New Jersey’s electronics recycling program accepts computers, monitors, TVs, desktop printers, fax machines and tablets. It does not accept cell phones.
Maryland’s program does. New York’s goes further, covering 3D printers, servers and digital picture frames. Connecticut and Pennsylvania largely mirror New Jersey.
This state-by-state collection patchwork is what confuses residents at drop-off sites, Diane Gard, chief of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s (NJDEP) Bureau of Recycling and Hazardous Waste Management, said at the E-Scrap Conference in New Orleans on Oct. 26.
Aligning product lists across states is “really important,” because regulators would have clearer direction for residents, Gard said.
Naomi Manahan, director of EPR operations at Reverse Logistics Group (RLG), opened the session by acknowledging that no two EPR laws are the same. The goal is to harmonize outcomes even if the laws aren’t, she said.
Up in smoke
Embedded batteries, and vapes in particular, are where the gaps are glaring.
Gard described a story she heard about a resident who brought two garbage bags of vapes to a county recycling event and was turned away.
“That person now has two garbage bags full of vapes in their house, and you know that can be very dangerous,” Gard said, pointing to the risk of thermal runaway with damaged batteries.
She noted that household hazardous waste events accept some covered electronics while others reject them.
New Jersey lawmakers are considering S681, the Electronic Cigarette Extended Producer Responsibility Act, which would require e-cigarette producers to form a single producer responsibility organization and submit a stewardship plan to NJDEP. A Senate committee advanced the bill with amendments Oct. 8. Gard declined to comment, citing pending legislation.
California runs its e-waste program as a fee-and-payment system, not EPR. Consumers pay a fee at checkout, and CalRecycle pays recyclers per pound on the back end.
SB 1215 added covered battery-embedded products to the program, and the fee took effect Jan. 1. It is set at 1.5% of the retail price, capped at $15. CalRecycle has proposed dropping the cap to $1 starting Jan. 1, 2027, while keeping the 1.5% rate.
Alan Ilusorio, an environmental program manager who oversees CalRecycle’s e-waste branch, said manufacturer notices to the department now cover roughly 64,000 device types. They range from electric toothbrushes to copiers and beyond. A contact recently forwarded him a Nike slipper with a built-in battery that heats and massages the foot.
The fee and the payouts don’t line up. While a device might be taxed at its sale this year, it may not reach a recycler for six or seven years.
“We’re playing this teeter-totter event of managing the fund,” Ilusorio said.
Paying by the pound creates its own problem. AirPods and a 40-pound printer earn the same per-pound rate, and recyclers tell CalRecycle small devices are difficult, and sometimes unsafe, to open, he said. Some question whether an electric toothbrush is worth the labor at all.
Ilusorio said state law gives CalRecycle authority starting in 2028 to split its payment rate into multiple product categories, a change he called necessary so recyclers don’t chase only the heaviest items.
Since 2003, the program has processed close to 3 billion pounds of devices and paid out nearly $1.5 billion, he said.
Keeping that material in state is another challenge. Ilusorio said Department of Toxic Substances Control restrictions on how recyclers treat and process material are pushing some of it across the border to Nevada.
Questions and answers
New Jersey sets manufacturer targets based on sales. The program collected 53.2 million pounds in 2024, above its 52 million-pound goal, according to NJDEP data. Collections topped the goal in three of the last four reported years.
Gard said manufacturers routinely tell NJDEP the state’s collection goals are set higher than they can reach. Yet they keep reaching them, and the department can’t explain the gap between the complaint and the results.
“We’re not quite sure what the disconnect is,” Gard said.
Both states measure success by weight. Gard said that doesn’t show whether material becomes a new product, “or is it just ending up overseas and being somebody else’s problem.”
She said public awareness is a weak point. New Jersey routes outreach funding through its Clean Communities program to municipalities, which she said are best positioned to tell residents what’s accepted and where.
Ilusorio said California’s visibility ends at the downstream vendor. The state can’t say whether recovered material went into a new product, or whether a device designed to last five years only lasted two.
“I’m a huge data person, but really the only thing that we’re able to track and manage is the sales, and then how much comes through our program,” Ilusorio said.
Federal framework?
The US EPA agency’s voluntary battery EPR framework, required under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and developed with the Department of Energy, hasn’t been released but is expected soon. EPA had originally targeted summer 2026, said Kathy Lett, environmental protection specialist at the agency.
Over roughly 18 months of stakeholder meetings, the EPA found that collection is where states most need flexibility, given differences between rural and urban states and the East and West coasts.
Asked how national producers can comply without weakening state goals, Lett said EPA doesn’t have lessons learned yet because there is no national program.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have any great answers at this point,” she said.
Where EPA does see room for consistency is messaging, Lett added. Whatever the delivery, the core lines should be consistent: keep batteries out of the trash and curbside bins and treat a swollen or odd-smelling battery as damaged.
Matt Flechter, recycling market development specialist, Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy said from the audience that he sat on a harmonization panel about 18 years ago. Eight states had e-scrap laws then, and it was already clear harmonization wasn’t coming, he said. He asked the panel what’s preventing it now.
Ilusorio said he isn’t the decision-maker. California’s battery-embedded program was built off its video display device program, and he acknowledged the fit isn’t perfect. He didn’t rule out state EPR legislation.
“I do know what it’ll look like next year and the year after, right? And the year after that,” Ilusorio said. “But after that, right? I mean, it’s something that we have to continue to engage in.”
When New Jersey’s e-waste law first passed, its rules contained contradictions, which NJDEP worked through with manufacturers before going back to the legislature for fixes, Gard said.
“Whenever a law gets passed, I like to say, beg, borrow and steal from whatever state you can,” she said.
