My name is Bekki Titchner. I am the Recycling Coordinator for Elk County. I am here today to share with you how the Covered Device Recycling Act affects rural counties in Pennsylvania. I will be focusing my own county’s experience prior to and since the CDRA became law.

Elk County is many things. It is home to the state’s elk herd, part of the Lumber Heritage Region and the place where Straub Beer is brewed. What I never anticipated was Elk County to be an electronics recycling Mecca for our region of Pennsylvania.

Let me say that we never strived for that designation, but it has happened as a result of the state’s Covered Device Recycling Act.

For residents seeking to recycle their electronic devices at no charge - as the act intended - Elk County is the only outlet within the 5279 square miles that includes Elk, McKean, Clearfield, Warren, Cameron, Jefferson and Forest counties. The next closest alternative is Centre County. That means some folks are forced to travel 2.5 to 3 hours round trip to the heart of Elk County. On any given day of the week, we provide the only “free” place for consumers to drop off that beautiful wood-grained 1980s console TV for recycling.

That doesn’t mean there is no cost to Elk County. In fact, due to elements of the Covered Device Recycling Act, our costs for managing electronic scrap have continued to escalate. We were expecting relief from managing these devices on our own – considering the law calls for manufacturer responsibility – but what we got instead has amounted to an unfunded mandate.

It wasn’t always this way.

In June 2004 Elk County opened a permanent drop off site for electronics at the encouragement of our county Solid Waste Authority. Unlike many areas, we always provided this service free of charge to residents. Why? Because we knew that if we told folks that grandma’s vintage Zenith was going to cost them $30 to recycle, nine out of 10 of them would either put that Zenith back on the porch or in the garage, set it on the curb for trash collection, wait for spring cleanup or – if they really didn’t care - pitch it over a hillside on State Game Lands.

We operated electronics recycling in conjunction with our Universal Waste program, and both benefited our business community. As was the case with items such as fluorescent lamps and batteries, we were able to negotiate a lower fee for electronics than each business could on its own. We saved the business owners enough money that they, in turn, helped us to subsidize the cost of the program for our residents. Additionally, our recycling programs have always included a donation jug to help offset costs. Residents then, and now, contribute to our programs voluntarily because they know their $1 will help keep our service available to them.

When we first opened our doors we truly believed it would take us upwards of a year to fill a 53foot trailer with electronic discards. Not only did we sorely underestimate the amount of old electronics filling basements, garages, attics and porches, we underestimated the number of people willing to load these items in their vehicles and drive them to us.

Even though the quantity of material surprised us – even then - at the time there was at least a patchwork of permanent and one-day collections throughout the region. There was also another choice: If you really had no desire to recycle that Commodore 64 or the Sony 32-inch that weighed nearly 300 pounds, you could legally throw them away. And if the waste hauler was willing to pick it up for no extra cost, then all the better.

In our first nine years of operation, we recycled 1.5 million pounds of electronics and we did it with three full-time staff and a group of volunteers one Saturday a month. We relied on DEP Act 190 monies to help offset charges from our contractor, businesses contributed, and residents donated. We weren’t rolling in the dough, but our costs were manageable. When the CDRA took effect we rejoiced. Not only would we not have to pay the contractor, we were told that the manufacturers would pay US for our labor and handling! Our joy was short-lived.

That was then…. This is now….

Again we underestimated. We underestimated how much was being thrown away in the landfill or over the hillside. We underestimated how many more people would seek us out once they had no other choice. We underestimated how vast our service area would be come.

We overestimated as well. We overestimated the rebates we were to receive and we certainly overestimated how many other programs would be available to people in our region.

Nearly 70 percent of the half million pounds of electronics we’ve recycled in the past two years have been televisions. We ask people where they are from and many times we will be questioned back, “If I’m not from Elk County will you still take my TV?” People – and entire municipalities - come from Cameron and McKean counties on a regular basis. Often they bring truckloads of devices. We have accepted electronics from folks in Jefferson County and we’ve also gotten calls from residents of Warren and Forest counties who inquire about using our program. Earlier this month a municipality in Warren County called and said, “We hear you take TVs.” Last month we accepted electronics from Coraopolis, because even the City of Pittsburgh no longer has access to a program where manufacturers cover the cost.

