Federal officials have allayed concerns that an executive order regarding environmentally friendly electronics purchasing will erode use of the EPEAT program. President Obama's March 2015 executive order on sustainable-product purchasing excluded an explicit requirement that federal agencies give purchasing preference to electronics meeting the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) standards.That omission concerned EPEAT advocates, who feared the decision could...

Illinois is set to put a legislative Band-Aid on the state's e-scrap program, requiring electronics manufacturers to collect and recycle more material in coming years. Passed unanimously by both the state House of Representatives and Senate, HB 1455 would require manufacturers to collect and recycle a combined 23,300 tons of e-scrap in 2015 and 24,800 tons in 2016 and 2017....

Bulk unlocking of cellphone and tablets for resale does not violate copyright law and should continue to be allowed, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries told the U.S. Copyright Office. ISRI's May 26 testimony came as federal officials consider whether to renew a three-year exemption allowing for the unlocking of mobile devices. Some mobile devices have software restricting them to...

Federally funded research into using robots to replace humans on MRF sorting lines could significantly lower materials sorting costs. "We'd like to reduce the cost of recycling and make it a little more cost-competitive with the cost of landfilling across the country," Matanya Horowitz of AMP Robotics told Resource Recycling. The National Science Foundation awarded the Boulder, Colo. startup a...

The Texas Legislature's serious consideration of a law mandating take-back and recycling for all household batteries sends a signal to other states considering the same, an advocate for the bill says. "If conservative Republicans in Texas are advocating for battery recycling, legislatures all across the country have the green light to do this," Robin Schneider, executive director of the Texas...

Offices will generate more recyclable materials and less contamination if each employee is given a large recycling bin and small garbage can, according to a study. The study, titled "Recycling at Work: Research to Inform Improved Recycling in the Workplace," was commissioned by Keep America Beautiful (KAB) with support from PepsiCo Recycling and commercial real estate giant CBRE. "It was...

"This is the place where thousands of tons of the world's electronics go to die," The Atlantic in December wrote about Agbogbloshie, a district in the middle of Accra, Ghana. One U.S. e-scrap expert, however, says he saw no evidence of that during a recent trip to the West African country. "It's basically a hoax," said Robin Ingenthron, founder of...

California officials no longer envision immediate cuts to programs funded by the state's beverage container fund because the fund's financial future looks brighter. That's according to a recent presentation by Susan Collins, executive director of the Container Recycling Institute (CRI), based in Culver City, California. Her analysis included data from an April financial report from CalRecycle, the state entity that...

  Reclaimers and recycling companies could avoid paying millions of dollars in sales taxes on purchases, under a bill in the California legislature. Assembly Bill 199 would expand the definition of projects eligible for sales tax exemptions to include that which "primarily processes recycled feedstock that is intended to be reused in the production of another product or utilizes recycled feedstock...

California officials no longer envision immediate cuts to programs funded by the state's beverage container fund – because the fund's financial future looks brighter. That's according to a recent presentation by Susan Collins, executive director of the Container Recycling Institute, based in Culver City, California. Her analysis included data from an April financial report from CalRecycle, the state entity that...