In case you missed it National Recycling Day came and went on Nov. 15 with nary a whimper - perhaps because it was a Sunday, but probably because recycling of old consumer products (particularly old displays chuck-full of hazardous waste material) just isn’t on folks’ mind. It’s not sexy, like those new ultra thin LCD-TVs or the "Nook" e-book reader from Barnes & Noble that ships with a cool, 3.5-inch secondary color display.

Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor

But sexy or not, old CE waste material is too dangerous to be treated simply like landfill garbage. In a recent article on recycling, tech writers Nathan Rowe and Derek Brink said, "Heavy metals and other poisonous contaminants can leak into the environment if electronic equipment is not properly processed," and that could lead to "environmental regulation violations that could come back to haunt the organization."

But as the Insight Media 2009 Green Display Report notes: "According to the US EPA, there is currently no federal mandate to recycle electronic waste, including displays. There have been attempts to develop federal law, but to date there has been no consensus expressed in legislation. Lacking federal action, many states (plus New York City) have established mandatory state electronic waste legislation." So, without federal direction, individual states are beginning to lead the charge (both in recycling and power-consumption restrictions, like the recent California initiative.) The Green Display Report identifies two growing trends:

· An increasing number of states’ regulations call upon manufacturers to establish programs to collect and recycle electronic products at end-of-life.
· Payment schemes for such recycling programs offer several themes and variations.

Here in the US, CE companies must chose to lead, follow or get out of the way. Two companies recently made news with their efforts to get on the recycling bandwagon: CE giant Samsung and CE retailer Sears. Samsung said it has recycled an impressive 12M pounds of e-waste so far in 2009, just one year after starting a recycling initiative in October 2008. The initiative includes a 50-state recycling program, offering consumers drop-off points for their CE products. Samsung currently has over 200 permanent drop-off centers in the US.

On the CE retail front, Sears Holdings (Hoffman Estates, IL) is putting a "reuse" spin on the recycling issue. The company said it is launching a CE trade-in and recycling program that allows shoppers to redeem their used products for gift cards. Sears collaborated with a green promotion/recycle company called Second Rotation (Boston, MA) and its Web-based initiative, Gazelle.com. The company mantra is "Recycling starts with Reuse." It encourages folks to send in their old electronics (from cell phones to LCDs) for cash. Sears modified the Web-based program a bit by offering a 5% premium over the price your used electronics would command if you opt to take a Sears gift card instead of cash. So, the $200 Gazelle would pay for your used iPhone would net you a $10 bonus for taking it in Sears merchandise instead of cold, hard cash.

Reuse is not a bad idea, but there are problems when old (used) electronics are shipped overseas and end up in a place with unsafe practices in materials reclamation, according to CE industry critics. The toxins that result, they say, endanger the people and ecology of impoverished areas of the world, especially in China, India and Latin America, where there is little if any overseeing. The issue of safe, responsible recycling does cross borders. It has the potential to severely affect the lives of people in poor nations that have become the dumping ground for toxic e-waste.

We think the recent US recycling efforts, while encouraging, are indeed "piecemeal," as the IM Green Display Report indicates. Samsung’s collection of 12M pounds of e-waste and the EPA recognition of its non-mandated recycling efforts are praiseworthy, but those are just the efforts of a single company. Sears’ partnership with Gazelle, while focusing on "reuse," is really little more than a trade-off of cash for a 5% bonus for spending that cash in a Sears store. While it does help get the word out on "reuse," the 5% incentive is unlikely to have any real impact on boosting the numbers.

As states and municipalities (like New York City) continue to pursue their e-waste recycling agendas, we believe the CE industry eventually must create a responsible, comprehensive eco management plan - or suffer a patchwork of regulations that are difficult and expensive to manage. And that’s downright wasteful. - Steve Sechrist

Ed. Note: For a more comprehensive view of e-waste and recycling, see this month’s Large Display Report.