Sunshine in Litigation Act of 2009

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1580) to authorize the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to award grants for electronic waste reduction research, development, and demonstration projects, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 1580, the bill now under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Today I rise in support of H.R. 1580, the Electronic Device Recycling, Research and Development Act. This bill represents the first step forward on a large and growing problem. Every year Americans send millions of old cell phones, televisions, computers, laptops and other electronic devices to landfills. Millions more are stored in desk drawers and attics by consumers unsure of how to get rid of the old computer.

These devices are often termed as electronic waste, but waste is hardly an appropriate name for these sophisticated products. Many can still be used. All can be recycled to recover their constituent materials. And as the Science and Technology Committee learned through a series of hearings, electronics also can contain hazardous materials like lead and cadmium, which do not belong in landfills.

The Environmental Protection Agency reported that nearly 2 billion electronic products were sold between 1980 and 2004. Unfortunately, of the hundreds of millions of now unwanted products, only about 15 percent are recycled. There are many hurdles to increasing this percentage, such as the cost of collecting and processing materials and the low value or the hazardous nature of many of the recoverable materials.

The purpose of H.R. 1580 is to meet these challenges through research and development. The areas the bill addresses were identified through two Science and Technology Committee hearings held this Congress and last, and reflects the considerable input from the electronics producers, manufacturers, recyclers, refurbishers and the environmental interest community.

It's supported by a broad number of stakeholders, including the Consumer Electronics Retailers Coalition, the Consumer Electronics Association, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, The Wireless Association, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Electronics Take Back Coalition, Best Buy, AT&T, the Center for Environmental Health, Lower East Side Ecology Center, the Product Stewardship Institute, and the National Center for Electronics Recycling.

I'm also pleased that this bill is the product of a bipartisan collaboration and contains the input of both Democratic and Republican members of our committee.

H.R. 1580 directs the Environmental Protection Agency to fund the R&D that will enable efficient and affordable electronic device recycling and find other means of reducing the impact of electronic devices on our environment. Research can foster innovation to enable more efficient recycling, the selection of more environmentally friendly materials, better ways to educate consumers about electronics recycling, and methods to design products for easier disassembly and recycling.

The research supported by H.R. 1580 will also assess the environmental impact of electronic products over their entire lifecycle. This information will allow electronic producers, policymakers and consumers to make wise environmental decisions.

Specifically, the research grants authorized by this bill require university or government-led laboratories to work with electronics producers, recyclers or related for-profit entities. The goal of H.R. 1580 is to ensure research that can be applied to this challenge as soon as possible.

H.R. 1580 also authorizes the EPA, in consultation with the National Science Foundation, to fund grants that will give engineering students the tools and knowledge to incorporate environmental considerations into their future environmental endeavors.

Electronic devices have become indispensable tools for modern living, but they, unfortunately, are a modern environmental problem, too. Research, development and innovation are a key component to addressing this environmental challenge. And I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 1508.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, let me first thank my friend from Florida for his constructive advice. I think most of his concerns have been addressed in report language. But this is a continuing product. We want to get the best that we can. And we want to work with you and your compatriots as we go through the whole process. This is an important bill and a good bill.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to my friend from California (Mr. Thompson). Mr. Thompson is the cochair of the Working Group on Electronic Waste, but more importantly, really is the leader in Congress on this issue. He has been a longtime advocate and we welcome his time.

We have no further speakers.

Let me just conclude, Mr. Speaker, by saying this is a good bipartisan bill, and I thank Mr. Thompson for his support. As I say, he has been a leader on this issue.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 1580. I am pleased that this bill has been introduced and happy that our country will continue to be on the forefront of technology policy. The goals, frankly, of this bill are commendable as we struggle to limit the pollution and amount of waste that is being sent to our landfills.

Obviously, there are a lot of issues to consider when we address disposal, recycling and the reuse of electronic equipment. First, we must consider what technologies are appropriate for reuse and recycling. Obviously, another consideration is the proper disposal of hazardous waste that accompanies electronics. And, finally, we must balance the costs and the benefits of the regulatory issues when you're dealing with export economies.

Now, with each technological advance and each model replacement, we face the question of disposal of those

older products. This is a very complex situation which creates a vast array of opinions on possible solutions to the problems.

Now, dealing with this problem is not insurmountable. With the right type of research and development, we can institute new ways of tracking, of sorting, recycling and reusing electronics, and by making them less hazardous from the design stage, from the beginning, before they're even being built, allow them to do less harm when we dispose of them later on in life. So I think this legislation is a move in the right direction to address these concerns.

Through the committee process, Mr. Speaker, we've learned that there are a number of companies, many of them actually, that seek new uses for these products which obviously then reduces the number of them that end up in landfills. And I'm grateful to the chairman for introducing this legislation and also for holding hearings on this subject matter.

So, again, lots of times we hear that legislation gets to the floor without going through the normal order, regular order. In this case, not only has that taken place, but the chairman has had hearings on it, and I think it's important.

Now, again, I endorse the concept behind this bill, and I believe Congress should be encouraging better designs for electronic devices, to increase their life span and, obviously, to make them easier to recycle.

But there are a few aspects of this bill that still I have some concerns with. One such concern comes from an amendment offered in committee requiring that the EPA publish the results of research and development projects authorized by this bill on its Web site. And of course that sounds like something we should all support, and we should.

But here's the concern, that the copyright protections of the research published on the Web site may not be preserved. We should ensure that this is addressed prior to the bill finally being enacted into law. And I look forward to continuing to work with the chairman.

