Hawai’i lawmakers added more devices to the 2008 e-scrap program via SB 1298. | lkonya/Shutterstock
Hawai’i added a host of new electronic devices and peripherals to its existing e-scrap law this year, also giving manufacturers more time to reach a 70% recycling and reuse target.
SB 1298, which is currently on Gov. Josh Green’s desk, would add fax machines, videocassette recorders, portable digital music and video disc players and recorders, household routers and modems and electronic device peripherals to the program. The peripheral list includes keyboards, mice, cords, power supplies and adapters, speakers and video game consoles.
Starting July 1, those items will join the legacy items, which are computers and monitors, printers, portable computers with screens larger than 4 inches measured diagonally, and televisions.
The law also adds a new exclusion, for manufacturers who only make electronic device peripherals and no other electronic devices. Previously, only manufacturers that sold fewer than 100 electronic devices per year were excluded from the requirements of the law.
Hawai’i first passed its extended producer responsibility law for electronics in 2008, then updated it in 2022 to require manufacturers to fully fund the program. That update was in response to a brief suspension of the program that happened in April 2022, when the Department of Health’s fund for the program ran dry months early.
SB 1298 will also adjust the 2025 target for collecting and recycling of electronic devices sold in the state two years prior to 66%, down from the original 70%, and push the 70% goal out to Jan. 1, 2027.
Finally, manufacturers would also be required to provide more information in their annual reports, including a list of operation hours for all collection and recycling locations used, the types and amounts, by weight, of each type of electronic device collected by each collector for each month, and the names of recyclers, collectors and reuse facilities used.
The bill passed the Senate on March 4, then the House on April 8 with amendments. The Senate disagreed with the amendments, so a conference committee was formed that eventually ended with an agreeable bill passed by both chambers and sent to the governor on May 2.
Roy Kadota, owner and president of Mr. K’s Recycle & Redemption Center, said that SB 1298 “brings good improvements.”
“It helps manufacturers by spreading the recycling target increases over a longer period of time. It helps us all by diverting more weight and toxic materials from our landfills by expanding what’s eligible for responsible recycling to include peripherals like keyboards and older devices like fax machines and VCRs,” he said.
Mr. K’s has two locations – in Hilo and Kailua-Kona – and also organizes collection events around the island as well, most recently in Waikoloa.
Kadota said he anticipates the update will bring in significantly more material, as in the first year the amended program was in effect, 2023, 4.3 million pounds were recycled, setting a record for the program. The previous three years, under 3 million pounds were handled by the program each year.
“That demonstrates the effectiveness of the program’s recycling targets and financial incentives,” Kadota said, adding that keeping those incentivized recycling targets is important.
“We know the weight is out there,” he said, so the incentives and more education and visibility is needed to get people “to clear out their garages and warehouses.”