form will now come to order without objection the chair and the ranking minority member will have five minutes to make opening statements followed by opening statements not to exceed three minutes by any other member who seeks recognition without objection members and witnesses may have five legislative days to submit a written statement or extraneous materials for the record  now today the subcommittee will hear from members of congress and government and industry representatives about the united states government's various programs designed to promote the purchase of environmental preferable i t products and the responsible recycling and disposal of ip put ment at the end of the products lifecycle the us government spends in excess of seventy billion dollars annually on i t v investments and disposes of more than five hundred thousand computers annually are approximately ten thousand units each week by default it plays a  pivotal role in shaping the marketplace this subcommittee is particularly interested in learning about what government wide policies and programs are now in place to promote the purchase of energy efficient products the use of recycled and other environmentally friendly materials in the manufacture of the new products and the responsible disposal and recycling of the in of life cycle i t assets the subcommittee is also interested in learning to what extent mandate u s government green initiatives are being implemented by various agencies as well as the level of interest in c accord nation and cooperation in the management and disposal of government assets by way of example executive order one three four two three executed in the year two thousand and seven requires that at least ninety five percent of the agency's acquisition of i t and other electronic assets be registered i available with the electronic product environmental assessment tool known as epeat which was developed with a grant from the environmental protection agency in two thousand and six and i managed by the green electronics council epeat register products which include desktops laptops and printers must meet requirements for energy conservation materials and lifecycle management earlier this month president obama issued executive order one three five one four which focuses on improving the federal government environmental energy and economic performance i'm considering that many other programs are voluntary and not sufficiently integrated into the core mission the absence of a clear set of standards and policies is perhaps most evident government's going programs currently in place if we continue to fail to develop a national policy on the reclamation recycling and responsible disposal of i t s a so i look forward to both informative and information no discussion of an issue that undoubtedly will grow in in part as a responsible and effective functioning government becomes increasingly dependent on and to the management of its assets so i think all the witnesses for appearing before the committee today and look forward to their first panel and i will now introduce the first panel i'd like to recognize representative mike thompson and he's represented california's first congressional district since one thousand nine hundred eighty he's a member of the house committee on ways and means in the house permanent select committee on intelligence congressman thompson also farmed the waste working group to develop a national approach to adequately dispose of  and congressman gene green has represented the twenty ninth congressional district of texas since one thousand nine hundred two he serves on the house energy and commerce committee and on the house committee on foreign affairs also a co sponsor of h r twenty five ninety five to restrict certain of electronic waste and i asked each of the witnesses now give a brief summary of their testimony mention of current programs many of them being voluntary and not having something to incorporate into our everyday practice of government is absolutely on point and something we i think all need to be working towards  fixing my interest in this subject goes back from when i was when i was first elected to congress as you mentioned i started the group but i've been involved in this for quite some time now and as we all know because of the technical technological advances in electronical equipment things are getting better they're getting smaller there's more bells and whistles is great for consumers but on the other end of it we have products that have about a two year life expectancy which means there's a heck of a lot of waste at the end of the day in the hundred eleventh congress i've been working with my friend and colleague congressman gene green on this legislation that you mention amount of it there and it should not be going overseas in a way that's you're responsible either environmentally responsible or morally irresponsible and if you look at some of the recent  of the mix so they can salvage the valuable components they've got kids picking through their stuff handling toxic materials to get these valuable components and the areas where they're doing this and most recently it was  pointed out in ghana china and indonesia some of the big offenders and the population the people who are working there have all kinds of very serious skin diseases respiratory problems throughout the entire community because of this open air burning this is gotta stop and i think our legislation is a first step towards towards putting an end to this immoral behavior i'm on the intelligence committee and share a subcommittee and i'm very concerned about government computers getting into the wrong hands and again some of these t v reporting entities have found examples and i have a picture of one of those that i'd like to submit country and in the author intelligence authorization bill for zero ten i was able to get an amendment and that requires a threat assessment report on the security of waste disposal federal federal property that's assigned the u s intelligence community and these items just have a great potential of getting to the wrong hands and causing a great deal of problems the e p a is estimated that the federal government discards some ten thousand computers every week we really need that national framework to better manage this and in the in the absence of that i believe that our federal government and our congress needs to lead by example not only help us get to that national framework but while we're while we're traveling to that point we need to do it right here in two thousand and five i had a concurrent resolution to get congress and other legislative branch offices to work together to establish and implement a coordinated program for the reuse recycling and appropriate disposal by offices of the legislative branch i think that's an important effort and i'm going to reintroduce that bill in the next couple of days and i hope that i would be able to garner some support from this committee and others who may be watching your hearing and paying attention to your important work so i thank you again for bringing this to a much greater national audience this is something the countries and facilities that are disposing of the waste in ways that are harmful the environment and to human health last summer i became chair that subcommittee and made it one of the top priorities and move the issue forward shortly after that we introduce house resolution thirteen ninety five of concern over the current federal policy that allows the exploitation of toxic electronic waste developing countries of the house in the united states should join other developed nations and  export of toxic electronic waste to developing nations we also begin working immediately on legislation that would ban the export of these products to developing countries that do not have the facilities to properly and safely handle this waste what's produced is h r twenty five ninety do just that while we're still working to strengthen language it cannot be manipulated broadly it only allows export of products that we track through the refurbishment process back to the marketplace to prevent abuse twenty five ninety five sets a framework for this and we're now working with various stakeholders to ensure the language is strong enough it provides enough transparency that it cannot be circumvented we're also trying to address the current problem where much of the of toxic waste being burned in open fires with no safety equipment and often bad children and creating the toxic conditions the fact that our electronic products are scrapped by children in developing countries