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Custom Goes Green
Flanner's eCycling Taps Demand
Sony and Waste Management use a dealer's electronics recycling event to help 'reverse' the supply chain.
By Janet Pinkerton
Within the first hour of Flanner's Home Entertainment's eCycling event, held in partnership with Sony and Waste Management on April 26-27, police had to be called to help direct traffic.
During the 11-hour two-day event, roughly 3,100 cars drove onto Flanner's lot to drop off a total of 36,405lbs. of eWaste - enough to fill to 17 semi-trailers. The weekend also marked the debut of the Flanner's "It's easy being green with your home entertainment" brochure of "green" tips for purchasing, using and disposing of electronics.
"I was shocked and thrilled by the response," says Flanner's President John Flanner. "It clearly showed that there's a lot need for proper recycling of unused electronics."
Flanner's received at least 100 calls in advance of the eCylcing event, starting after an announcement mailer shipped to 14,000 Flanner's customers on April 7 and intensifying once radio promotions began playing on seven local stations.
"The minute the mailer dropped," Flanner's marketing manager Todd Errath said, "we started having customers calling: 'Can I bring this? I can't make it that day so can I bring it Friday? We're not able to bring it in ourselves; can you come pick it up?"
Flanner's did pick up several TVs from elderly customers unable to attend the event but did not accept any type of appliances or computer printers. Nor would it accept electronics from businesses.
Waste Management subcontractor Intercon Recycling, headquartered in Chicago, sent a screw to help with unloading equipment and packing it into gaylords and onto pallets for shipment.
An equal amount of computer and home entertainment products were collected. "We saw a lot of old TVs, old CRT monitors, old computer towers, DVD players, CD players, 8-tracks--we took it," said Errath, "We [saw] a ton of console TVs."
Flanner said, "I've never done any kind of promotion that generated so much good will around it. All day long, both days, I continually heard people thank us for doing this."
To those people recycling TVs 19 inches or larger, Flanner's gave out a coupon offering $75 off any Sony TV costing $499 or more purchased at Flanner's on or before May 11. About 1,600 coupons were given out, and 91 were used.
The profit earned by the Sony TVs leaving Flanner's that weekend in no way covered Sony's costs for the massive recycling project. "If we had to pay Waste Management for all the stuff we took in on that weekend, it would have cost almost $80,000," Errah estimated.
Sony launched its eCycling program with Waste Management in September 2007 with 75 drop-off locations that could be used by individuals, schools, businesses and retailers alike. The program recycles any Sony product for free - from Walkmans to the Jumbotron TVs from the Tampa Bay football stadium. Non-Sony-brand products can be recycled for a fee.
As of March 15, the Sony/WM drop-off locations totaled 138, with due to open this year. "We're hoping [the network] grows quickly," says Douglas Smith, who oversees Sony's contract with Waste Management as Sony's director of corporate environmental affairs.
Currently, Sony is subsidizing the recycling costs, but Smith said Sony's vision is to collect one pound of electronic waste for every pound that it sells, and recover the materials - copper, plastic and steel, for example - for reuse in its manufacturing. At that rate of recycling, Sony believes it could "tip the economies of sale and reduce the costs for collection," Smith said. "As we start to get larger volumes of those [recovered materials], we can get the cost to zero.
"We're trying to reverse the supply chain [to] save on the earth's resources and generate a consistent supply for our manufacturing plants."
Dealers interested in holding an eCycling promotion using the Sony/Waste Management network should contact they Sony sales representative, Smith said. With its pound-for-pound goal, he said, Sony is "trying to make recycling as easy as it is to purchase... The more we can do with retailers, the better off we will be in the long run."
National E-Waste Law Slow in Coming
For the near term, consumer electronics manufacturers and their dealers are stuck with a growing patchwork quilt of state laws governing the recycling of electronics.
At last count, 15 states had adopted electronics recycling laws, most of which make the manufacturers responsible - directly or indirectly - for the recycling. Some states, such as Maine, maintain a "do-not-sell" list that prohibits state dealers from selling the products of non-compliant manufacturers.
CE manufacturers, retailers and others strongly desire a federal law that will supercede the state laws and establish a consistent national electronics recycling program, but agreement on legislation has been hard to achieve.
At press time, the staffs of eight members of Congress were reviewing comments made in response to a draft "Concepts Paper" for federal e-waste legislation to create a national electronic recycling system. Originally introduced in February, the concept paper proposes an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) model with manufacturers and retailers who sell private label products and recyclers sharing the responsibility for recycling consumer electronics devices. In this draft proposal, states may impose requirements that are more stringent or broader in scope than the federal requirements.
Also at press time, Anne Warden, communications director for Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA), who chairs the Congressional E-Waste Working Group, stated. "Our deadline for introducing the legislation is as soon as possible because e-waste is clearly a growing threat to public health and the environment. However, it's a complex problem involving a wide range of stakeholders, so we want to take the time to be deliberate and throrough." - JP
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