In 2018 Fairfax County collected nearly 1.6 million pounds of scrap electronics. | Lukasz Stefanski/Shutterstock
E-scrap collection contracting in Fairfax County, Va. turned messy after the county selected a new service provider to replace its existing vendor.
Communities that want to offer home pick-up of end-of-life electronics must overcome a number of challenges. Bureaucracy, it seems, is one of them.
In 2016, New York began providing grants to offset municipalities’ e-scrap collection and recycling costs. Two years later, nearly one-third of the dollars remain to be distributed.
America’s most-populous city will further expand its curbside collection service for e-scrap starting Oct. 1.
Processors handling non-CRT devices will be paid 60 cents a pound by the state of California, a 22 percent increase over their current payment rate.
Curbside garbage and recycling audits show the amount of e-scrap improperly disposed by New York City households has dropped substantially in recent years.
Budget shortfalls are a reality for state programs nationwide, and in Maryland, the strain is increasingly being felt at the county level.
An appeals court has ruled against Vizio in a case over how Connecticut’s state program calculates the recycling fee it charges manufacturers.
Despite having a landfill ban in place, problems have plagued electronics recycling in Colorado for years, and stakeholders are working to find a solution.