Editor’s Note: This column has also been published on the website of Toxic Free NC.
The North Carolina General Assembly recently voted to lift a popularly supported and arguably successful ban on electronic waste in landfills. The move was harshly criticized by environmentalists in the state as the ban prevented the hazardous materials contained in electronic devices such as old TVs, cell phones and computers from lingering in landfills and potentially leaking mercury and other hazardous substances into adjacent properties and groundwater. The ban provided support for a burgeoning electronic recycling industry, currently worth about $20 billion nationally, with recycling facilities contracting with the state to provide a receptacle for e-waste.
Legislators opposed to the ban, however, claimed that the e-recycling program, which was in part funded by fees imposed on electronics manufacturers, burdened these manufacturers who would then pass the cost onto consumers. The state’s Department of Environmental Quality — infamous for its mismanaging of the coal ash crisis of the past few years — released a statement of support for the measure, echoing the legislators’ claims and alluding to the illegal waste exports that may expose children to toxic chemicals, although they provided no evidence that North Carolina facilities are doing this.
It’s important to acknowledge that e-recycling’s problems, as a relatively new industry, are indeed cause for concern, including instances of fraud involving the illegal shipment of e-waste overseas. But illegal exports aren’t out of states’ control. The U.S. is one of just a handful of developed countries that does not regulate its e-waste exports. By repealing the landfill ban, North Carolina has arguably taken a step backward where we could have strengthened our export regulations.
The prospect of mercury-laden landfills leaking into wetlands and aquifers, however, is hardly a consolation for the existing regulatory deficit, and legislators’ folksy platitudes tend to obscure the crony capitalism at play. Minus a small number of legislators who opposed the ban, the General Assembly’s conflation of these fraudulent e-recycling businesses with the entire industry is a symptom of the larger trend of deregulation in North Carolina.
The repeal of the ban is part of the omnibus regulatory reform bill, Senate Bill 303, which is the legislature’s effort to overhaul regulations across a wide range of public and private sector activities. As with many of the other scrapped regulations, this ban on landfill disposal of e-waste not only mitigated contamination of soil and waterways, but supported a growing industry that encouraged the proper disposal of e-waste through no-cost recycling programs that generated millions of dollars annually and employed hundreds of people.
While legislators claim they have the interests of consumers in mind, it’s essential that we look critically at who benefits most from this measure. Manufacturers, now unburdened by e-recycling fees, are now saving approximately $1 million, which is a paltry amount relative to the annual profits of most major electronics manufacturers. Still, it’s highly unlikely that they will now pass these savings onto consumers, while under the ban, consumers and the government had a small but arguably effective means to keep the environmental and public health abuses of the electronics industry in check, and a path toward stronger environmental protections.
Legislators’ shortsighted claims of regulatory burden miss several important factors that contribute to the environmental and public health risks inherent to consumer electronics. Deregulation of the electronics industry effectively absolves manufacturers — many of whom have been shown to engage in human rights abuses through the overseas manufacturing process as well as pollution — of their responsibility to the environment and to public health. Statements from elected officials about the greater benefits of lifting the ban are a representation of the triangulation and co-opting of legitimate concerns of the poor and working classes that has become commonplace in North Carolina.
This kind of rhetoric from our legislators is a sign of a disturbing species of pro-corporate conservativism that masquerades as ‘traditional values’ conservativism. It’s time for North Carolinians to wake up from the neoconservative fantasy that polarizes our communities, hamstrings small businesses and destroys our natural resources — and demand accountability from our elected representatives.
