Michigan electronics manufacturers are failing to meet recycling goals

• Under a 2008 law to boost electronics recycling, Michigan electronic manufacturers have to ‘take back’ consumers’ old TVs, printers and computers 
• But without binding collection goals, in 2023 manufacturers’ collected less than half of the pounds of electronics as they did in 2016
• The director of the take-back program, electronics recyclers and environmentalists are asking for the law to be updated

Michigan landfills hold more than 17 million tons of recyclable electronic waste. 

Low tipping fees and no landfill ban on electronics make dumping old tech easy. But the phones, TVs and computers in landfills leak toxic chemicals into the air and groundwater.

In 2008, Michigan created a law to make manufacturers part of the solution to the electronic waste problem.

Under the Electronics Take Back Law, manufacturers are required to provide “free and convenient” electronics recycling in the form of a “take back program,” which allows customers to send their old electronics back to the manufacturer to be properly reused or recycled. 

But government officials, environmental advocates and electronics recyclers say the program is outdated and failing. 

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The law has no “teeth,” said Kerrin O’Brien, executive director of the Michigan Recycling Coalition, an education and advocacy group.

“What does free and convenient really mean?” she said. Without clear rules, “the law hasn’t been enforced.”

There are no binding goals and no consequences for not doing what the law intended. So many manufacturers are collecting less electronics from consumers.

Experts say the law needs to change to hold manufacturers accountable and divert the toxic waste stream from landfills.   

‘Feet to the fire’

Amid the push to electrify Michigan’s energy sources, boosting electronics recycling in the state has never been more important. 

Many of the electronics heading to landfills or lying in junk drawers are a valuable source of “critical minerals,” 50 non-fuel materials or substances that the U.S. Department of Energy has declared essential for the nation's transition to renewable energy but are at risk of supply shortages.

The electronics waste law can help capture those critical minerals. But manufacturers would first need to follow the law. 

The Electronics Take Back Program encourages video display manufacturers, such as Apple, Best Buy and LG Electronics, to collect 60% by weight of their previous year’s television sales, but most are far from that benchmark. (The law does not list a similar collection percentage goal for computers.)

“The manufacturers can register, but they have no performance goals,” said Steve Noble, Michigan’s electronics recycling coordinator. “So they can do as little as they want.”

The most recent state data available on how well manufacturers are doing is from 2016, and that year only 35% of manufacturers met the goal. 

Since then, the total pounds of electronics collected from manufacturers throughout Michigan for recycling has dropped by half, from 20 million in 2016 to 10 million in 2023, according to Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE).

The law needs an update, experts say

Noble said take-back laws do work. Michigan just needs to update its law. 

Half of U.S. states have laws to boost electronics recycling.

In recent years, New York, California and Pennsylvania have collected the most pounds of electronics for recycling, according to the Electronics Recycling Coordination Clearinghouse. In 2021, New York collected over 100 million pounds of electronics, 5 pounds per person. 

New York sets collection goals for its manufacturers and charges fines if the goals aren’t met. 

Michigan needs to similarly penalize companies falling short of their recycling goals, said independent waste management consultant Garth Hickle. 

Hickle played a role in developing Minnesota’s Electronics Recycling Act, passed in 2007.

In Minnesota, electronics manufacturers have to pay an annual recycling fee proportional to how much they recycled. If they meet or exceed the state’s designated goal, their fee is $0. Manufacturers who choose not to pay their fee are fined heavily.

This could work in Michigan, but Nobel notes that with electronics getting lighter each year, the weight goals would have to be constantly adjusted, and may not be reliable in the future.

Noble said the easiest change is to require manufacturers to operate at least one electronics drop-off location in each county. 

Consumers in underserved rural counties in Michigan, especially in the UP, have few electronic collection sites. “EGLE is supporting most of the action in the northern third of the state and in the UP through grant programs,” said Noble. 

A change to the take-back law could shift the responsibility to manufacturers to ensure recycling accessibility for consumers. 

Hickle, too, supports efforts to make recycling more widely accessible, citing a successful convenience-based recycling law in Illinois requiring manufacturers to make collection sites available across the state.

“Manufacturers need to have the responsibility for financing and ensuring that the system is functional,” Hickle said.

A law made for a bygone era

The idea behind such efforts is to eventually make electronics recycling as natural to consumers as taking back pop cans or recycling paper products. 

The current take-back law was made with that intention in mind, but it’s outdated, said Noble. 

Manufacturers used to be able to make a profit off refurbishing and reselling the cathode ray tube televisions or chunky computer monitors they would collect from consumers. 

“Now, you can hardly even get rid of them, even through recycling,” said Noble. So, the manufacturers don’t want to collect them, and when they do, they’re charging consumers up to 30 dollars, he added. 

Those costs “are discouraging consumers from recycling. Instead they’re saying, ‘Oh, I’ll just throw this in the landfill because it’s free,’” said Michigan Recycling Coalition’s O’Brien. 

The least that manufacturers are required to do to keep compliant with the law is offer a mail-back program. 

Imagine mailing back a 85-inch flat screen TV. It’s just not feasible, said Noble. 

The program also doesn’t require manufacturers to take back mobile phones, which are a valuable chunk of today’s electronic waste.

“The electronics world back then was very different,” said Noble. “The law has not kept up.”

About a quarter of Michigan’s registered electronics manufacturers (including Amazon, Best Buy and Walmart) pay Electronic Manufacturers Recycling Management (MRM) to coordinate their e-waste collection and processing at Staples and local recycling centers.

MRM Executive Director Tricia Conroy acknowledges that e-waste collection isn’t required in Michigan. But MRM clients still cover the costs.

“I think the manufacturers we work with genuinely believe in providing their consumers with recycling opportunities,” she said. “They understand that they make a product and they want to be good, responsible stewards, so they want to participate in recycling.”

Conroy added that she’s unaware of any Michigan manufacturers who make recycling intentionally difficult for their consumers.

Recyclers’ challenges

The unenforced law is also burdening electronics recycling companies. 

Under the law, manufacturers are supposed to help offset the cost of refurbishing and recycling electronics. But since consumers are bringing their electronics to manufacturers less, the costs of collection, transportation and recycling are falling more on recyclers. 

“We are working on material and products that are going down in value every second, while the cost of properly handling them is going up,” said Scott VanderKooy, president of Comprenew, a nonprofit electronics recycling company based in Grand Rapids.

Another challenge for the recyclers is disassembling the electronics, which electronics recyclers do by hand. 

And electronics manufacturers don’t make it easy, said the lead of Comprenew’s disassembly team, Christopher Brennan. 

Many components in new Apple products are glued together (including the lithium batteries), making taking the product apart for recycling very difficult. 

And the products are short-lived. The average consumer upgrades their phone every two to three years.

“They purposefully make products, specifically electronics, so that they don’t last long,” said Samanth Pickering, the public and environmental health coordinator at the Michigan Environmental Council. 

“Producers need to be responsible for everything that they put into existence for us to buy.”