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Product Stewardship

What is product stewardship? Why electronics?

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Product Stewardship

What is Product Stewardship?

The Northwest Product Stewardship Council has adopted the following definition of Product Stewardship.

Product stewardship means that whoever designs, makes, sells or uses a product takes responsibility for minimizing its environmental impact. This responsibility spans the product's life cycle - from selection of raw materials to design and production processes to its use and disposal.

Product stewardship addresses the environmental impact of a product at all stages of its life cycle, from design and manufacturing to packaging and distribution to end-of-life management. It shifts the responsibility for end-of-life management from the public sector (government and taxpayers) alone, to a shared responsibility that includes the private sector (manufacturers and purchasers). The goal is to encourage environmentally friendly design and recycling, and reduce flow to the landfills.

Europe and Asia have a variety of product stewardship models in place that involve different types of products, with electronics now being addressed. It may also be called Extended Product Responsibility, Extended Producer Responsibility, or EPR.

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What is a life cycle perspective?

The life of a product and its packaging starts with the conceptual design, extends through manufacture, sale, use and reuse/recycling, and finishes with disposal and all impacts from the product and its packaging after disposal. In order to understand all the impacts a product has during its lifetime one needs to consider energy and materials consumption, air and water emissions, the amount of toxics in the product, worker and user safety and waste disposal issues. Questions to consider include the following:

• How much energy does it take to extract the raw materials?

• How much energy is needed to transport the raw materials to the manufacturing site?

• How about the energy needed to transport the final product to its point of sale?

• How much energy goes into producing and transporting the chemicals and materials, that are used to manufacture the product in question?

• Are non-renewable materials being used?

• Is the product being manufactured from recycled materials?

• What kinds of emissions enter the environment during the production of the product and during production of the parts and chemicals used to manufacture the product?

• What toxic materials are in the product, or are used to make the product?

• What risk does the product or its manufacture present to the production workers and to the end-user?

• How much waste is created during the production process?

• Can the product or its packaging be made with less material?

• How much energy is needed to operate the product?

• Can the product be repaired or upgraded if necessary, hence extending its life?

• Are there recycling options available for the user?

• What are the recovery options?

• Is the product designed to facilitate materials reuse at the end of its life?

• What natural capital services are being compromised by all of these impacts?

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Who is Responsible?

A product stewardship model suggests that if an entity has a greater ability to minimize a product's life-cycle impacts, so too does it have a greater degree of responsibility and opportunity for addressing those impacts. For a more detailed look at who the stakeholders are, and what role they play in a product's life, go to stakeholders.

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Cost Internalization

In today's world, costs to design, manufacture and sell a product are borne by the manufacturer. State and local governments, along with the users, are left with the end-of-life costs of recycling and/or disposing of the product. In the process, because responsibility for the front and back end of the life cycle are independent, resources are lost and the environment is degraded.

Under product stewardship the product life cycle costs, from using resources, to reducing health and environmental impacts throughout the production process, to managing products at their end-of-life, would be shared by the actors in the product life cycle chain such that those who can reduce the environmental costs will have a financial incentive to do so. In this way manufacturers would have a direct financial incentive to redesign their products and packaging to reduce these costs. In turn, consumers would have a direct incentive to buy from the companies that reduce these total impacts and costs.

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Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP)

A consumer can make choices to purchase environmentally preferable products. This includes consideration of all the questions listed in "Life Cycle Perspective", above. Look for products with recycled content, and products that can be recycled themselves at the end of their life. Does the manufacturer have a "Take-back" program? Choose products that are expected to have a longer life. Choose products with less packaging. Look for guides to environmentally preferable purchasing. Businesses and governments that make very large purchases can especially help to drive the product stewardship principles by developing procurement guidelines that require them.

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Design for Environment (DfE)

Design for Environment is a process by which firms design products and processes in an environmentally conscious way across the entire product life cycle. One tactic being used is to reevaluate what the company actually provides. Some have changed their focus to the services their products offer. Rather than selling the actual physical product, they are striving to design and deliver the services in the least resource-intensive and ecologically damaging manner, taking account of life-cycle impacts. With DfE both pollution and waste are considered to be avoidable inefficiencies. Designers will evaluate such questions as:

• Can the product life be extended?

• Can recycled material be incorporated in the product manufacture?

