“Most people want to do the right thing and when there’s such a variety of ways to manage products it gets overwhelming.” “It’s overwhelming for consumers,” Anderson said. Anderson said more education is needed to prevent the fires. In the December incident, a battery somehow ended up at the 59th Street Marine Terminal for sorting paper waste, creating a tinderbox. Part of the issue is “wishcycling,” a term used to describe people who throw items in their blue bins in the hopes it will be repurposed. In California, two bills that would have required manufacturers to fund recycling programs for lithium-ion batteries died in the state Legislature amid heavy industry lobbying.Ĭomputer and electronic components are fed into a machine to be processed at a recycling facility.
In New York, industry opposition is already brewing over a bill that would charge makers of paper and packaging material for disposal costs - which is known as an extended producer responsibility, or EPR, measure. A spokesperson for the DEC said the agency is evaluating ways to increase battery recycling.īut efforts to pass recycling costs onto manufacturers are often fraught.
Department of sanitation under fire for nyc gridlock again update#
Lawmakers are also drafting a bill that would force the DEC to update the regulations, according to a person familiar with the process. “Those are the things that we’re pushing at the state level.”Īnderson said New York City and other municipalities are in active discussions with state regulators on updating the codes. “The can clarify and strengthen the interpretation of what the obligations are for producers for the existing covered materials,” Anderson said. Toys like remote-controlled cars and airplanes also don’t make the cut.
Batteries used to charge vehicles like scooters or bikes are not covered under the law, even though they’ve become more popular in the decade since it passed.
A separate law passed the same year extends identical rules to rechargeable batteries.īridget Anderson, the city’s deputy commissioner of recycling and sustainability, said the regulations have failed to keep up with the times. Under the law, stores like Staples and Best Buy must take back all electronic waste covered by the new regulations. New York passed a law in 2010 that requires manufacturers to collect and recycle their “fair share” of e-waste and makes it illegal for residents to leave it on the curb. “These are poisons that should not find their way into our air, our water or be left haphazardly on our sidewalks or dumped unceremoniously and illegally.” “We know that the e-waste problem is not yet solved,” said Eric Goldstein, New York City environment director for the nonprofit advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council. New York City officials told POLITICO they are calling on the state to beef up regulations for batteries and force producers to take on more responsibility for the problem. The report acknowledges that number is likely an undercount. More than 60 plants experienced 245 fires that were caused by or expected to have been started by lithium-ion batteries between 20, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Lithium-ion batteries are widely considered a growing threat to recycling facilities across the United States, but data on them is limited.
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