Page:Nixing the Fix.pdf/42

 C.Environmental Harm Right to repair advocates argue that manufacturers’ repair restrictions contribute to environmental and electronic waste. Manufacturers dispute this assertion.

Right to repair advocates argue that such restrictions are contributing to the amount of e-waste, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) considers to include the subset of discarded, donated, or recycled electronics that end up in a landfill or an unprotected dump site in the US or abroad. For example, according to LKQ Corp., and as described above, automobile manufacturers engage in VIN burning, which contributes to electronic waste because parts cannot be reused. By contrast, LKQ Corp. alleged that remanufactured parts save up to 85% of material and energy costs relative to producing a comparable new product. Workshop panelists Theresa McDonough, Jennifer Larson, and Nathan Proctor similarly stated that repair restrictions contribute to e-waste. Proctor stated that Americans dispose of 416,000 cell phones each day.

Alcorn of the CTA, however, disputed that statistic, arguing it was more than 15 years old, and stated that the CTA conducts consumer recycling and reuse surveys every couple of years in part to find out what consumers do with their old devices. According to the CTA, the “vast majority of consumers that removed a mobile device from their household in the year leading up to the study did so by trading it in for a new device, donating it, or recycling it.”

Like the CTA, several organizations representing manufacturers stated that manufacturer repair restrictions do not contribute to e-waste because manufacturers have implemented protocols and procedures to reduce e-waste. Specifically, CompTIA, citing a Rochester Institute of Technology study and a 2016 EPA report, stated that e-waste is in a period of steep decline because manufacturers have developed robust policies and programs to ensure that they are continuously improving the sustainability of their products for their whole lifecycle. And CompTIA stated that existing policies around e-waste and “green procurement” promote repair