EPA blasted for lax controls for hazardous electronic waste exports

EPA blasted for lax controls for hazardous electronic waste exports A congressional watchdog agency released a scathing report citing that environmental regulators have failed to enforce a federal rule preventing the unfettered export of hazardous cathode-ray tubes to developing countries.
   Government Accountability Office investigators recently found that the Environmental Protection Agency has done little to enforce the country’s CRT export rule.
   Since the rule took effect in January 2007, Hong Kong’s Environmental Protection Department and customs service have worked together to intercept and return 26 containers of CRT waste to the United States.
   The GAO also found that U.S. electronic waste exporters do not take the CRT law seriously, even though violations are subject to administrative penalties.
   “When we posed as foreign buyers looking for nonworking CRT monitors, 43 U.S. companies that responded to our fictitious requests were willing to export nonworking CRTs to us, in apparent violation of the CRT rule,” said John B. Stephenson, GAO’s director of natural resources and environment, in written testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the global environment, on Sept. 17.
   “Many of these companies also actively promote an environmentally responsible public image, with three holding Earth Day 2008 electronics-recycling events,” he said.
   Most overseas solicitations for U.S. electronic scrap come from developing countries and regions, such as China, India and Africa. Many recyclers in these countries employ techniques that are both harmful to human health and the environment, like open-air incineration and acid baths to extract metals such as copper and gold.
   Technically, when CRTs are exported for recycling, the U.S. exporter must first notify EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance in Washington, which then obtains consent from the importing country. This written consent, which the EPA sends to the exporter, must accompany the shipment.
   Stephenson, in his testimony to the House subcommittee, said the United States could do much more to monitor and control other potentially hazardous electronic waste exports, such as cell phones, flat-screen TVs, laptops and printers, which aren’t regulated as hazardous waste under the 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
   The GAO recommended that the EPA could work more closely with Customs and Border Protection and the International Trade Commission to improve identification and tracking of exported used electronics.
   Stephenson noted that at present the U.S. Harmonized Tariff Schedule, which helps regulators track goods entering and leaving the country, lacks codes specifically identifying used electronics. “Through identification of potentially illegal shipments of CRTs, we observed that shippers described used electronic exports as ‘mixed plastics’ and ‘scrap metals,’ ” he said.
   There are also documented cases of U.S. exporters arranging deals with African importers to accept shipments mixed with both working and non-working used CRTs. The African importer is then forced to accept the responsibility for disposing the non-working CRTs.
   In addition, the GAO recommended that the United States become part of the Basel Convention, which has been ratified by 170 countries. The international convention stipulates that a country may ship hazardous waste only after receiving prior written consent from the receiving country. These countries must have sufficient and environmentally sound disposal capacity to accept these types of exports.
   The GAO pointed out that there are some international companies providing safe and environmentally friendly electronic waste recycling services.
   For example, Samsung Corning has a plant in Malaysia that recycles CRT glass and manufactures new CRT televisions, which contain as much as half recycled glass content. Samsung Corning’s U.S. contractor has coordinated with about 40 U.S. recyclers for export of CRT glass. “According to the contractor, about 250 shipping containers, totaling about 4,000 tons of CRT glass, leave the United States for the Malaysian facility each month,” Stephenson said. ' Chris Gillis