FULL OF SCRAP The case for California’s buyer-billed e-cycling scheme

Mar 01, 2008 | 01:15 PM |

California's three-year-old electronics recycling program uses an approach no other legislature has copied, but James Mejia believes its virtues will become clearer as states seek to widen the scope of products covered.

Mejia is a longtime figure in California's scrap metal and electronics processing industries, and his advice helped shape that state's program, which requires buyers of new electronics with monitors to pay a recycling fee. Some of the money goes to the 528 California companies and agencies that collect the defunct equipment; the rest goes to the 63 physical recyclers to whom the collectors ship. Other legislatures have opted for an alternate strategy, requiring television and computer makers to pay for the eventual recycling of their products.

Mejia is above the fray in California for the moment, working as vice president of environmental affairs for Redemtech Inc., Columbus, Ohio, but from 2003 to 2006 he was chief operating officer at a Los Angeles electronics processor he helped launch. That company later became part of a Mississippi-based recycling chain.....