The bill, SB 20, which has now been forwarded to Governor Gray Davis for signing, has been the subject of intense debate for over two years. It was originally meant to make the electronics industry more responsible for managing their products at end-of-life. Additionally it was supposed to address the revelation that about 80% of electronic waste was finding its way offshore to Asian destinations such as China where it was causing massive pollution and occupational health problems. However, according to BAN if fails absolutely on both counts.

"Not only, does the bill fail miserably to make producers responsible for cleaning up their act and producing less toxic electronic waste, we are horrified to observe that last minute industry lobbying has created legislation that actually will pay waste recyclers to sweep out California's electronic waste to the poorest communities of the world via the back-door of export." said coordinator of the Basel Action Network (BAN). "Perversely, more waste than every before will likely be exported, and this time it will be exported with the blessing and funding provided by the great state of California."

The final bill deals only with computer monitors and TVs and does not make producers responsible for their own product's take-back and recycling and thus provides no market based incentive for manufacturers to produce less wasteful and toxic products. Further, far from prohibiting exports of hazardous electronic waste, SB 20 will actually give state sanction to export, payment for it to make it more profitable, and numerous avenues to continue it. SB 20 does require that consumer's pay a point-of-sale recovery fee for each Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) sold in California, which will then be used by local authorities to pay recyclers to deal with the CRT waste. But according to BAN, this fund, paid for by consumers, can be received by recyclers or brokers who then simply export the waste offshore.

In BAN's analysis of the export language (attached) they cite three major loopholes that will allow waste brokers/recyclers to grab the money provided by the established recycling fund and not do any recycling at all, but simply sell the waste offshore. One such loophole is, by itself "large enough to sail a fleet of container ships through." Under that loophole, all restraints listed in the bill regarding export can be ignored as long as one claims that the recycled electronic waste will be recovered for use in new electronic components. All waste currently recycled in Asia, such as gold, lead, plastics etc. even under the most dangerous conditions will likely find its way back into the Asian electronics industry and thus this will be very easy to claim. Further, and setting a far reaching and unfortunate global precedent, the bill allows exporters to exploit weaker economies simply with assurances that they will be meeting certain minimum technological guideline. This approach, which violates the principle of environmental justice, is tantamount to placing all hazardous waste management facilities in the poorest neighborhoods as long as they are sold as state-of-the-art facilities.

This permission and actual encouragement to use weaker economies such as in China, or India, as waste dumping grounds, is contrary to what the vast majority of the world agreed to in the Basel Convention, an international treaty not ratified by the United States, which regulates international movements of hazardous waste. In 1994 the Basel Convention members decided to forbid such exports from rich developed countries to developing countries. Because this new California permission to export is now combined with a California CRT landfill ban and an imposed recovery fee, more California e-waste than ever before is likely to be exported and exporters can actually get paid to do it.

"If this bill is not vetoed, rather than becoming part of the export solution, California will be a serious part of the problem, said Puckett. "Its sad to see the best of intentions, subverted by industry so that now consumers will actually be footing the bill for industry pollution of Asia."

BAN is urging Governor Gray Davis to veto the bill and refuse to become a tool of industry to facilitate international waste dumping and environmental injustice.

For more information contact:

Jim Puckett, Basel Action Network (BAN), Coordinator: 1.206.652.5555, cell 1.206.779.0363