Dive Brief:
- New Jersey Sen. Christopher "Kip" Bateman is sponsoring a recycling bill that would require electronic manufactures to collect covered electronics in municipalities and at statewide entities across New Jersey.
- It would also add acceptance of printers and fax machines in the recycling programs to the current law.
- The passage of this bill is anticipated to generate cost savings locally while diverting at least a bulk of one state's contribution to the pile — 24 million unused hard copy devices go unrecycled annually in the U.S.
Dive Insight:
As technology advances and electronic devices fast become obsolete, electronic waste is becoming a growing problem. 41.8 million tons of it were discarded globally in 2014, worth $52 billion in reusable resources, though almost none was reused or recycled properly.
One Colorado landfill has tried to address the issue, but for a price, while a Pennsylvania county canceled its e-cycling program mainly because a state law made it economically impossible for e-cyclers to handle the waste generated.
