Published: October 11, 2009 11:04 pm      

Electronic devices pose environmental concern in W.Va.

An endless stream of ravaged television sets, outdated computers, old cell phones and other electronic devices is raising a fresh environmental concern over the matter of disposal.

Last year, West Virginia ventured into the issue with a new law, SB746, that led to a program known as Covered Electronic Devices, or CED, that essentially lets the Department of Environmental Protection, in a registration effort, to collect fees from manufacturers producing at least 1,000 products annually in the past three years.

If a firm lacks an approved takeback or recycling program in the state, it pays an initial fee of $10,000. Those with approved programs are assessed $5,000. Each year, firms pay a $5,000 fee if they don’t have a recycling program, or $500 for those that do.

“To date, we’ve collected approximately $400,000 from the manufacturers registration process,” says Sandy Rogers, director of the Rehabilitation Environmental Action Plan.

Money funneled through grants from the DEP allows counties to conduct special events, such as the ones implemented by the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority.

Once a year, at least, the SWA there invites consumers to bring in old appliances, taking them off their hands when there simply is no place else to go.

Yet, one annual event falls woefully shy of what is needed, says the SWA’s chairman, Clint Hogbin.

In a recent one, he points out, participants numbered 724 in an eight-hour stretch and there was enough junk carted in to start a warehouse.

“We filled four 53-foot tractor-trailers,” Hogbin said. “It was almost 37 tons. We always set a cap on the number of items you can bring.”

Seven years ago, when the SWA began inviting consumers to turn in used electronic devices, no one had 10 computers or TVs. In those prosperous years that followed, however, families have accumulated a vast storehouse of electronic devices.

“This summer, it was common for people to say, ‘Well, I brought 10, I have four more at home, but I’m not waiting an hour to come back and bring them,’” Hogbin said.

Rogers says REAP has awarded $173,290.90 in 17 grants across the state for the electronic recycling program.

Among the recipients were the city of Lewisburg, $6,000; and solid waste authorities in Greenbrier County, $20,000, McDowell County, $13,030, Pocahontas County, $17,134, and Raleigh County, $26,676.

Disposing of such devices is a growing problem, and Hogbin says the state needs to consider a law that totally bans them from landfills, given the laundry list of chemicals and heavy metals, such as lead, cadmium and mercury, that could leach and seep into groundwater supplies. On average, a television set contains seven pounds of lead, he pointed out.

“Secondly, we need to establish a funding mechanism to allow an ongoing collection so that people who can’t take it to the landfill have a place to go,” Hogbin said.

“You can’t just leave them in closets, in basements and garages.”

Already, some consumers are reverting to the familiar old tack of dumping their old units over the hillsides, just as some lawbreakers did in decades past with old stoves, refrigerators and other heavy appliances.

“Illegal dumps have changed,” Hogbin said. “They are now having electronics in them. That shouldn’t happen under any circumstances.”

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In Beckley, the Raleigh County landfill seeks to get some use out of discarded appliances, such as tape recorders or televisions, by allowing owners to drop them off at the Last Chance Mercantile, spokesperson Sherrie Hunter says.

“Somebody else can pick it up and benefit from it,” she said. “You’re contributing in a bigger way in that you’re not adding anything to the waste stream.”

For a nominal fee, the junked items are sold and proceeds are used to defray some costs of the center, she explained.

Hunter said the Raleigh County SWA intends to eventually get into e-recycling for southern West Virginia residents in a major way.

“We’re going to do that,” she said.

Berkeley County uses extensive competitive bidding to get hooked up with a firm specializing in electronics, such as Eco International, with a solid reputation for disposing of unwanted devices, Hogbin said.

“Some companies do some really bad stuff, like shipping it to China and things like that,” he said. “We make sure we team up with a reputable entity.”

Firms either dispose of the items intact or break them down to basic components for salvage materials that get recycled into school programs, or the various metals, plastic and glass undergo an industrial reincarnation into another product.

“Berkeley County residents are not comfortable with a one-day, special event,” Hogbin said.

“The most common request we get is, ‘When are you going to take electronics?’ We get that request starting the day after we just run an event. In the past event, we had traffic backed up at our recycling center for about half a mile. We had people waiting an hour. Even though everybody is grateful there is an event, and there is a large amount of participation, it’s not really that convenient when you have to wait an hour to get there.”

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Linda Frame, program director for West Virginia-Citizens Action Group, says her organization would gladly get behind any new e-recycling legislation that is proposed by the Legislature in 2010, but so far, she is unaware of any planned by lawmakers.

But as with the often-failed bottle bill that would impose a deposit on beverage containers to inspire recycling, Frame says the leadership needs to get behind any such legislation. Otherwise, it would be doomed from the start.

“We really need to get on board with what’s going on nationally,” Frame said.

Nineteen states have enacted laws that require old electronics to be recycled and similar legislation is being eyed in 13 others.

“Some of the producer stuff is interesting,” Frame said.

“The companies are creating these products and wanting you to get rid of your old stuff. It gets cheaper and cheaper to go buy these different things. But what are people going to do with their old monitors? What do you do with these things?”

Hogbin says the solution lies in a two-fold approach: Increase recycling so there is an ongoing program rather than an annual event, and completely reject old devices from landfills.

“I think West Virginia needs to do that before we wake up and have a problem at our landfills,” he said.

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com