NYC Sentinel

A poster about battery recycling, on a wall in 3R Living. Photo: Mahawish Rezvi

By Mahawish Rezvi

3R Living is a narrow store filled with small boxes overflowing with various used batteries; ink cartridges; CDs, DVDs and VHS cassettes; hand-held electronics and cell phones in the corner, surrounded by bamboo cutlery, organic cotton towels and other such products. The small business in Park Slope, Brooklyn, is run by the husband-and-wife team of Samantha Delman-Caserta and Mark Caserta, catering to an environmentally conscious clientele not only through their products but also through one particular service they provide. The landscape of this store might change once a controversial electronics recycling law takes affect in New York City.

“We could never find a place to recycle our batteries,” said Delman-Caserta. Before the couple started the business, Park Slope offered no convenient alternatives for recycling electronics. “So my husband, who has a background in environmental lobbying, came up with this idea,” she said.

Electronic waste can be hazardous to the environment because it can contain metals such as lead and mercury. These metal objects are then thrown in regular trash bins in New York and often end up in landfills, creating an environmental nightmare. The city government is tackling this problem by passing a new law, the Electronic Equipment Recycling and Refuse Act, which requires manufacturers to be responsible for disposing of their products sold to consumers.

For the past five years, since they opened the store doors, the Casertas collect small used electronic equipment and ship it off to recyclers at their own cost. They call themselves a “community recycling center,” along with the environmentally friendly products they sell at their stores in Brooklyn and New Jersey.

Samantha Delman-Caserta, the owner of 3R Living, an environmentally friendly home décor store in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Photo: Mahawish Rezvi

This collection center they offer is rare not only in their community but also in the rest of the city. New York City’s Sanitation picks up 25,000 tons of disposable electronic waste—cell phones, music players, computer and printer cartridges- a year. That accounts for a mere 1.24 percent of the city’s waste, according the Department of Sanitation. To deal with an increasing problem of electronic waste, city lawmakers decided to make manufacturers responsible for the products they make, even after its lifespan.

District 39’s City Councilman, Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, is one of the prime movers behind the Electronic Equipment Recycling and Refuse Act. His office says the motivation behind this law is the amount of electronic waste generated in New York City. “Manufacturers making profits off the products they sell should be responsible for safe disposal of their products,” said Freya Riel, de Blasio’s chief of staff. If implemented, the law requires manufacturers to go door to door collecting their products from customers who want to dispose of them.

New Yorkers buy nearly 12 million electronic devices every year, the amount of electronics thrown out also rises, Reil said. Most residents throw out the majority of electronic waste in the regular trash. “I have seen flat screen TVs lying on the sidewalk by the trash,” said Ronald Curiel, 24, standing outside a Best Buy at Columbus Avenue. “It’s too much of a burden to recycle larger electronics, you can also risk injury. So you just end up leaving it on the sidewalks.

This law has pitted environmentalists against manufacturers, a group of who filed a complaint against the city postponing the implementation of the law. Consumer Electronics Association along with Information technology Industry Council and Industrial and Technology Assistance Corporation systems filed a lawsuit on July 24, 2008 against the City of New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York City Department of Sanitation.

“This law is creating an environmental problem, while trying to solve one,” said Parker Brugge, Vice President, Environmental Affairs and Industry Sustainability Consumer Electronics Association. Brugge’s trade association, which has more than 2,000 manufacturers as members, is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the city of New York in an attempt block the implementation of this new law. “This law is illegal and unconstitutional,” said Brugge. The complaint has kept the department of sanitation from enforcing the law. Oral arguments are scheduled for Oct. 23.

Bloomberg originally vetoed the bill, but it passed through the legislature through a vote of 47-3. In February 2008, Bloomberg actually threatened to not enforce the law, calling it “illegal.”  Electronics consumers too are still skeptical about the new law, but for very different reasons. “I think it’s feasible for large manufacturers to collect electronic waste themselves,” said Schulz, a woman who didn’t want her first name identified, as she stepped out of the Columbus circle Best Buy. Collecting the waste would cost manufacturers a lot of money but “in the end it would be us, consumers, paying for it,” she said.

Batteries are recycled at 3R Living for $1. Photo: Mahawish Rezvi

With the uncertainty of the pending lawsuit, the owners to 3R Living, Delman-Caserta says, “we have not made any final decisions on how it will impact our program” but she does admit the economic downturn has affected their business, due to which 3R Living is charging $1 for the batteries they collect. Currently it costs the store $150 to take care of the battery recycling. They have to ship the battery they collect to an electronic waste recycler in Michigan. The rest of the electronic refuse in their store is picked up for no charge by a local recycler. Delman-Caserta insists this $1 charge is just to cover their costs of shipping, rather than profit.

For now, the Casertas continue to provide electronic recycling as a service to their community. As the fate of New York City’s electronic recycling law still remains uncertain, residents of Park Slope still have 3R Living to bring their broken DVD players, old cassettes and CDs and most of all, piles of drained batteries.