Wednesday, January 24, 2007

If I'm a Monkey, You Get Bananas

Looks like that crafty Federal government is going to try and make a monkey out of me. As reported by the AEA, Hilda Solis (D-CA) is now running the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials, and is going to make a big effort to get "RoHS-Like" legislation passed. Of course, I've already said that I don't think it will happen. So I'm going to make a bet with Hilda and her gang; if "RoHS-Like" legislation is passed before one year from today, I'll give bananas to all my readers. I have a few conditions - actually, they are the same as the AEA's. The regs must:

  • Have a strong basis in science - not merely copy what was done in California and the EU;

  • exceed the current California and EU RoHS restrictions;

  • Not preempt any existing state RoHS laws; and

  • Create mandatory take-back requirements or impose advanced recovery fees for waste electronics.

How's that. Better hurry though, states like Nebraska (bad link to html text here) are already working on WEEE.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

The Nebraska bill you link to is NOT an example of RoHS-like legislation. It is an example of e-waste legislation, particularly EPR, or Extended Producer Responsibility legislation (OK...a WEEE-like bill).

Do I get a banana yet? Is it organic?

Mark Ontkush said...

Hi designchain,

Thanks for posting, and pointing this out. The point I had in my monkey mind was that a lot of states are beating the feds to the punch on tackling the eWaste issue, it is true that Nebraska is not 'RoHS-Like'. I changed it in the article. I don't believe that any state other than CA is addressing RoHS.