using open fires and acid bath we wouldn't want to import other people's hatters waste so we should send ours overseas these conditions have been documented in films and the films exporting harmon digital dump national geographic magazine sixty minutes and panel and i'm sure i'll discuss the report in more debt of the g a o report that was released in last september identified that customs border protection already has a framework in place that could help obtain data and improve oversight of exporting used electronics has also stated the agency's automated tracking systems electronically store information from shippers export declaration forms which include tariff codes and that adding more detailed code to the schedule could assist other countries and  used electronics exported from the united states our legislation or attempt to build on this by directing e p a to work with necessary agencies including customs and border protection to set up a system that accomplishes while detailing what products can be exported and for what purpose it is important to know there are currently no federal laws in place to prevent the export of this waste h r twenty five ninety five includes strong protections that make abuse of the export provisions illegal college plan unlikely as well as providing  shment fall certifications would result in criminal violations and penalties under the resource conservation recovery act also known as the record companies wishing to export must also further notify the p a of the name and contact information  collection of such records would be critical to investigations of companies are suspected of abusing provisions allowing for limited exports finally items x for the purpose or river which might be packaged according to standards which the legislature direction e p a to develop to prevent loss of functionality to damage during transit which a conscious human cost to the company's action wishing export such items madam chairman want to thank you again for holding the hearing and on on the electronic lifecycle and the rol practices for the federal government this is an exciting time to be dealing with this topic as we have unprecedented technological expertise interest in a vital leadership at the executive level by working together and half what we can advance in the aggressive agenda supply schedules would increase demand and drive down the prices federal agencies pay for these green products small businesses make up eighty percent of the participants in the g s a supplies schedule so giving local and state governments access to the skies will also help those small businesses and submitting testimony from fairfax county staff my district madam chairwoman for the record as their written statement explains this legislation would help localities across the country move forward with their green purchasing initiatives and as an example of the kind of local and federal partnership we should seek to create the national association of counties and the national government purchasing association have also endorsed h r seven hundred sixty six because it would help counties like mine that wish to green the and i hope the subcommittee has an opportunity to mark up h r seventy seven hundred sixty six in the not so distant future i applaud the representatives of the private sector were here today as well madam chairwoman who are leading by example in recent years there's been extensive news coverage of electronic waste being shipped overseas and dismantled in highly dangerous conditions the workers as we've heard from our colleagues this morning i was pleased to learn about dell's initiative to prevent export of electronic waste that would be processed in an unsafe environmentally destructive manner i hope that we can strive to achieve these objectives at a minimum let's agree to mark up h r seven hundred sixty six which would be a boon for local and state governments evolve a green procurement second to follow up on the testimony we've heard from our colleagues represent green representative we should identify the next steps to prevent the federal government from shipping waste overseas if there is an administrative solution that we should monitor its implementation if it requires legislation then we should develop a pass such legislation third i would hope we could identify private sector best practices that could apply to the federal government it sounds like we have a lot to learn finally based on private sector testimony it would be worthwhile to learn more about what we could what could be a framework for broader is it possible that information could be pulled up out of our computer can you expand on that when we get rid of a computer is computers because our personal information is on there obviously as a country we don't want someone having our intelligence information or our information but as individuals we have when we dispose of our computers we want to make sure that  about the new shows and other things how terrible it is in other parts of the world that they're actually taking our waste in injuring themselves four and so that's what we want to control and i appreciate having a hearing today thank you so concern about your bill specifically keeping us from export into third world countries or countries with or areas with less environmental standards than then we may think is appropriate now does that address the issue of california and sending our waste t texas i just gotta say frankly though as california work with this guy on this i almost want to tell my colleague that calling the green was a factor of mine and mr green is an oil man already that i do know it comes from one of the largest natural gas producers in the world but i  i do worry about when we when we talk about this issue of where we're going and i think one of the things that we try to do in this committee is look at the fact of not just waste but how do we sort of preempt it by going to pre engineered hardware that is designed to reuse the equipment so that there is a limitation the waste problem but also the  material new material for future my biggest concern is this and i think there's two of us here of actually manage a way stream and been responsible for it for millions of people as we talk about making sure it doesn't leave the country californians are probably one of the worst culprits of this except for new york new york is by far the worst of let's send our waste to somebody else we're discussing it all it energy and commerce my own thoughts with you mr green about the fact of what are we doing to require regions and areas to start citing the facilities because it seems always so easy to stop a recycling facility from being sighted and stop people from the able ship but we don't find answers in the line of you guys even even discuss the aspect of if we stop the export and which we should what do we do in proactively to site recycling facility within within the country  let me just say that there are a number of recycling facilities not only in our country but in our state of california i work with one in my district northern california every time i have an event  we did the same when we work with house admin so they're they're actually saying though if they're actually breaking out the components and reselling the verge of the material correct here in this particular company in california but we did the same when we did the use to have recycle products on here and i think both you gentlemen will agree that one of the biggest problems we've had historically with the term recycling a mean separation and collection but the ninety nine percent of the material gets shipped to the far east to a third world country we don't recycle in this country hardly at all we separate we collect and we send it off to somebody else to do it and i'm glad to hear you talking about we're actually being proactive about that in our statesmen the worse about trying to be an ally at siding these industries in these businesses within our own jurisdiction and having the environmental regulations compatible to that kind of environmental strategy one of our greatest frustrations our country does have experience with the resource conservation recovery act which expired prohibits exportation of toxic materials and the best example i know is it in northern california and in texas in virginia there's  that did it one time they thought they could explore them to other countries that don't have our standards but you can't and so in northern california that actually having no ships or they can ship to brownsville texas or there's other yards and on the ship and they have