With the state budget now signed off on, and casino legislation flying, undeservedly, through the Legislature (its progress unimpeded by any substantial public debate or objective analysis), the clock is now ticking for any number of pet proposals that lawmakers and constituents hope to see come to a vote before the end of the current legislative session on July 31.
At the top of that list for many: the so-called “e-waste” bill, which would require electronics manufacturers who sell their products in Massachusetts to bear the cost for collecting and recycling discarded products, such as computers, televisions and video games.
The bill—known officially as H4374, An Act to Require Producer Responsibility for Collection, Reuse and Recycling of Discarded Electronic Products—was filed by state Rep. William Straus (D-Mattapoisett) and has been reported favorably out of the House Committee on Rules and the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture. (The bill also has the support of activist groups, including Clean Water Action, the Sierra Club and the League of Women Voters.)
But for the past few months, it’s sat in the House Ways and Means Committee—and supporters are anxious to see it move forward.
Those supporters include a number of municipal officials—no surprise, since it’s municipalities that now bear the considerable cost of handling discarded electronics, a cost made higher by the number of toxins used in their manufacturing. Last month, a group of seven municipal officials—including Northampton Mayor Clare Higgins, Holyoke Mayor Elaine Pluta, Holyoke City Councilor Rebecca Lisi and Springfield City Councilor Melvin Edwards—wrote to House Speaker Robert DeLeo requesting a meeting to discuss the e-waste bill and expressing their desire to see it come to a vote. The signers are part of a working group putting together a statewide “product stewardship council” made up of local officials.
“Passage of the bill this session has implications for our municipalities beyond the obvious environmental benefit of increasing recycling,” they wrote. “In 22 states similar e-waste laws are providing budget relief to local governments, and generating new businesses and jobs. There is no reason that our cities and towns should be paying to recycle the same electronic products that brand-owners are paying to recycle in other states.”
The Massachusetts Municipal Association also backs the bill. MMA Executive Director Geoffrey Beckwith recently wrote to Rep. Charles Murphy, the chair of Ways and Means, that it would “help municipal budgets and provide an incentive for manufacturers to make cleaner products that are easier to recycle.” According to MMA, “[d]iscarded electronics make up the fastest growing portion of the municipal solid waste stream in the Commonwealth”—183,000 tons, less than 20 percent of which is recycled. In 2007, Beckwith added, Massachusetts municipalities spent $1.8 million processing this waste.
The Holyoke and Springfield City Councils both earlier this year approved resolutions calling for the passage of the e-waste bill, as well as for broader efforts to shift the responsibility for discarded products and packaging on to manufacturers. Similar resolutions have also been passed in Salem and Milton, and are in the works in several other communities, including Northampton, said Lynne Pledger, who’s coordinating the efforts for Clean Water Action.
The e-waste bill, Pledger said, is important both in its own right and as a key step toward those broader efforts to make manufacturers bear responsibility for their products’ end-of-life. Those efforts, known as “extended producer responsibility,” or EPR, aim to relieve recycling costs now borne by taxpayers by shifting them to manufacturers—who, it’s hoped, would then be motivated to make products that last longer and are easier to recycle.
“[The e-waste bill is] essentially a gateway bill,” Pledger said. “Once it’s passed, we’ll get on to legislation in the next session that will allow us to cover multiple products.”
In March, Maine became the first state to pass a “framework” EPR law, which creates a process for the state to add multiple products to its EPR laws rather than having to pass individual laws addressing each product. Pledger and other activists hope to see Massachusetts adopt its own framework EPR law in the near future.
