatory WE type directive requiring manufacturers take back financial responsibility for electronic waste.
[41:33.170 --> 41:48.870]  And apparently, before the law became into effect, the Japanese manufacturers and people who sold in the country looked at, you know, read the law, and did make some changes for the ones in, you know, in their country.
[41:49.950 --> 41:56.930]  And they replaced plastic housing with magnesium alloy because they had trouble with the plastic recycling.
[41:57.810 --> 42:00.330]  My favorite example is an older one.
[42:00.470 --> 42:04.630]  It's a terrible product if you're an environmentalist, which I used to be working at.
[42:04.850 --> 42:06.510]  But Kodak with their...
[42:06.510 --> 42:08.170]  They used to call them disposable cameras.
[42:08.810 --> 42:11.390]  Well, then they called them one-use cameras.
[42:13.010 --> 42:15.170]  But it's actually a success story.
[42:15.410 --> 42:26.490]  This is the ultimate goal for extended producer responsibility or for materials management for the environment, where manufacturing is doing things the right way.
[42:26.490 --> 42:28.350]  It's not a cradle-to-grave system.
[42:28.490 --> 42:31.270]  It's a cradle-to-cradle system, okay?
[42:31.630 --> 42:48.590]  So the ultimate expression of extended producer responsibility is when the manufacturer is financially responsible for the entire life cycle of the product, which usually means, you know, it's produced, it goes in the supply chain, it's sold, it's used, and then the user does something with it.
[42:52.410 --> 42:54.370]  They give it to a recycler, they dispose of it, whatever.
[42:55.370 --> 42:56.990]  So it goes to disposal recycling.
[42:57.130 --> 42:58.210]  It goes at the end and it's over.
[42:58.570 --> 43:01.130]  The best system is when it's a real circle.
[43:01.610 --> 43:03.510]  Recycling is not a circle, okay?
[43:03.670 --> 43:08.670]  It's a, you know, you think of it with a circle symbol, but it's a circle at the end.
[43:08.790 --> 43:09.310]  So something...
[43:09.310 --> 43:17.430]  They take a product and they take it apart, and they can melt things down, they can reuse other things, but it's not always used to make the same product.
[43:17.430 --> 43:18.850]  You can go into other things.
[43:19.070 --> 43:20.190]  And then you get a degradation.
[43:20.450 --> 43:21.830]  There's only so many times you can do that.
[43:22.370 --> 43:34.870]  So what Kodak has done with 84% recycling rate, which is probably the best you can do, because they make the product intentionally from the same product that comes back to them.
[43:35.310 --> 43:37.070]  And it's a unique product, okay?
[43:37.090 --> 43:40.350]  You probably can't do this with almost any other kind of product because it's a one-use camera.
[43:41.530 --> 43:49.410]  Those are probably going out of style unless they're, you know, because of digital cameras, but you can still buy them and people still use them who don't want to go into the digital world.
[43:49.990 --> 43:53.190]  But so to get it developed, you return the entire camera.
[43:53.690 --> 43:55.130]  So they get the camera back.
[43:55.430 --> 43:59.910]  But the camera that you bought, new, is made partially recycled materials.
[44:00.590 --> 44:02.790]  So it's a complete circle.
[44:02.790 --> 44:03.910]  It's a cradle-to-cradle system.
[44:04.030 --> 44:05.390]  It's called inverse manufacturing.
[44:06.110 --> 44:07.890]  And there's been very little written on this.
[44:07.890 --> 44:14.190]  And every time I try to bring it up to university folks and people working on the issue, they shake their head and say, no, no, no, don't go there.
[44:14.470 --> 44:16.150]  But this is the ultimate thing.
[44:16.310 --> 44:22.730]  So what if HP, when they make their computer, you know, and you dispose of it, or you're done with it, you discard it.
[44:22.830 --> 44:24.170]  The word we're supposed to use is discard.
[44:25.210 --> 44:27.390]  That they use it to make more computers.
[44:27.590 --> 44:33.310]  Now, there's a limit to that because, as we know, not everything is recyclable the same way.
[44:35.190 --> 44:37.550]  But maybe, you know, for other products, it makes sense.
[44:37.550 --> 44:40.030]  Carpets, gypsum wallboard.
[44:40.490 --> 44:43.630]  The best thing to make gypsum wallboard out of is old gypsum wallboard.
[44:43.830 --> 44:49.790]  Because it's a, you know, it's a paper strip and a cardboard.
[44:50.170 --> 44:52.970]  And it's just this powder, basically, that's glued together.
[44:53.510 --> 45:00.170]  And in Massachusetts, we try to get better recycling of gypsum cardboard because it was causing odors and salt in landfills.
[45:00.450 --> 45:07.030]  And so the state talked to the manufacturers, all three of them that were in the New England, and they said, oh, yeah, okay, we'll pick it up.
