Mixed Reviews for Sony's E-Waste Plan

Environmental groups criticize the tech giant because it won't bear the entire cost of recycling its products in the U.S.

by Kenji Hall

Environmental groups can be a tough crowd to please. Just ask Sony (SNE). Within days of announcing that it would begin recycling any unwanted Sony gadget in the U.S. for free, the Japanese electronics and entertainment giant was already catching flak from environmentalists who believe that Sony should be doing even more.

Sony's recycling plan, unveiled on Aug. 16, looks good on paper. Starting in mid-September in 18 states, the company will open 75 drop-off centers operated by trash-hauler Waste Management (WMI). Within a year, the number of facilities is expected to double, with at least one in every state, and will continue to multiply until there are 1,000 nationwide. Even non-Sony products can be recycled, for a fee. The whole program will involve a "significant investment" for Sony, says Richard Clancy, Sony Electronics senior vice-president.

No other tech manufacturer with as diverse a product mix as Sony even comes close to attempting such a large-scale takeback program. So why aren't environmentalists showering praise on Sony? Because the company won't bear the entire cost of recycling its products in the U.S.

California Fees

Though Sony's new plan will offer free recycling services in nearly every state, consumers buying a new TV or laptop computer in California will be footing part of the bill themselves. There, Sony and a dozen other tech manufacturers have successfully lobbied to have consumers pay what's known as advanced recycling fees (ARFs).

To environmentalists, such fees are antithetical to the promises that manufacturers have made elsewhere. "Sony has committed to individual producer responsibility in Europe, and yet it supports fees in the U.S. that go against the idea," Greenpeace's Zeina Alhajj says. "That's a double standard."

The criticism strikes at the core of a longstanding debate about who should pay for dismantling and recycling unwanted gadgets. It's a polarizing issue, and the squabbling has slowed progress in finding practical solutions that encourage consumers to recycle the antiquated electronics clogging closets and filing cabinets at home.

Japan Leads the Way

Since 2001, Japan has had laws requiring that TVs, refrigerators, washing machines, and air conditioners get recycled. It works like this: Consumers pay retailers to take back their old TVs and appliances, which get sent to the manufacturers for recycling. Sony has a recycling network with five other Japanese tech manufacturers, and its cathode-ray-tube TVs are now recycled at 15 plants across Japan. In the year ended March, 2006, roughly 650,000 Sony CRT sets were recycled.

These days, though, it's generally still easier for Americans to dump old PCs, monitors, cell phones, and connecting wires into the trash, despite recycling programs by Dell (DELL), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), and Lenovo (LNVGY), as well as some U.S. retailers such as Best Buy (BBY). That's a problem, because the more gadgets that end up in landfills, the higher the risk that lead, cadmium, mercury, brominated flame retardants, and other toxic substances from old tech hardware might contaminate the soil or water supply. (Newer gadgets meet stricter guidelines and eliminate most, but not all, of those substances.) In 2005, U.S. consumers recycled less than 20% of the 1.9 million to 2.2 million tons of electronics they threw out, according to a recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study.