Businesses soon may be disposing of
computer monitors under Universal Waste
Rules, a waste category established by the
Environmental Protection Agency to
handle ubiquitous hazardous waste.
The EPA's goal is to make it easier and
less costly for businesses to dispose of
widely used products that contain
hazardous materials. If placed in that
category, CRTs would still be handled and
disposed of as hazardous waste, but the
paperwork associated with them would be
cut. That can significantly reduce the cost
of disposal.
In May, the EPA sent out a request for
comment on whether monitors - specifically
the cathode ray tubes, or CRTs,
inside the monitors - should be handled in
the same way as batteries, recalled pesticides,
mercury-containing thermostats and
fluorescent lamps. A final decision will
take time, maybe even years, said David
Friedman, recycling coordinator, solid
waste branch of Nevada's Bureau of Waste
Management in Carson City. "The
government is just feeling its way around
the issue." He said. "But the road is being
built right now."
If that happens, the rules for disposing
of CRTs would become less stringent, and
businesses would be categorized as either
small-quantity generators or large-quantity
generators, depending on how much
CRT waste they create. Under the criteria
for fluorescent lamps, for example, a smallquantity
handler of universal waste is
defined as any business that accumulates
less than 11,000 pounds of waste at any
time, while a large quantity handler is
defined as one that amasses more than
11,000 pounds.
Many businesses may not even be
aware that CRTs, as well as other electronic
equipment, are considered hazardous
waste. "It's just recently that someone
finally realized CRTs had lead so they
were hazardous waste," said Friedman.
The Lockwood Regional Landfill in
Sparks, which serves Washoe County,
stopped taking CRTs from businesses
about 10 months ago, according to Mark
Franchi, landfill transfer station manager,
and the landfill has plans soon to stop
taking any part of the computer from
businesses, he said.
CRTs contain lead and cadmium, both
on the EPA's list of hazardous materials
under the agency's Resource Conservation
and Recovery Act, or RCRA, which
Nevada follows. The plastic casing also
may be hazardous, said Friedman, because
most are made heat resistant with bromiated
flame retardant, another hazardous
chemical. And other parts of a computer
may contain hazardous wastes, too. The
liquid crystal display used in flat panel
screens and laptops, for example,may contain
mercury, said Friedman. Circuit board
solder is also a problem in sufficiently
great quantities.
RCRA specifies chemicals and minerals,
not products, which are hazardous.
(The exception is the universal waste category
in which the EPA specifies products
that it considers to be pervasive.) Under
RCRA, it is up to the manufacturer to
determine whether a product contains
hazardous waste and then if it passes what
the EPA calls the toxicity characteristic
leaching procedure, or TCLP, to determine
whether the product would seep
dangerous amounts of hazardous wastes if
it were placed in a landfill.
The manufacturer determines whether
a product is classified as hazardous waste,
but it's the responsibility of the end-user
to dispose of such products properly and
legally. The Business Environmental
Program, an EPA-funded outfit located at
the University of Nevada, Reno, can help
businesses figure that out. The service is
free and confidential, and businesses of
any size can take advantage of it.
The group's goal is to promote hazardous
waste reduction, said Peter
Johnson, hazardous waste management
specialist at BEP. The program helped
reduce business-generated hazardous
waste in Nevada by a couple hundred
thousand pounds last year, said Johnson.
The first thing BEP does for a business is to
determine whether its old CRTs are still
usable. If so, BEP suggests several ways the
business can resell the monitors, including
posting them on the NevadaMax.org web
site, a business-to-business materials
exchange run by BEP where businesses can
sell or buy equipment.
If the monitors cannot be reused, BEP
helps businesses recycle them. If a business
is large, said Johnson, BEP encourages it to
work with the computer manufacturers to
take back the monitors. Most PC makers
have so-called take-back programs for
leased computers and Johnson thinks large
end-users have enough leverage to force
makers to accept purchased PCs, too.
"My goal is to make corporate entities,
like the Dells and Gateways, to be more
accountable," said Aaron Zimmerman,
owner of Abacus Revival, a Reno-based recycler
of computer equipment. His dream is to
collect computers and other electronic equipment
then work with the manufacturers to
create large-scale take-back programs. That's
proving a rough row to hoe, he said, so in the
meantime Abacus recycles on its own.
Abacus is one of dozens of computer
recyclers that businesses, both large and
small, can use to dispose of used equipment.
Abacus, for example, recycles more than a
million pounds a year. The company takes
apart CRTs, said Zimmerman, and removes
any precious metals. Then it sends the glass
to a company in Pennsylvania, where it is
ground, melted and recycled. The circuit
boards, plastic and steel are processed similarly.
Abacus also handles copy machines,
printers, and computer CPUs, all of which
contain one or more hazardous waste materials.
Whatever category CRTs and other ewaste
falls into, recycling it is what matters,
said Johnson and others. According to the
EPA, as many as 315 million obsolete computers
could potentially be disposed of in
landfills by the 2004. That would introduce
4 billion pounds of plastic, 1 billion pounds
of lead, 2 million pounds of cadmium and
400,000 pounds of mercury into the waste
stream, the EPA said.