[45:07.550 --> 45:12.450]  So they had all the developers, as much as possible, set up special bins for the gypsum wallboard.
[45:12.550 --> 45:14.410]  They used to make more gypsum wallboard.
[45:14.590 --> 45:19.050]  So, again, this is not universally applicable, but that's ultimately what we're talking about.
[45:19.190 --> 45:29.410]  To reduce environmental impact, but also reduce the cost for municipalities and have a complete circle of the life cycle of the product.
[45:31.750 --> 45:32.710]  So, conclusions.
[45:33.050 --> 45:40.670]  I hope everyone saw a walleye, or a patron saint of recycling or waste management, I suppose, doing it the old-fashioned way.
[45:42.030 --> 45:43.850]  EPR is still being proposed.
[45:44.150 --> 45:46.010]  There's about 20 other states in the U.S.
[45:46.150 --> 45:49.250]  where, like Massachusetts, where I've been unsuccessful for 10 years, they get it passed.
[45:49.250 --> 45:52.010]  But there's other states where it's still being proposed.
[45:52.330 --> 45:54.270]  There may be efforts at the national level.
[45:54.750 --> 46:03.650]  India, Australia, Canada has a number of provinces who are doing it for many products, but there's talk about a national legislation there.
[46:05.770 --> 46:06.170]  Israel.
[46:06.170 --> 46:07.850]  So, it's ongoing.
[46:08.150 --> 46:11.710]  And I've been working on it since 1999, and it finally started to take off in the U.S.
[46:11.830 --> 46:12.430]  two years ago.
[46:13.190 --> 46:21.990]  And across the world, everyone's looking at Europe and the U.S., and it's being seen as the way to go, and all the major companies are falling in favor of it.
[46:22.130 --> 46:38.990]  So, for more information, I don't think I need to put the websites, but look for the Electronic Kickback Campaign, the Silicon Valley Toxics Institute, the Product Policy Institute, and Clean Water Action, and my email's there at johnmcnab.comcast.net if I can answer any questions.
[46:39.290 --> 46:41.310]  Yeah, we've got about five minutes for questions.
[46:41.610 --> 46:42.090]  Questions.
[46:42.170 --> 46:45.700]  And I'd like to encourage you to come to the audience.
[46:45.920 --> 46:46.200]  Okay.
[46:46.400 --> 46:47.140]  Any questions?
[47:02.530 --> 47:08.910]  Yeah, the questions about cell phones that turn over every two years or so, and what happens to them.
[47:09.930 --> 47:12.690]  I'm not as knowledgeable in cell phones.
[47:12.870 --> 47:16.250]  There's hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of cell phones disposed every year.
[47:16.930 --> 47:21.970]  And you go most places, and there's a place to discard them so they don't go in the waste.
[47:24.050 --> 47:25.410]  I don't know what happens to them.
[47:27.110 --> 47:36.490]  But that's... some state laws are intentional, you know, are looking at including those in the EPR laws, because they're, in terms of the number of units, that it blows away anything else.
[47:37.010 --> 47:39.090]  So, there needs to be attention to cell phones.
[47:41.310 --> 47:46.290]  You know, for a cell phone, there isn't that much toxic, really, compared to, say, a computer, but it adds up.
[47:46.390 --> 47:47.470]  It adds up the same way.
[47:48.690 --> 47:49.050]  Yes?
[47:49.190 --> 47:50.510]  Do you mention anything about batteries?
[47:51.210 --> 47:51.730]  No.
[47:52.230 --> 47:52.270]  No.
[47:53.510 --> 47:53.770]  Batteries.
[47:54.210 --> 47:55.390]  The question is about batteries.
[47:55.810 --> 47:55.950]  Okay.
[47:57.230 --> 47:58.510]  That's one of the...
[47:58.510 --> 48:02.130]  We dealt with that in Massachusetts and in some other New England states.
[48:02.410 --> 48:08.430]  There's a voluntary battery program run by the industry that has a terrible track record.
[48:08.430 --> 48:34.530]  But, of course, every time we talk about recycling batteries, which are toxic in many cases, lithium-iod, other ones, there was a national law passed during the Clinton administration that preempts local laws requiring battery recycling and gave a preference to this voluntary program that the statistics show it isn't working.
[48:35.850 --> 48:42.150]  So, there's movement on that with the national groups trying to get something done at the national level to change that.
[48:43.390 --> 48:45.950]  Most, like, C or D batteries can be thrown away.
[48:46.110 --> 48:51.030]  But the really high-powered ones, like in laptops or whatever, can't.
[48:51.170 --> 48:57.850]  And so, when you discard the laptop that goes with it, I don't really know what happens to that at that point.
[48:58.930 --> 48:59.830]  Any other questions?
[49:02.450 --> 49:03.390]  Okay, thank you.
[49:03.390 --> 49:03.470]  Thank you.