Dive Summary:
- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that U.S. consumers throw out 500,000 electronic devices and appliances everyday and results from a study by the University of California, Irvine and the University of Limerick, Ireland conclude that electronic recycling laws implemented in 13 U.S. states are not effective.
- It was discovered that whether a state had e-recycling laws or not made no difference in getting consumers to recycle, likely because of little enforcement of policies and uninformed citizens. The study's co-author believes a nationwide law would prove more effective to increase e-recycling volumes.
- California's law on phones is the lone exception. According to the study, the state made recycling used phones easy and was thus able to alter the behavior of consumers.
From the article:
On average, the researchers found Californians are as much as seven times as likely to recycle their cellphones as similar Americans in other states.
“Until there are policies or pressures in place to force those costs into the economic stream, there won’t be a real incentive to change,” says Tomlinson, professor of informatics at UC Irvine.