astronomically bigger problems and what we're dealing with but we can do the same thing with electronic ways i'd love to have those pre engineering so those parts could be recycled the problem we had today a lot of  they were going to have to buy it back they would be able to do this at a profitable scenario i'm not certain as to all of the different government contracts and what they include or include but i do know that there are certain computer companies that have provisions whereby you can return the old computer to that to that company it's a good thing but at the same time that's been one of the stumbling blocks trying to figure out how we get our arms around the whole issue of recycling you know part of the problem we have right now is that you've got fifty different states all trying to deal with  what the state process and the state laws are going to be regarding this issue and now we're trying to figure out maybe not all but one of my issues is trying to figure out how to make that  happen across the entire country and now one of the stumbling blocks of van when you get all the stakeholders together everybody agrees that's a problem we need to do something about it but like so many other things it becomes the details become difficult them are some of them aren't and what the what the government specific government contracts are probably differ between different parts of the government seem to me that if you had a requirement in the contract th for your testimony this morning and your concern and we will be having you in again thank you very much but you know i'd like to now to ask the second panel to come up and take your seat will it is the committee's policy that all witnesses are sworn in so i'd like the witnesses to now stand as i administer the o your right hand and do you solemnly swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth  the record show that the witness has to have answered in the affirmative and you are now seated i'd first like to introduce mister james jones he's the principal deputy assistant administrator of the us environmental protection agency's office of prevention pesticides and toxic substances he is responsible for managing the daily operations of the office which oversees the nation's pesticide toxic chemical and pollution prevention laws the office has had an annual budget of more than two hundred and fifty million dollars and employs over one thousand two hundred staff in his twenty plus years with the e p a mr jones has also served as director of the office of pesticide programs where he's was responsible for the regulation of pesticides in the united states with a budget of one hundred fifty million and eight hundred fifty employees making it the largest e p a hit corridors program office mr john stephenson is the director of the natural resources and environment for the government accountability office he's directed numerous studies and research progs project issued in directed numerous and research programs issued hundreds of reports and he has testified many times before both the house and the senate committees mr stevens in the area of expertise regarding environmental protection  includes clean air and water chemical controls toxic substances climate change superfund and hassidic materials spill prevention and cleanup he is also conducted study and investigations related to information technology federal acquisition and federal grant areas missy and is also has also worked as deputy staff director for the senate special committee on the year two thousand technology program and miss coleman as served as chief information officer for the us general services administration since two thousand and seven as an officer ms coleman manages the agency's five hundred million dollars information technology program and she oversees the management information security enterprise architecture and government prior to this position mr coleman served as the chief information officer for the federal acquisition service in two thousand and six other experiences include office assistant services where she launched the usa services government wide citizens customer service program and so as we get started i'd like to call on mr jones morning madam chair ranking member bilbray and members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to discuss over the last several years the environmental protection agency has been working very hard to green ninety per curiam and to reduce our environmental footprint across the federal government today i will discuss several programs an e p a and the federal government uses to guide the management of our i t assess assets along their complete lifecycle from product manufacturing to purchasing to use and ultimately to proper disposal let me take a few minutes to briefly describe these programs the first one is energy star energy star is a joint program of e p a and the u s department of energy since one thousand nine hundred two energy star has helped revolutionize the marketplace for cost effective energy efficient products program is a trusted source of unbiased information that helps homeowners businesses and other consumers understand their opportunities for energy savings with a simple  widely recognized logo the next one is the e p the green purchasing system for electronics it is managed by the green electronics council a five hundred one c three nonprofit organization e t a was an early funder of this effort and continues to provide technical support for the development of e p green standards for new product types repeat evaluates and then registers products based on a total of twenty three mandatory criteria to target many different environmental endpoints from energy reach us to reduction or elimination of toxic metals and chemicals and even product product packaging one of these criterion is that he peed products must meet energy star requirements for energy efficiency this program helps people identify people and institutions identify and buy environmentally profer preferable electronics  helps manufacturers gain market advantage by building greener electronics products the pro e p program is a had tremendous enthusiastic response there are almost three thousand e p a registered products from thirty two manufacturers in two thousand and eight according to the green electronics council there were purchases of forty four million e p products the united states gave the enthusiastic participation so far it is actively exploring opportunities with many e p partners to expand the program beyond its current state slate of computer products standards  being created for copiers and fax machines and televisions and plans are in place to develop standards for servers and cell phones given that the federal government is likely the largest purchaser of consumer products in the u s and spends an estimated seventy four billion dollars a year in information we know that this is an enormous opportunity for us to green our own house so we work hard to lead by example on ways to purchase greener electronic products reduce the rim in packs or in product use and manage obsolete electronics an environmentally safe way to do that  working collaboratively with the federal environmental executive invited our federal partners to choose to participate in the federal electronics challenge which laid out the following goals by the end of two thousand and ten ninety five percent of conceit of computer purchases are repeat registered and one hundred percent are energy star enabled electronic equipment achieves an average lifespan of at least four years and one hundred percent of non reusable electronic equipment is recycled using environmentally sound management sixteen federal agencies  were repeat registered the average life of computer equipment in two thousand it was forty five months just short of the goal of forty eight months for twenty ten finally we also need to measure electronic waste elect electronics affectively when they have outlived their useful life time specifically the federal government manages the disposition of about ten thousand computers a week not to mention other forms of electronics in order to assist federal agencies in recycling as much of these materials as possible and safely disposing of the remainder e p a manages read the recycling electronics and ass asset disposition program this program provides federal agencies with a dependable method of properly managing electronic inventories recycling electronic equipment and disposing of any excess or obsolete electronic equipment in environmentally responsible manner e p a has awarded contracts to companies