A Washington state remanufacturer is currently hard at work trying to ensure the concerns of remanufacturers are met in proposed electronic waste legislation.
Remanufacturer Robert Parker of The Printer People in Bremerton, Wash., attended state legislative hearings last year and recently, in an attempt to have printer cartridge remanufacturing addressed in proposed state electronic waste bills.
The proposed House Bill 1942, "Regulating Electronic Waste," was introduced to the House of Representatives early last year and mandated that electronic waste producers implement plans for the disposal of electronic waste they generate. No language including printer cartridges or the prevention of obstacles to remanufacturing (smart chips) was included in the bill. Parker has advocated remanufacturing as one of the solutions to electronic waste generation.
The proposed bill, which was referred to the Fisheries, Ecology and Parks Committee early last year, was put on hold for a more in-depth study and has now been split into two separate proposals that currently do little to address state remanufacturers’ concerns.
The new proposals, House Bill 2487 and 2488, were introduced Jan. 12. House Bill 2487 prohibits hazardous electronic material from being disposed in a solid waste landfill, while House Bill 2488 establishes guidelines for electronic product manufacturers to collect and recycle their electronic waste. "The first one, 2487, doesn't help us at all," Parker said. "It kind of goes way away from us." The current version of the bill only prohibits the disposal of televisions, computer monitors and computer central processing units (CPUs). As with House Bill 1942, neither of the new bills' language includes printers or printer cartridges.
At a public hearing on the new proposals Jan. 23, in Olympia, Wash., Parker once again voiced his concerns with Representative Mike Cooper, who was the prime sponsor of the original bill. "Basically I explained to him, 'Look, you guys are worried about the CPUs and not worrying about the printers and cartridges,'" Parker said. "By the time you go through one CPU I'm going to go through a pallet of toner cartridges."
Representative Cooper said Parker brought up some very valid concerns about the hazards of printers during the hearing. Parker also urged the addition of printers to the list of electronic waste listed in HB 2488 and suggested the addition of a completely new section in the bill that states:
"It shall be prohibited to add an electronic device or single use license agreement that serves to inhibit, hinder, or restrict the open market reuse, recycle, or remanufacture of a covered electronic equipment or consumable of such equipment."
The suggested addition was prompted by many remanufacturers’ concerns about smart chips that make it more difficult to remanufacture printer cartridges. "I'm just trying to get it to where people aren't designing products that we can't remanufacture or that they're creating sophisticated licensing agreements that lines them up to be able to sue us if we do remanufacture products," Parker said.
Cooper said the focus of HB 1942 was narrowed into the two newer bills in an attempt to get at least some aspects of the original bill pushed through this year's legislative session. "We clearly have some more work to do," he said.
Sarah Westervelt, Toxics Research Analyst for the Seattle-based Basel Action Network (BAN), said the organization would like to have everything considered toxic included in the bills. A similar European Union Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) Directive was passed last year.
