While seven of the ten provinces have adopted an extended producer responsibility (EPR) system that requires producers to take responsibility for beverage-container waste, no jurisdiction in Canada has yet taken the step of banning computers from landfills and giving industry responsibility for old equipment.

Duncan Bury, Head of Product Policy at Environment Canada's National Office of Pollution Prevention, tells Marketplace "the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) deals with toxic substances, but we don't have any explicit authority under CEPA to legislate the industry to take back a particular waste product. We do not have a magic wand that we can wave and mandate a take-back by the industry of this kind of equipment."

There are still no laws preventing Canadians from dumping technology into the trash. Right now most of it ends up at the curb and once it is at the curb, it ends up in landfill. But John Hanson, a consultant who runs Hanson Research and Communications in Toronto, tells Marketplace that "a strict and literal interpretation of the Environmental Protection Act in Ontario would say that this is also illegal for municipalities to put that in landfills. If it's under 2 kg, then there's a small quantities exemption and the law doesn't apply. But most computer monitors have in excess of 2 kg of lead in them, so the monitors alone would be enough to say that it shouldn't go in landfill."

Last year, Alberta became the first province to introduce an initiative to recycle fluorescent bulbs and obsolete computers. Phase One of the Fluorescent Bulb & Computer Recycling Program was launched February 6, 2001 and targeted municipalities, universities, schools and hospitals, over 70 of which have signed a "Partner in Recycling" form to voluntarily recycle their spent fluorescent bulbs and obsolete computers.

Phase II of the program, launched June 3, 2002, sees fluorescent bulbs and computers collected from the industrial, commercial and institutional sectors and safely recycled.

Through a province-wide campaign, the program aims to achieve a recycling rate for these sectors of 75 per cent by 2005 for both spent fluorescent bulbs and obsolete computers. But there is no actual ban on disposing electronic waste in landfills - it's a voluntary program.

Manitoba has also issued draft regulations on household hazardous waste that would require computer manufacturers to take back their machines for re-use or recycling. Section 2(2) of the Proposed Household Hazardous Waste Stewardship Regulation reads "Products, substances, material, devices or equipment that are in the following categories of household hazardous material are designated as designated material for the purpose of the Act effective September 1, 2002:

• batteries category
• consumer electrical and electronic equipment category
• mercury-containing products category

The government says it will discuss with retailers how the collection of electronic equipment will work.

• Manitoba Conservation Household Hazardous Main Site
• Technical Information on Proposed Regulation
• Frequently Asked Questions
• See also: CBC News: Manitoba electronic recycling program could cost consumers November 15, 2001

Manitoba's proposed regulations are more in line with the EPR concept in Europe, where the EU is drawing up regulations. They would require established electrical and electronics goods manufacturers to assume full financial or physical responsibility for their products at the end of their consumer life. That would include paying for recycling "orphan" waste equipment produced by untraceable companies. The law covers practically every electrical item, including personal computers. As well, another law will phase out the use of some of the most hazardous substances in the electronics industry by 2006.

See: Proposal for a Directive Of The European Parliament And Of The Council on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment and on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment.
Press release
Full text of the proposal (PDF Adobe Acrobat file)
(Follow the progress of this proposal in the legislative process on the Prelex database)

Nationally, the Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC), which represents 1,300 companies in the computing and telecommunications hardware, software, services, and electronic content sectors, has formed a committee that is working to identify environmentally responsible options for the disposal of information technology and to develop a waste minimization action plan for the Canadian industry. A March 30, 2001 ENVIROS RIS report submitted to ITAC notes the IT equipment recycling infrastructure is "an immature industry, with a relatively small number of companies across the country." It adds "the infrastructure for collecting IT equipment for reuse and recycling is more developed in the U.S. than it is in Canada."

Options for Recovery of End of Life IT Equipment Waste in Canada Draft Final Report
(PDF Adobe Acrobat file)
Submitted to ITAC by EnvirosRIS - March 30, 2001

The ENVIROS report lists six different options for handling electronic waste. They range from the status quo to a mandated full industry responsibility program - an option the report subsequently elects to eliminate, saying "the possibility of a national regulation in Canada similar to the EU WEEE Directive is remote in the extreme." The report recommends instead that "the IT industry design and implement an appropriate product stewardship program that does not rely on governments implementing complex full industry responsibility regulations."

The report repeatedly notes that industry can only be held directly responsible for a product to the point where possession is transferred to a purchaser/user, who must make the final decision about what to do with the equipment when it is no longer useful/functional.

David Betts, Vice President of Programs for ITAC, says, "We'd like to have a system where the existing infrastructure is used properly, with consolidation points looking after all the industry sectors...if you have a system in place in Canada, say the province of Ontario, such as a municipal waste collection system, it makes no sense to duplicate that system to pick up electronics. Are you going to duplicate it then to pick up paint? Are you going to duplicate it then to pick up plastics?"

Ottawa's Duncan Bury notes that "a lot of people are saying that is very unlikely that the municipalities are going to have the wherewithall or the interest to take on new responsibilities and new costs, and that the industry is going to have to up the ante and take full responsibility for the collection of this type of material as well. They are the ones who are busy putting equipment which becomes rapidly obsolescent onto the marketplace, so maybe they should take some responsibility for dealing with it."

The ITAC report's policy options only addresses PCs, monitors, peripherals, phones and fax machines, and does not include things like TVs, VCRs, DVD and CD players, stereo equipment, camcorders, electronic personal organizers, etc., despite the fact that there will be millions of television sets and VCRs that will be discarded once the digital TV revolution kicks in.