• Can the number of polymer types be reduced? Are the polymers labeled?

• Can a product be easily taken apart at the end of its useful life?

• Can more environmentally benign materials substitute for ones with greater risk?

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Market Development

There need to be markets for the reclaimed materials. For example, develop options for the use of recycled CRT glass in new products. Insure that glass-to-glass recyclers are close enough to justify the transportation costs. Also, identify uses for highly engineered plastics. As markets for these plastics are developed, there will be increased interest in collecting them.

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Why target electronics?

Electronics are a waste management problem

Electronic products are one of the fastest growing segments of the waste stream, and this number is projected to increase dramatically unless reuse and recycling options expand. One report estimated that about 27 million televisions and about 26 million computer monitors were sold in the U.S. in the year 2000. There are almost no options for TV recycling, and as high definition television technology becomes available it's expected that there will be a significant spike in the number of TVs purchased. The National Safety Council's Environmental Health Center (the "EPR2 Baseline Report") gives a 2-4 year expected lifespan for computers, and estimates that a half billion computers will enter the U.S. waste stream from 1998-2007. This figure does not include TVs or all the other unwanted electronic products. The report estimates that 20.6 million PCs became obsolete in 1998 but only 11% were recycled. Much obsolete equipment is stored in attics and basements. Research conducted for the EPA concluded that perhaps three-fourths of all computers sold in the U.S. remain stockpiled.

There are two situations to consider in a waste management plan for electronics. First, how to manage the existing e-waste. For the most part this equipment was not designed with reuse or recycling in mind. In some cases the original manufacturer is no longer in business. Second, how to manage future electronic equipment. As DfE strategies are implemented, this equipment should become easier to handle.

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Barriers to recycling e-waste

The infrastructure for electronics collection/re-use/recycling is currently insufficient to handle the huge volumes of existing, let alone projected, material. The equipment was designed for disposal and is hard to disassemble, making it expensive to recycle. It is bulky, presenting transportation and storage problems. Markets for reclaimed materials are not well developed. CRT manufacturers can use more recycled CRT glass than is currently available to them, although perhaps not all of the glass that is out there. However, transportation costs to a glass-to-glass recycler are often prohibitively high. E-waste contains many types of highly engineered plastics which are difficult to identify. Though they have high resale value, these present a true recycling challenge. A DfE plan would reduce the number of plastics used, and perhaps standardize industry-wide a selected number of plastics that can be easily identified and recycled. The addition of flame retardants to plastics is also problematic for recycling processes.

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Toxics are a problem for electronics

Electronic equipment contains lead, mercury, cadmium, brominated flame retardants and chlorinated solvents. These toxic materials are entering our landfills without consideration to the detrimental effects that may result. Lead, mercury and cadmium can cause brain and kidney damage. Manufacturing and burning plastics as garbage can release toxic fumes. Brominated flame retardants in plastics are linked to long-term toxic effects. In fact, discarded computer monitors are starting to be classified as hazardous waste, and in some cases are being banned from landfills.

CRTs and Lead: Cathode ray tubes (CRTs) are in computer monitors, televisions and other video display devices. After vehicle batteries, CRTs are considered to be the single largest source of lead in municipal waste. Each contains 4-8 pounds of lead, which is used to protect the user from radiation. According to EPA test methods, lead from the funnel glass and the glass solder that fuses the panel glass to the funnel glass can leach out of a CRT under landfill-simulated conditions. When these components are crushed in landfills the lead is released into the environment. Consumer electronics constitute 40% of lead found in landfills. About 70% of the heavy metals (including mercury and cadmium) found in landfills originates from e-waste. If incinerated, discarded CRT glass can contribute to an ash that can leach lead in levels exceeding the EPA hazardous waste criteria.

Mercury: This environmentally persistent metal is in computer printed wiring boards, switches, relays and batteries.

Cadmium: Cadmium compounds, metals suspected as persistent carcinogens, are in computer batteries, wiring boards and plastic stabilizers.

For more information on toxic substances and e-waste visit the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition Web site: www.svtc.org

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What happens to the e-waste that is exported?

It is labor-intensive to disassemble the electronic waste. Large quantities of it are exported to overseas markets for recycling. It's not known what happens to the waste once it is shipped, or whether the hazardous materials are properly handled.

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