Setting Up an Electronic
Recycling Business
Used electronics recycling has become a growing concern for municipal and regional
solid waste programs. The primary goal of this manual is to provide managers of these
programs and other local officials with the basic tools to set up and operate effective
electronics recycling/reuse programs by learning from the experiences of their peers. In
order to provide this base of experience, a national survey of existing electronics
recycling/reuse programs was conducted. The results of that survey and the experience
of recycling coordinators and other recycling professionals provided the foundation for
this document.
Because of the national need to learn from the limited experience that exists in the
United States, this project enjoyed support from the Environmental Protection Agency
Headquarters, and Regions 1, 2, 4, 8 & 9. This document is not region specific, but is
applicable to anyplace in the U.S. It is being written in conjunction with the
development of training workshops.
The second goal of this manual is to help empower the creation of more electronics
recycling/reuse programs around the country, and thereby stimulate a reliable and
predictable source of used electronics, which will lead to more used electronics
recycling and reuse market development. As recycling markets expand and become
more profitable, we can anticipate that the cost to recycle cathode ray tubes will
decrease, and in time there might even be a positive value.
At the same time that this manual is being written (September - October 2001), a
national effort is unfolding to develop a system of product stewardship for computers
and televisions. The "National Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative" (NEPSI), is a
coalition of governments (federal, state, local, and regional), manufacturers of
computers, televisions and other consumer electronics, retailers, software
manufacturers, non-profits and public policy groups, attempting to create a strategy for
shared responsibility between government and industry in the end-of-life management
of electronics. The NEPSI process is scheduled to be completed in mid-2002, a likely
result of which will be the additional availability of manufacturer and retailer recycling
and take-back programs. It is not expected that these programs will completely replace
government collection programs - however we can look forward to more end-of-life
options and partnerships between government, manufacturers and retailers.
Manual Contents
This document has four key components:
- Section One: The results of the national electronics collection programs
survey conducted between April and September 2001.
- Section Two: General considerations for setting up and running any type of
electronics collection program.
- Section Three: Specific guidance about ongoing collection, special event, and
curbside electronics collection programs.
- Section Four: Appendices.
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Michael R. Meuser
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