Texas Campaign for the Environment: News
MEDIA RELEASE: May 20, 2008
State Environmental Agency to Vote on Rules for Electronic Waste Recycling
AUSTIN - On Wednesday May 21, the Texas environmental agency will meet in Austin to vote on final guidelines to implement the new Electronics TakeBack Recycling legislation. State legislators and recycling advocates say that while the proposed rules are good in some areas, they don’t do enough to ensure that the manufacturers will provide environmentally responsible recycling programs for Texans.
Tens of thousands of Texas residents have sent letters to environmental agency calling for stronger standards that would ensure electronics collected for recycling won’t end up being dumped in developing countries around the world – something the proposed standard fails to address. In addition, responsible electronics recyclers, computer giant Dell, and over a dozen state lawmakers have also urged the agency to adopt stronger recycling rules.
State Representatives Valinda Bolton (right) and Eddie Rodriguez join TCE activists at the state capitol
State Representatives Eddie Rodriguez and Valinda Bolton stood with environmental advocates to call on the state environmental agency to adopt standards to prevent Texas electronic waste from being dumped on developing countries. In all more than a dozen state legislators weighed in on the issue. Texas Campaign for the Environment displayed some of the more than 69,000 signatures of Texans backing strong recycling standards.
“Safe and responsible recycling of electronic waste was and is the goal of the Texas Computer TakeBack law, which passed the Legislature unanimously last year,” said State Representative Eddie Rodriguez (Austin). “Simply shipping it away - without specific environmental standards and safety measures for workers in the receiving country - does not accomplish that,” he continued.
“My constituents have made it clear to me that they want responsible recycling of electronic waste,” explained State Representative Valinda Bolton. “I have joined with many of my legislative colleagues on both sides of the aisle to contact the state environmental agency. We are urging the state environmental commissioners to adopt provisions from federal EPA Plug-In to eCycling Guidelines so that any export of electronic waste is done in accordance with the laws of the importing countries,” Bolton concluded.
The state environmental agency will be voting to finalize the rules on Wednesday May 21st for the computer recycling program.
TCE Intern Mary Grace Hebert and Austin Staff Director Stacy Guidry at the press conference.
“When Texas becomes the fourth state in the nation to have a producer takeback recycling program for electronic waste up and running on September 1, consumers want to know that the producers are not dumping our problem onto someone else even more vulnerable to pollution than we are,” declared Robin Schneider, Executive Director of Texas Campaign for the Environment (TCE). “Thousands of Texans have sent letters and signed on to show they don’t want the export of hazardous electronic waste to be a huge elephant in the room that the state environmental agency refuses to address,” she asserted.
Legislators, environmental groups, local government officials, recyclers and some computer makers have urged the state environmental agency, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to use the federal EPA Plug-In to eCycling Guidelines, as the State of Connecticut is doing for their producer responsibility program. These producer takeback recycling programs must be in operation by September 1, 2008, or retailers and producers cannot sell their products in Texas.
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