New enviro fees on electronics begin today

Electronic purchases will cost a few dollars more as of today.
Since February 2006, the province has made electronics producers responsible for the safe disposal of their products.

The Electronics Stewardship Association of B.C., an industry group, in turn issued a levy to finance a new provincewide electronics recycling program, which takes effect today.  Charges range from $5 for a notebook computer to $15 to $45 for televisions, depending on their size.

“The levy is supposed to prevent these things from going into municipal landfills, which makes a lot of sense because, actually, there is some pretty nasty stuff in electronics,” said Peter Neville, president of Bytz Computers.

After the Ministry of Environment approved the recycling plan, the industry contracted Encorp (known for beverage container recycling stations) to administer the program.

“It‘s amazing the number of people you talk to who have electronics they don‘t know what to do with,” said Encorp spokesman Malcolm Harvey. “Now, there‘s going to be a way get rid of them at no charge, plus it will go into recycling and it will be done according to the highest environmental and health standards as well. It won‘t be shipped offshore, and it will be managed properly.”

Once electronics are collected, equipment will be moved to consolidation sites for mechanical breakdown, shredding or smelting to refine metals.

The recycling program is funded by the environmental handling fees, costing only the electronics consumer.

Not everyone, however, believes that a new recycling program will keep dangerous electronics out of landfills.

“My objection is that it is just not achieving its sensible goal,” said Neville. “There‘s no real incentive for people who are not as responsible as others not to put the stuff in the dumpster. Because there‘s no deposit, there‘s no incentive to bring the stuff back to the proper place.”
In addition, Neville argues that electronics recycling programs already exist, just not on a provincewide level.

Charging consumers extra won‘t make anyone more responsible, he said.
“If it were a deposit system, you‘d think twice before you put your computer in the dumpster, because it‘s like putting a $10 bill in the dumpster.”

Bytz Computers is one of many local business that already provide free electronics recycling disposal as a service to customers so that as of now, customers are “getting a lot of cost with no extra benefits.”

Encorp‘s Harvey said, “There‘s no prohibition from anyone else recycling electronics.”
“The important thing to remember is that Encorp operates 170 depots around the province, and it was fairly obvious early on that whoever was to get the industry contract would probably have to use a depot network to collect materials. It seemed the right thing to do to keep the depots viable.”

As for deposits, Harvey said that with the large number of unused electronics in the province, refunds are not viable at this time.

“The incentive for most people is that it‘s the right thing to do, and British Columbians have proven that in a lot of different ways, with things like household hazardous waste and leftover paint and stuff like that, and there‘s no deposit for that,” said Harvey.

Kelowna residents can drop off electronics at two Encorp depots: Boucherie Self Storage & Bottle at 2711 Kyle Rd. and The Battery Doctors at 1972 Windsor Rd.