that can evaluate each piece of on one equipment and its components and then reuse recycle or disposed under the following hierarchy refurbish and resell them using the proceeds offset costs donate them to charitable causes recycle as much as possible and properly dispose of the remainder this program is now self sustaining meaning that sales for recycling pays for the program this program descriptions results just scratched the surface of what is taking place in the world of greeting i to the federal government and i thought i'd be happy to answer any questions you may have  waste the federal government as the world's largest purchaser of electronic quick equipment annually spending nearly seventy five billion on products and services or seven percent of the world market through its purchasing decisions the federal government has substantial leverage to enhance recycling infrastructures and stimulate markets for environmentally preferable electronic products waste disposal has become increasingly important because of rapidly advancing technology which has led to increasing sales of new electronic products  particular computers monitors p d s and cell phones with this increase comes the dilemma of what to do with the old computers and electronics if discarded improperly a number of adverse environmental impacts may result ranging from the loss of valuable resources in the electronics such as copper gold and aluminum to the potential harmful substances such as cadmium lead and mercury entering the environment e p a estimates that the federal government disposes of ten thousand computers a week as you've heard agencies generally can donate their use of all equipment to schools or other nonprofit educational institutions give them to recycle or exchange him with other federal state or local agencies trade them in to offset the cost of new product or sell them through a surplus property programs with sell then sells equipment at public auctions federal agencies however are not required to track the ultimate destination of their waste consequence when they don't know what happens to it in our august two thousand and eight report we showed that some us electronics recyclers including ones that publicly tout their ex employer a environmental practices showed a willingness to violate u s hazardous waste export laws and export he waste to countries in southeast asia where they were often dismantled under dangerous health conditions using methods like open air and center ration and acid bass to extract precious materials have you heard from the two congressmen in november two thousand and five we reported on two promising initiatives that could officials and comparing and selecting computers with environmentally preferable attributes like energy efficiency features snapping components for ease of upgrades and reduce toxicity of materials second to federal ect tronics challenger f e c program helps agencies fully utilize the benefits of epeat rated electronics by providing resources to help extend product alive operate them in an energy efficient way and expand markets for recycling and recovered materials notably energy savings and environmental benefits to the federal government have resulted from these initiatives e p a reports that sixteen agencies in two hundred twenty eight federal facilities representing about one third of the federal employees participated to some extent in these programs and that for these participating agencies eighty eight percent of all computers and monitors were repeat registered products in addition fifty percent of the electronics taken out of service were donated for use reuse forty percent were recycle old about eight percent were sold and two percent were disposed of these environmentally preferable choices enable over forty million in savings at the end of two thousand and eight the problem is that not nearly enough federal agencies and facilities are taking advantage of these electronic product stewardship programs first if one third of the federal agencies are participating in these promising initiatives it means that two thirds are not despite instructions to do so an executive order signed by both presidents bush and obama second few participating agencies are maximizing the use of these initiatives for some participation merely means that the ads he has identified as current practices for managing electronic products and set goals to improve them but only to federal facilities at the end  the end of two thousand and eight showed that they actually managed electronic products through all three phases lifecycle phases procurement use and disposal for past perspective we calculated that a federal agencies in the normal course  five hundred thousand computers and monitors with epeat registered products and operated then disposed of them in accordance with f e c goals they could save over two hundred million in energy usage and realize other costs waste and emissions reductions this is the equivalent of annual energy use for over one hundred eighty thousand homes as the world's biggest user of electronic products the federal government simply must take more of a leadership role in this area and i'm sure that concludes my summary and i'll be happy to answer questions at the appropriate time thank you  good morning chairwoman watson ranking member bilbray and members of the subcommittee thank you for inviting me here today to appear before you to discuss the application of green policies in the lifecycle management of g s a information technology assets g s a has taken a life cycle approach to our sustainability program we buy energy efficient devices certified through the electronic product environmental assessment tool which you've just heard about the program developed with a grant from the environmental protection agency we encourage our users to rely on fewer devices such as shared multifunction printers rather than a printer on every desk we employ modern approaches such as virtual to reduce the number of servers required to perform the same amount of work and we have a program to ensure that assets that they're into blythe's are recycled responsibly g s a path toward a sustainable green i t program began maturing in two thousand and seven that year g s a began a program to consolidate all agency infrastructure and operations into one program called g s a i t global operations or get go for short we consolidated thirty nine contracts and fifteen help desk into a single program under the management of the g s a c i a o the get go program was critical to enabling our green i t efforts previously our i d s sets were not standardized and there was no central accountability or visibility into where we had assets deployed through getgo the office of the chief information officer began to modernize standardize and consolidate the agency's infrastructure our goals were cost savings improve sustainability and equipping our workforce with modern tools and effective support procedures necessary for them to perform their mission effectively our infrastructure management efforts have yielded significant green benefits in several areas including server and printer consolidation telework support and toner management on the broader scale we are investigating new technologies such as cloud computing and green data center and vance's which offer the promise of further significant reductions in energy consumption madam chair member bilbray a members of the committee thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you to discuss this important subject g s a is committed to environmentally friendly policies and procedures throughout the life cycle we will continue our current initiatives and are constantly on the lookout for new and in of innovative ways to become even more agent the agency's probably are responsible for more in the others and is data on maintained for the federal government as a whole or is it maintain by individual agencies can you kind of clarify that for g s a might be a better person answer that but i think they maintain their inventories themselves however participation in the kinds that we just think there's a great opportunity to increase participation in the program to make sure that the epeat standards are rigidly adhered to both presidents bush and obama expressed their desire for them to do so  the executive order that was just established three weeks ago there's even a requirement for o m b and the council of environmental quality to monitor agency participation in those programs so we think i showed you that i described the cost savings that could occur if we did that let alone the implications