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Korea Times

KOREA, 30 April 2002 --The product recycling liability law, pursued by the Ministry of Environment, is highly likely to weaken Korean electronic products' global competitiveness and lead to a contraction of domestic sales and exports, the Electronic Industries Association of Korea (EIAK) claimed yesterday. BODY: EIAK said that this recycling liability law is extremely costly burdens to domestic electronics makers. The product recycling liability law, based on Green Logistics, imposes electronics makers with a target volume for the collection, conveyance and recycling of manufacturing waste products to reprocess them into new resources. If manufacturers fail to fulfill the designated quota, they will be fined with 130 percent of recollection and recycling costs. Amid increasing international concerns over the environment, the Korean Environment Ministry has adopted a product recycling liability law since February this year, stressing the importance of ''Green Logistics'' aimed at minimizing pollution from electronic wastes. Presently household appliances such as TVs, refrigerators, washing machines and air conditioners are subject to the recycling law, and computers, audio equipment and mobile handsets will be subject to it from next year. The EIAK said, the government is double torturing electronics makers by designating polystyrene, a material widely used for packaging electronic appliances for which companies are already paying recycling costs, as an item subject to the product recycling liability law that demands greater environmental responsibility from manufacturers. The association said the inclusion of personal computers and mobile handsets in the recycling law fails to reflect the reality of the market, since computer makers not only lack recycling technologies and facilities, but also large volumes of second-hand computers are currently being exported to overseas. It added that the mobile handset manufacturers are already implementing a compensatory sales system, with manufacturers giving 20,000-30,000 won price discounts when purchasing new mobile handsets, and considerable amounts of used handsets are being shipped out to foreign markets.

Thus it is unnecessary to subject these two electronic items to the recycling law, the association said. The association argued out that if the government only regulates Korean electronic firms on recycling, in the midst of intense competition with other multinational corporations, it is highly likely to weaken the global competitiveness of domestic firms, eventually shrinking exports as well as domestic sales.