California's E-Waste Ending Up In Arizona
source: http://cbs5.com/investigates/e.waste.loopholes.2.993177.html
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(CBS 5/Anna Warner) It's California's dirty little secret. The state boasts it has the most advanced program for recycling toxic television and computer monitors. But if that's true, then why did CBS 5 Investigates find a mountain of glass from those TVs and monitors in the desert of a neighboring state?
What's going wrong? One problem is that when the state set up the program in 2005, the chief goal was to recycle TVs and monitors. Why? Because each one contains a glass tube called a cathode ray tube, or CRT. Each CRT holds 7 to 8 pounds of toxic lead.
But they're considered so toxic, the state told recyclers they can only break them down so far.
At recycler Jim Taggart's facility, ECS Refining in Santa Clara, cathode ray tubes go up a conveyor belt, are dropped down a chute to break up the tube and the remaining broken glass is deposited into a large box. "As far as the glass goes this is the end of the line for us," said Taggart.
To do anything further, recyclers would need a hazardous waste permit, according to Carol Northrup of the California State Department of Toxic Substance Control, or DTSC. But, said Northrup, "It's not easy to get a permit in California at all." In fact, CIWMB's Hunts admits getting a permit isn't "prohibited, it's just prohibitively expensive".
The result, Taggart said, is that CRT glass, a big part of California's e-waste, isn't really being recycled here at all and is being sent out of state. "We have not created a full complete system for the recycling of it, so we are exporting it", said Taggart. ECS Refining sends most of its glass to a lead smelter to be melted down.
But CBS 5 Investigates found other recyclers sending the glass to places like Yuma, Arizona. In a location that looks like a mountain, is actually a giant heap of CRT glass. The facility is run by a glass recycling company called Dlubak Glass, and on the day CBS 5 Investigates visited, plant manager Hector Castillo readily admitted most of the glass is coming from California.
And California state data shows California recyclers sent 41 million pounds of CRT glass to Dlubak's facility in Yuma in 2007. Both Castillo and company owner Dave Dlubak told CBS 5 Investigates the plant meets Arizona state and federal regulations. "We're complying with the federal regulations", Castillo said.
But when CBS 5 showed videotape of the facility and the pile of CRT glass to Jim Polek of the US Environmental Protection Agency, he said the pictures did not reflect what he had expected to see.
"My understanding was that things had changed", Polek said. He says the facility has "violations they need to correct."
"They need to inspect and…make sure the facility is cleaned up", he said.
Would a mountain of broken glass full of toxic lead ever be okay with California regulators?...
[Complete article in link and video]
What's going wrong? One problem is that when the state set up the program in 2005, the chief goal was to recycle TVs and monitors. Why? Because each one contains a glass tube called a cathode ray tube, or CRT. Each CRT holds 7 to 8 pounds of toxic lead.
But they're considered so toxic, the state told recyclers they can only break them down so far.
At recycler Jim Taggart's facility, ECS Refining in Santa Clara, cathode ray tubes go up a conveyor belt, are dropped down a chute to break up the tube and the remaining broken glass is deposited into a large box. "As far as the glass goes this is the end of the line for us," said Taggart.
To do anything further, recyclers would need a hazardous waste permit, according to Carol Northrup of the California State Department of Toxic Substance Control, or DTSC. But, said Northrup, "It's not easy to get a permit in California at all." In fact, CIWMB's Hunts admits getting a permit isn't "prohibited, it's just prohibitively expensive".
The result, Taggart said, is that CRT glass, a big part of California's e-waste, isn't really being recycled here at all and is being sent out of state. "We have not created a full complete system for the recycling of it, so we are exporting it", said Taggart. ECS Refining sends most of its glass to a lead smelter to be melted down.
But CBS 5 Investigates found other recyclers sending the glass to places like Yuma, Arizona. In a location that looks like a mountain, is actually a giant heap of CRT glass. The facility is run by a glass recycling company called Dlubak Glass, and on the day CBS 5 Investigates visited, plant manager Hector Castillo readily admitted most of the glass is coming from California.
And California state data shows California recyclers sent 41 million pounds of CRT glass to Dlubak's facility in Yuma in 2007. Both Castillo and company owner Dave Dlubak told CBS 5 Investigates the plant meets Arizona state and federal regulations. "We're complying with the federal regulations", Castillo said.
But when CBS 5 showed videotape of the facility and the pile of CRT glass to Jim Polek of the US Environmental Protection Agency, he said the pictures did not reflect what he had expected to see.
"My understanding was that things had changed", Polek said. He says the facility has "violations they need to correct."
"They need to inspect and…make sure the facility is cleaned up", he said.
Would a mountain of broken glass full of toxic lead ever be okay with California regulators?...
[Complete article in link and video]
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