Additionally, it was unclear from the bill's language whether, if there's more than one for-profit entity included in a consortium whether the total contribution from all for-profit entities is to be at least 10 percent, or if each for-profit member is to contribute at least 10 percent. It's not clear. So I appreciate the efforts of the chairman to clarify this in report language, and I hope that he would be willing to modify the legislative language itself, if necessary, to ensure that these issues are addressed. And, again, the chairman, I know, also has the same concerns because he's addressed it. But I think we need to address it a little bit further.

I believe this bill takes steps towards addressing a very important issue. And I hope that this bill, as it moves forward, will continue to be tweaked a little bit to make sure that it's even better.

So, again, I hope that we can get the best possible bill, the best possible legislation out of this. I commend the chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the remaining part of my time.

If I may inquire, Mr. Speaker, of the chairman if he has further speakers.

At this time then, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1580.

Many of us, whether at home or in our offices, have leftover electronics that eventually find their way to a dark closet corner or basement.

If I took a poll of Members here, everyone would raise a hand to having an old computer, several old cell phones, and at least one old television. For those of us with children and grandchildren, that list probably grows to include first generation Nintendos, Gameboys, and Mp3 players.

Those of us that keep old electronics probably plan to give them away. Or, we buy the latest, most updated gadget without thinking of what to do with the old. We want to dump or donate the old PC, but we worry about what personal information may still be on its hard drive.

H.R. 1580 takes the first step to address all of those issues, and study the prospects and concerns for abandoned electronics and their components stream.

As we heard at our February 11th hearing, coordinated research and education efforts are needed to address disposal, product design, and in general, raise awareness of what opportunities consumers have to recycle un-used or what they consider ``obsolete'' equipment.

A witness at that hearing, and constituent of mine, is one of the first certified Microsoft refurbishers in the country. Thanks to his hard work, forty thousand computers have been refurbished and distributed to schools, non-profits, and homes of at-risk children throughout the Chicago area.

With the right research and development, and more business models like my constituent's, electronics recycling and refurbishment can be an integral part of our communities, decrease waste in our landfills, and offer budget-friendly alternatives for consumers. It is important to note that every dollar spent on refurbishment stays in the U.S.; every dollar spent on new products may not.

I would like to thank Chairman Gordon for working with the members of the committee to improve H.R. 1580. Thanks to his cooperation, we were able to include an important change

from the term ``waste'' to ``device'' in the underlying text. Doing so sets a tone of reuse instead of disposal and lessens the opportunity for regulatory or legal hurdles to stall the refurbishing and recycling process that we are trying to promote.

If we can institute new ways of tracking, sorting, recycling, and reusing electronics and make them less hazardous from the design stage, we can allow them to do less harm in the disposal stage. I think this legislation is a move in the right direction to address these concerns.

Although I endorse the concept behind H.R. 1580 and believe Congress should be encouraging better designs for electronic devices to increase their life-span and make them easier to recycle, there are aspects of this bill that concern me.

One such concern comes from an amendment offered in Committee requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to publish the results of research and development projects authorized by this bill on its website. The concern here is that the copyright protections of the research published on the website may not be preserved. We should ensure this is addressed prior to this bill being enacted into law.

Additionally, it is unclear from the bill language whether if there is more than one for-profit entity included in a consortium whether the total contribution from all for-profit entities is to be at least ten (10) percent, or if each for-profit member is to contribute at least ten (10) percent. I appreciate the efforts of the Chairman to clarify this in report language and hope that he would be willing to modify the legislative language, if necessary, to ensure this issue is addressed.

I believe this bill takes steps toward addressing a very important issue and I hope that moving forward we will continue to work together to ensure we produce the best law possible.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your kind words and for recognizing me on this bill.

Mr. Speaker and Members, I'm here today to speak in strong support of this measure, H.R. 1580. As the chairman noted, I've been involved in this subject of electronic waste or e-waste since I first came to Congress. And I want to applaud the chairman and the Science Committee's work and their interest on this very, very important issue. Chairman Gordon has been a strong leader on e-waste issues and has helped to move this issue forward.

Electronic product technology is moving at a very, very fast pace, but at the same time, it's creating an ever-growing environmental and waste disposal problem. That's because it's often cheaper or sometimes cooler to buy a new PC or a new cell phone than to upgrade an old one. Today, the average life span of a computer is only 2 years, and Americans are disposing of 3,000 tons of computers every day. These discarded items, more often than not, wind up in landfills in developing countries where the waste is a terrible environmental problem.

A recent GAO study found that most e-waste exported from the U.S. is dismantled under unsafe conditions, often by children, using methods like open-air incineration and acid baths to extract component metals. This puts people at risk and makes e-waste a moral issue, a moral hazard as well.

The bill we are considering today will achieve two important and necessary goals. First, it will establish grant programs to fund studies to evaluate how to make electronic equipment easier to recycle on the front end. Second, it will train our Nation's engineering students in ``green design.'' This important legislation will lay an important piece of the foundation for comprehensive e-waste legislation in the future. Truly, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If obsolete computers and other such items can be diverted from the waste stream at the outset, half of our battle will already have been won.

Again, I thank the chairman and the committee for their good work. I urge swift passage of this measure.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that I may hereafter be considered as the first sponsor of H.R. 1508, a bill originally introduced by Representative Wexler of Florida, for the purposes of adding cosponsors and requesting reprintings pursuant to clause 7 of rule XII.