of end of life disposal that you heard congressman green talk about thank you of the generated by our federal government about forty percent are recycled only about two percent are disposed of the problem is recycled means getting to a recycling contractor and without downstream auditing you're not sure what that recycling contractor is doing with it  the federal government doesn't do its own recycling and contracts with others to do that to assure that the recycler is credible that's what we mean by downstream auditing make sure things are making sure they're good actors and we found in our analysis in two thousand eight that there are many bad actors out there that promise environmental stewardship but don't deliver they're the very ones that wind up exploiting this equipment overseas and again mrs stephenson we understand that agency's compliance with a v and other electronic stewardship requirements is reported to the o m b environmental scorecards in the carding to press reports chairman we expect that the those numbers will be improving pretty dramatically in the in the coming years one of the issues that we are dealing with in the executive branch as it relates to pyramid is that contract has many contracts are often a five executive order and the recent acquisition regulation that was promulgated in january two thousand and nine will be able to ensure that those acquisitions will be fully compliant with the e p a requirements that have been established in the federal government so we think that over the next five years in particular for some agencies a little bit longer than that if they have very long term and contract will be getting more those numbers will be climbing up pretty dramatically to alternately reaching the goal of of ninety five percent keyboards mice flat panel monitors central processing unit cell phones which also contain hassett is constituents  materials and it may be difficult to determine what happens to after it is collected by recycler recycling may include various activities such as sorting the ways  manufacturing to remove half of this constituents and the export of certain components for further processing it may also simply involve the export of whole unit for refurbishment and reuse or for processing for recycling recycling that involves entirely mystic operations will likely be more costly than those said simply export a voice and it is possible that the practices of any downstream vendors will be unknown and so the politics of the policies not politics and policies of individual agencies may be relatively easy to find but documentation that demonstrates compliance with these policies may not be easy to determine particularly at the field level so most common given g s a's high volume of purchases of id and other equipment please respond to these questions describe the steps like tronics equipment is not your responsibility exported to developing countries where it may threaten human health and environment madam chair i can speak to the steps that g s a follows internally i'll have to get back to you with the information about g s a information that would be shared externally with our customer agencies within the agency we have a four step process for our disposal of end of life i t assets the first step is them the third step is to put them up for public auction through online auction site the vast majority of our devices are handled through these first three channels those that remain are return returned to the reseller as a credit for new devices and the terms of the contract call for responsible recycling on their part you mr johnson there's a reported twenty one million metric tons of waste produced in north america you know what portion of that is united states what's our what's our national our national production of that's another question i don't think i have the answer to but we need to get back to our community i just think that we've got a panel before us just for you that says we're going to outlaw the export to a large percentage  but we're not talk about what are we doing to preempt that export what is to assure that we have recycling facilities within the united states to address this problem what do you do today interested parties in developing certification programs these are voluntary consensus standards so that if a recycler claims to follow certain practices there is some third party verification of that so it's largely been from the federal government is a voluntary approach where we encourage recycling and then we work with interested parties in the saddle sharing verification standards to ensure that recycling is followed according to environmental practices what was the do we know how many facilities been cited in the last decade and what is their volume capabilities that that we have done basically if it's if it's automobile production if it is to production all of the units within the united states you know department of commerce can tell us what was produced within our jurisdiction can e p a tell us what was recycled within our jurisdiction get in here when we talk about the recycling we're not talking much source separation we're talking about a product the waste stream being made into a marketable product within the united states so the recycling leading to some meaningful economic reuse within the within the jurisdiction i think i do not have access that information with me but i expect that the agencies got a fair amount of specificity with respect to by sector that kind of that kind of data ok i'll just tell you something as somebody that's worked on environmental issues since one thousand nine hundred seventy it real pains me to watch the ships on the west coast drop off automobiles and get filled with with cardboard  plastics and steels and whatever and it and the ships go off to over the seas with our waste products and we don't do we do very little of that proportionately in this country my biggest concern is that rather than reactionary and regulatory  we need to take with our environmental strategies the kind of approach that the eisenhower acted with transportation we don't just wait for the private sector to come forward with a proposal for a highway we don't wait for them to cite it to do the the environmental regulations whatever and then we just oversight it we are pro active partners from the get go to be able to create the interstate system that all of us you know brag about that wasn't just a result of the private sector doing all the heavy lifting and the and the federal government being a passive observer and a regulator we're actually proactive in that i just would really like to see you be able to come back to this committee with we have a strategy of making sure that we we we we say look for good locations we look for good companies we actually work with them we help them cite it when a local community is opposing it based on this we're proactive and working with them as partners just like we do with the freeway i mean let's face it of the federal trust haitian works with the the the local i mean the state to site and move forward with we haven't done that with our recycling facilities within a passive sort of hands off approach and i think with that is we're going to run into this crisis we keep saying no no no no and that's our government's obligation it's easy to say no but it's almost like me to ask and my son to take out the trash but feel like i don't have the responsibility to make sure there's a trash can for him to put it that's your problems on my job was just the mandate that you have to get rid of this stuff i hope that as we're talking madam chair outlawing the export in of this material that we bear the responsibility with the right to restrict comes particularly our energy has been around the design of products to try to work to design these products so that they do not create waste that are difficult to manage and i think you'll hear somewhat from our colleagues with  opposed to the actual recycling aspects of where they ultimately the disposition of these products and where would the problem is we don't people feel like we've got a right to be able to regulate their own their own state but they feel no responsibility to accommodate accommodate the way straight when california is one of the worst i mean our low level radiation issue our lack of citing medical waste facilities is a blatant example of just irresponsible environmental you point to a good issue that we addressed in two thousand and seven with g s a telework challenge is the name of the program at that time g s a had fewer than twenty percent of its employees teleworking