Starting next April, a fee will be added to electronics to help establish a recycling system for Ontario, CA. Producers of televisions, computers, monitors and fax machines will pay an “e-waste” fee on each device to help build a structure of 420 drop-off locations where e-waste can disposed of safely.
The fees will range from 32 cents for a mouse or keyboard, $10 for a TV and $13 for a desktop computer. Later in the year, fees will be charged on articles like cell phones, cameras, DVD players and stereos.
Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan have already implemented similar plans. Dalton McGuinty, (Ontario Premier), acknowledged it was time to take responsibility for e-waste and with this program jobs will also be created.
The present plan is to charge fees to the manufacturers of the products, but there’s no sign as to whether the companies will digest the fee as a cost of doing business, or eventually pass the fee onto consumers.
Eleanor Friedland, (of Consumers Council of Canada), said she “expects the majority of companies will add the fee to the final cost of their product, forwarding the fee onto the consumer”
Between homeowners and businesses, Ontario disposes 90,000 tons of e-waste, (computers, printers and televisions), each year. The province says that number could grow to 123,000 tons over the next 5 years. That’s the equivalent of four million desktop computers, 1.5 million notebook computers, 1.2 million computer monitors, 1.5 million printers and 2.2 million TVs. Only 27% of that waste is recycled, the rest is taken to landfills or exported overseas, where it poses a threat to the environment and human health.
Electronic products contain toxic elements, (lead, cadmium and mercury), which can cause environmental and health problems if not disposed of properly. Any new effort to recycle e-waste is a good one. Way to go Ontario to implementing this program!
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Patrick Hebert, Thriftopia.com 09.16.08 at 7:49 am
Ms. Friedland is absolutely correct - we can’t expect that new fees charged on electronic and computer products will be absorbed by corporate Canada. In fact, what’s charged at the manufacturing level will likely be marked up several times over by the time they reach us at the consumer level.
The exact markup will be interesting to see since in many cases, items go from manufacturer to importer to wholesaler and eventually to the retailer before being purchased by us.
Also important to note, the majority of other provincial programs favour bulk shredding and destruction of electronics - this does not create nearly as many jobs as could be created if we were to focus on refurbishing and reusing equipment. Bulk shredding and recycling also increases our carbon footprint, since recycling a PC actually consumes 20 times the energy when compared to reusing one.
Unfortunately, there is also a lack of incentive or penalty to get manufacturers to design products with fewer toxic elements.
Also missing are incentives to ensure that people actually return their equipment to a collection depot when finished with it rather than simply mixing it in with their solid waste.
While these programs are a starting point, we can certainly do better.