Tiny bites at the landfill
In Rhode Island, a likely first stop for an obsolete computer is the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation (RIRRC) landfill in Johnston. In a best-case scenario, the machine is brought to one of the RIRRC’s monthly electronics collections. John Trevor, who manages the program, says the e-waste collections, which are advertised in newspapers and on radio, are increasingly popular — 500,000 pounds were collected in fiscal 2006, nearly double the 2005 amount. (For details on collections, visit www.rirrc.org.)
On a recent Saturday morning, a steady stream of cars loaded with digital junk passes through the landfill gates, headed to the e-waste drop-off. Volunteer Cheryl Long of Smithfield asks drivers what they’ve got, and has them pop the trunk. Long and an employee of CRT Recycling of Brockton, Massachusetts, then remove the items, passing them to two CRT workers who stand in a 24-foot truck, steadily stacking printers, fax machines, CPUs, and monitors. The collection is far from a moneymaker; the RIRRC pays CRT ten cents a pound to take the stuff away.
Not surprisingly, those dropping off materials at the landfill tend to be environmentally aware. “I’ve got grandkids,” says Betty Gemma of Charleston, who leaves a monitor, “I worry about all that kind of toxic stuff.” Joe Campagna of Cumberland brings a TV (paying $5 for the privilege), as well as a stereo, a laptop, and a cell phone. Campagna became attuned to the e-waste problem when he was a college exchange student in Germany 10 years ago, and worked on an electronic waste project. “They have a law there,” he recalls, “that you have to recycle electronic scrap.”
As commendable as this program is, it reaches only a small fraction of motivated and well-informed Rhode Islanders. Many people simply put their old televisions and computers out at the curb on trash pick-up day.
While municipalities have varying policies on taking such stuff, countless computers, TVs, monitors, and other equipment nonetheless wind up in the landfill’s bulging heaps. As Trevor says, “Once the stuff ends up in the waste stream, there’s no after-sorting.” Of particular concern are monitors and televisions whose screens break en-route, causing some of the otherwise encapsulated lead to escape. Given the health dangers posed when it enters the air, ground, and water, Clean Water Action’s Dormody views this as a serious problem. “Our municipal waste facility,” she says, “is not designed to be a toxic landfill.”
Bleak as this picture is, computer recycling could increase sharply in the next few years. Rhode Island’s 2006 law, which takes effect July 1, 2008, prohibits e-waste from going into the landfill, and mandates the separation of electronics from other waste.
The law does not, however, fund these activities, or specify how to accomplish these goals. Despite ample study of computer recycling, the bugaboo invariably remains deciding who is going to foot the bill. In the absence of legislation specifying otherwise, the state, municipalities, and Rhode Island Resource Recovery will be on the hook for paying the cost — pegged at $42 million by Clean Water Action — of collecting and properly recycling 95 percent of Rhode Island’s e-waste through 2011.