and we  k initiative to see that over fifty percent of our employees were regularly teleworking in order to reap the benefits such as reduced dependence on foreign oil reduce congestion improved employee morale and improved ability to in the event of a continuity of operations or a building emergency situation as i said in my opening remarks we have instituted a policy that encourages the reliance on fewer devices in order to do that and avoid the situation that you refer to  employees might have computer at home a computer at work and perhaps another one in their car for emergencies we outfitted all eligible employees for telework with laptop computers which we ask that they use either when they're to working at home or in the office  program has been and continues to be successful our goal in two thousand and seven was twenty percent of our employees to a working in two thousand and forty percent and then at the end of two thousand and nine we were at forty six percent of our employees offer any particular incentives in terms of paying for broadband access we do provide them with modern equipment in some cases they have not only a laptop but also a voice over ip phone which allows them to function as if they were in the office with the same phone number and same access to our employee directory so there is sort of an inherent benefit in telling work through forgoing a daily commute that is part of part of the benefit of participating in tel office of personnel management jointly have a responsibility for the government wide oversight of the federal executive branch telework program g s a because it has that role  run the existing contract actually expires at the end of this year but i will say that we have been competitively put out of business and that there are alternative government entities who are stepping up to the plate will be able to provide that contract for cheaper than we were able to and so when the contract expires that will be the agency's last contract because the questions that we're concerned about that we've been raising what is sent for recycling and how is it managed and what types of sharon says are tainted show that the materials are handled properly and legally by downstream vendors throughout the recycling chain and what criteria does the agency use to select a recycler and is it primarily priced these are some of the answers that we'd like to have and we'll have you back but recently the new york times reported that both the department of energy and the e p a inspector generals have detected significant problems with the accuracy of energy star labels with consumers buying products that are mislabeled and this is a bad precedent for consumers and the environment as consumers pay more for in a g star product yet these appliances fail to save energy so how serious a problem and what steps taking to address this problem observation about congressman bilbray and recycling he actually is absolutely on the right track there are very responsible recyclers in this country and abroad the problem is there's not economic incentives for them to do their job right now because there's no federal legislation that controls electronic waste right now some twenty states had various laws on the books that range from everything from landfill bans for computers but there are currently no economic incentives to get those recyclers up to speed has probably more capacity right now than there is material to recycle because of that  your state california has an advance recovery fee approach where the consumer pays a certain amount to enable recycling at the end the state of maine and most of the other states have what's called an extended producer responsibility program where the manufacturer is required to take back computers and then recycle them in a responsible way so that's why we called for in our two thousand and five report a federal legislation on this issue  and we're not concerned export is just kind of an outgrowth of that if we do a better job of work here ing and managing the end of life we'll do a better job with the recycling of illegal exports at the end i'm sure california the example we've got a surcharge on on the products how many facilities have we cited in california to finance that in other words where as those funds go you know right now they in california they go to the recyclers but they go to the collection agents and the recyclers exactly and according to congressman thompson there is a state of the art facility in northern california and i think you're going to hear on the third panel another recycler that can explain in more detail the importance of the way the computer is designed and how it's managed the materials it's made of how easy it is to take apart in fact some of the t providing good options and they're basically saying well that's your problem we're here to just make sure you dispose of a don't ask us to participate in helping to create those options and the biggest concern i have coming from a working class  community being born and raised there is traditionally when you will limit the other options the bootleg options start being forced in and then where the first ones to scream how could all this the legal dumping go on how could this ever happen well we've created a situation that basically makes it very very tempting to go to that option because all the other options have not been made good options have not been made available because it wasn't our responsibility to provide the positive option i think that we've got and government be more proactive at creating those positive options and that our responsibility is not just to make sure that waste is not the slows in the wrong way but we have a responsibility proactive like we did the freeways and make sure there's a good option available to the capacity that we admit is there you know twenty one million tons metric tons so hopefully we will be able sac cooperation and when the state the states do have a responsible a right  of control but they also have a responsibility as a consumer as a government agency as we would say to consumers that you have a responsibility to make sure your waste ramus is manager properly when you throw it out thank you very much  and you see where we need to go so is going to have subsequent hearings on this matter and there are two bills available to us now and within those two bills we might find  miss coleman for your testimony you may be excused now thank you so much we're now going to turn to the third and the final panel and if they'll come up as you know it's the policy of the committee on oversight and government reform it to swear in all witnesses before they testify i'd like to ask all of you to raise your right hand  solemnly swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth ok thank you you may be seated and let the record reflect that the witnesses answered in the affirmative i'll scuse me polly mers is that correct thank you and which he started in richmond california in one nine hundred ninety four and previously missed a bit all served as principal of michael biddle and associates as a research leader for dow chemical company and as an adjunct professor at st mary's college chimurenga california mr gilbert to c s is a vice president of corp responsibility for dell and cooperated where he oversees the company's global diversity sustainability and corporate philanthropy functions he previously served as chairman of the u s equal employment opportunity commission as general counsel of the department of air force and as a cochairman of the u s census monitoring board mr rick gawked manages the information technology industry consuls environmental leadership council which promotes the consul's positions all of the tronics recycling materials content and design and green  procurement mr goss represents the electronics industry before elected officials regulators and the media and he has testified on behalf of high tech manufactures before congress and in several states he also works as international regulatory issues related to the environment energy and sustainability and he participates in several federal and state planning teams and task forces on the environmental priorities his prior experiences include working for the electronic industries alliance as vice president of environmental affairs mr rick little head or rich little head is that right little haile ok sorry is a senior at d l college majoring in  history doing his summers a v l riches who worked on a construction team for an investment firm and added investment bank and in two thousand and eight rich took a leave of absence from