Since the landfill ban took effect, we have seen a 69 percent average increase per month in the amount of electronics making their way to us. We are open three days a week, not just one day a month as we were in the past, but that doesn’t matter. We still find them dropped off over the weekends, and at night during the week. Or, if people aren’t sure where we are exactly, they simply randomly drop them off in the industrial complex where we are located and other businesses bring them to us.

The increasing volume of materials has also created other challenges. We now have to devote more square footage to proper storage. This in turn has led to the investment in a much larger facility than we currently have for our normal recycling operation.

It also has meant that we must devote more labor each week to managing these materials. Every processor has specific packaging requirements to maximize shipping weight. So, not only are hours spent herding electronics from wherever they are dropped off, they must be properly packaged as well.

At any given time, our current 2500 square foot electronics recycling center is holding between 20,000 and 40,000 pounds of palletized items. The uncertainty of Pennsylvania processors to

survive without adequate compensation from the manufacturers makes storing this amount of material risky. And this year we will be charged for items not part of the Covered Device Recycling Act – stereos, DVD players, telephones, microwaves and other household electronics – so the small amount we will earn through rebates will be wiped out by these new charges and we expect a loss of about $10,000. That might seem like a small amount to some, but it is significant to our small recycling program, all of which is funded through our efforts. No county general fund monies have ever been used to pay for recycling services in Elk County.

While we consider ourselves fortunate because we at least have an ongoing program, we continue to worry about the future. On any given day, I wait for our contractor to call and tell me that he will no longer be able to pick up our electronics at all.

If left holding this volume of mostly CRT devices, Elk County runs the risk of paying upwards of $1,000 per ton to dispose these items as hazardous waste. Yet something else we underestimated.

The Covered Device Recycling Act bans disposal. Period. No portion of the population is excluded. Yet it limits the extent of the service manufacturers must provide to 85 percent of the population. Even where service exists, the items collected from residents throughout the Commonwealth far exceed the manufacturers’ maximum financial commitment, so I ask, who are the Unlucky 15? They are not defined. And what choice do they have?

Truth is: there is no choice. The CDRA does not give you the choice to throw these items away. And somehow illegal dumping seems to be a poor management strategy. Moreover, telling certain people they have to pay to recycle their electronics when the law states that this service is to be available free of charge, is inequitable at best. It is unfair and could easily be viewed as a tax on those folks who – by no fault of their own – do not have access to a manufacturer’s program.

There is no doubt the legislature truly wanted to do something good when it created this law. It wanted to keep these items out of our landfills and properly recycled. But we are all here because that law, though well intended, isn’t working.

If 100 percent of the population is banned from throwing away a TV, then 100 percent of the population needs to be provided with free, convenient access to recycling. And processors need to be paid enough by the manufacturers to cover their costs, particularly the costs specific to recycling old leaded glass TVs and monitors. These orphan devices aren’t going away anytime soon, and putting a cap on market share combined with a disposal ban is working against everything the law intends. The amount of electronics generated by the residents of PA in a given year should be recycled, regardless of what that number might be. If that is not a possibility, then perhaps there should be thought given to lifting the disposal ban on CRT glass – at the very least - or give consideration to other environmentally acceptable and permitted options.

We used to get terribly upset when we discovered televisions and computers dropped off outside the door. But that is a far better option than having to hoist them up steep hillsides. Illegal dumping of electronics is a growing problem in the counties in our region, and if people do not have a reasonable choice – and we aren’t even talking convenient at this point - some will opt to dump these old electronics in the woods.

As I said at the beginning of my testimony, I never wanted our county to be the go-to destination for electronics recycling. Our intention was to grow a program to provide a muchneeded service to our residents. But with no viable options, the flow of old electronics from our region of PA to Elk County – televisions in particular - will continue because at this point we provide the only free electronics recycling service in the entire Northwestern Region of DEP.