y know to found a greener like tronics reuse and recycling company called you re new dot com which helps people businesses arden is ations and government recycles or old electronics equipment and finally mr jeffs almost chuck founded the green of the tronics council in two thousand and five to reinvest society's relationship with electronics in two thousand and six the green and the trauma consul was selected to oversee tronics product environmental assessment to our e p the global green certification program for electronics mr almost chuck was selected to serve as the executive director for both the consul and his prior experiences include a founding a consulting and training practice and working as an engineer in silicone valley and i ask that each of the witnesses now give a brief summary of their testimony and keep to keep this summary under five to some of the other challenges facing our country today i started m b a polymers over fifteen years ago to implement a more sustainable way to manufacture plan sticks and i did it for a couple of reasons the biggest perhaps is because this i was watching this country consume about one hundred billion pounds each and every year of plastics and throw over ninety percent of that in landfills the less than ten percent more like six or seven percent that we manage to collect for recycling most of it ends up overseas as representative bilbray has already pointed out and i thought there was a better way to use this valuable resource m b a palmers is now the world the world leader in mining and recycling plastics from  such as computers electronics and automobiles were headquartered in richmond california where we have an office and research center however we build our manufacturing plants which are the most advanced plastics recycling plants on the face of the planet overseas we build them in asia and we build them in europe because this is where the collection infrastructure for in device durable goods like electronics has been developed our companies been recognized for breakthrough technologies like awards from the world economic forum tech pioneer intel corporation's international environmental award and the thomas alva edison award for innovation and we were just named one of the top one hundred clean tech companies in the world on one side of our business we mine the plastics from the materials left over after electronics and automobile  recyclers recover the materials from end of life products we take what is called their shredder residue which is a complex mixture of materials that would otherwise be landfill or and center rated in from this we recover a number of different plastics and even some of the metals that they missed by working very closely with literally hundreds of computer electronic recyclers all over the world we know firsthand the breadth the breadth of approaches to collect transport and recycling of life computers and electronics we have seen the most primitive the most sophisticated recycling approaches and technologies and everything in between on the other side of our business we sell our recycle plastics to some of the largest electronics and automobiles in the world so we also know firsthand the challenges and opportunities manufacturers face in using recycled materials and their new products so i hope this explains why i'm here as a witness at your hearing today my testimony can be summarized very simply we believe that the us is missing both a timely leadership in an enormous economic opportunity by following our current practice of mostly wasting our unique and valuable resources the us has the largest appositive end of life electronic equipment in the world as we've already heard some of the other speakers testified to you might  say from our perspective as recycling in mining company that we have the richest aboveground mines in the world and a kind of put this in perspective if you look at north america with a population of over three hundred million people we generate as representative bilbray already pointed out over twenty million tons of waste a year and i'm using a waste in the sense that the e u defines anything with a quarter battery just so we understand the definition that's almost seventy kilograms per each person in north america by contrast europe with about twice our population generates less the waste and that amount so they end up generating less than one third per person than what we do here in the united states per year and in asia you look at the other extreme with a very large population of much much less waste they only generate about five percent per person per year compared to the united states now much of the obsolete electronics in the u s are stored in closets and garages and i know my family's guilty of that but the majority the rest is dispose of in landfills or incinerators the e p a estimates that less than twenty percent of even the high value portions of this the waste stream is recycled and unfortunately the small amount that is collected for recycling is mostly shipped overseas to developing countries often without the knowledge  means to recycle the equipment and materials in a way that protects the workers or the local environment we've already referred to the show's on sixty minutes national geographic and hundreds of news stories talking about what happens when the waste is handled in appropriately and the potentially has a disastrous consequences and most of the waste that is handled appropriately comes from the united states so three things that we'd like to point out at this hearing firstly our country should take a leadership position in the responsible management of our large collection of the waste we are one of the last developed countries to have a national policy for these wastes even though we have the largest amounts of this waste in the world secondly and just as importantly we're missing a significant opportunity to reap some enormous economic benefits by recovering these materials of this equipment domestically examples include shovel ready green jobs the scrap recycling industry here in the united states already employs over eighty five thousand people and generates over eighty five billion dollars in revenues and we throw away a great deal of resources this industry is ready to capture those resource and generate jobs and generate revenues there's enormous energy savings that can be realized by raising materials compared to making them if you just look at metals and plastics for example they require as little as ten percent of the energy required to make them from virgin materials i can't think of very hardly any other opportunities where we can slash ninety percent of the energy use and there are also concurrent significant greenhouse gas savings from using recycled materials so let me just put a few of metrics on the table so you can kind of understand the magnitude of the savings and i'm going to focus on plastics not just because we're the plastics recycler but because it's the last major material category to be recycled anywhere in the world including the united states less than seven percent of our plastics are recycled in the u s and we and the majority of that about seventy five percent of that is actually shipped overseas for recycling so there's a huge opportunity here that we're not if we were to only recover one half of the plastics end of life electronics in automobiles and this is very conservative because we recover much higher amounts of metals from what percentage of these and of life goods we actually recycle us we could save over nine billion barrels of oil per year something like fifteen billion kilowatt hours of energy per year and over five billion pounds of c o two from being emitted to the atmosphere every year i have other examples of potential savings in my written testimony so thirdly and finally the u s government can  its use its large purchasing power to accelerate the realization of these benefits manufacturers are often reluctant to use new materials particularly recycled materials and recyclers are reluctant to make the necessary expensive investments in plant and equipment unless they know that they have reliable supplies of raw material and a market for their recycled products u s government can prime the pump and help drive the market for recycled materials like problems like plastics federal and state government policies to prepare recycled paper for example were instrumental in driving up the availability of recycled paper and driving down the costs they're already exists in a part of the solid waste act eeling with federal procurement that instructs government agencies to procure such items composed of the highest percentage of recovered materials practicable this policy seems to have mostly been focused on paper and we believe there remains a huge opportunity to release the value in our waste streams this would in turn create jobs secure resources save energy reduce greenhouse gases and protect people and the environment i think these are all benefits that we'd like to see happen  chairwoman ranking member members of the subcommittee thank you for the chance to be here today to talk about dell's commitment to being the greenest technology company on the planet and how we work with the federal government to help achieve its environmental energy and performance goals for dell responsibly reducing environmental impacts and economic cost depends on three things improving our own operations encouraging the supply chain and empowering our customers to reach their environmental goal the first place dell looks as within our walls we already have met our goal of achieving operational carbon neutrality by reducing our energy use purchasing green power where we can and offsetting the rest we source about thirty five percent of our u s energy use from green power and we aspired to one hundred percent in fact we just completed construction of a five hundred sixteen panels solar structure at our round rock texas headquarters just by taking some basic energy efficiency steps in our own facilities we reduced our facilities energy consumption three percent last year and will save nearly six million dollars annually in addition to a improving our own operations our second goal is to work with our suppliers to expand environmental improvements into the supply chain for example we now require our primary suppliers to measure and publicly report their greenhouse gas emissions and we ask them to set improvement goals of their own and set expectations for their suppliers we can make the biggest difference though through our third goal by helping our customers achieve their goals around performance costs and environmental stewardship i t is a big part of the solution to the challenge of reducing energy consumption according to a recent report for every extra kilowatt hour of electricity used to power tools the u s economy saves ten times that much we offer customers various services and solutions to address their energy and environmental needs including energy efficiency  calculators green printed visor and a data center capacity planner we were the first tech company to offer customers carbon offsets delis the industry in packaging solutions shrinking volume increasing recycled content and increasing the use of recyclable packaging mature we are the first manufacturer to offer free computer recycling to consumers worldwide and we've been providing responsible recycling services for more than a decade we regularly audit our resupply years to the highest standards of responsible disposition and dell is the first major computer manufacturer to ban the export of non working electronics to developing countries we bring this experience to the table with our biggest customer the federal government president obama's new executive order requires federal agencies to work to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and to buy environmentally responsible products and services we help by participating in the creation of environmental prepare men standards as well as by providing tools technology and services we participate in many partnerships to drive environmental standards including as an original and active participant in both e and energy star and we support the peace efforts to become a global standard many of our green products are described in my written testimony but some that i'm most proud of include our more than ninety e p products most rated as gold and are brought energy star offerings we were the first to announce a family of energy star servers the first to announce energy star five point zero products and all of our displays are now energy star we also help our customers rethink their data center operations including through virtualization the technology enabling a single server to act as multiple servers reducing the equipment power cooling and space in fact we work with  s zone data center and computer use many of our high volume products come with power management already enabled allowing systems to be powered down when not in use and cutting electricity consumption by up to seventy eight percent and for all our displays we are transitioning to l e d back like technology which is more energy efficient and is mercury fury in conclusion delp applaud your efforts to help the federal government to lead by example with environmentally responsible procurement and chairman i'm happy to answer any questions you may have thank you thank you so much forty three things high tech and electronics manufacturers in the information communications technology sector leading dell through our environmental leadership council we also represent several dozen additional prominent manufacturers in the high tech sector a member companies have long been leaders in sustainability many exceed their requirements on environmental design and energy efficiency and lead the way in products that were chip efforts i should also note the newsweek magazine recently issued its two thousand and green rankings of america's five hundred largest corporations based on their overall environmental performance policies and reputation our members occupy four of the top five positions and fourteen of the top forty slots overall i t on our member companies are strong supporters and active participants in energy piece both of these programs promise me promise a valuable and concrete market rewards for those leadership companies that make significant time and resource investments i should note that energy stars are required criterion under epeat and th members of i t i n r environmental leadership council dominate the peat registry and presently manufacture ninety percent of the four hundred nineteen epeat gold rated products i have four recommendations i'd like to offer in the area of energy star an e p to find may number one is to increase federal government procurement of energy star and e p rated products purchasing requirements for energy star and e p products are already included in the far president obama's new executive order on federal leadership in environmental energy and economic performance include specific provisions i'm preparing energy star and e p to lecture on equipment supports this commitment to look forward to working with the administration and congress on its fulfillment number two is to provide targeted funding for education and outreach efforts the largest and most immediate opportunity to secure additional energy and cost savings is by educating purchasers about the benefits of buying energy star an e p quality qualified products congress to consider funding for initiatives to in pro draw her promote broader awareness and energy efficiency in the energy star program an effective use of power management features incorporated into i c t products and systems and on the lifecycle benefits of purchasing e p products number three maintain the focus of the energy star program product energy use u s e p a is considering a potential expansion of the energy star program to factor quote additional energy impacts into the specification the success of the energy star label is due in large part to the fact that it is objective measurable and verifiable by focusing solely on the attribute of energy consumption of a particular product model energy star offers product purchasers a straightforward and objective means of evaluating the energy efficiency of that product and finally number four provide additional funding and oversight of epeat manufacturers want to see e p succeed and become the premier international park human program for green electronics the administration of the e p program is currently funded solely by manufacturer registration fees the program is expanding at a rapid pace but there has been no additional government support to revise the original standard or provide for the long term stability of this important program in addition epeat is a federal procurement requirement and is being increasingly recognize an international venue s by numerous private purchasers however the e p program is managed by a small third party single source provider i t i encourages congress to provide additional funding and oversight of e p to make sure this important program succeeds we also have recommendations in my written testimony ensuring harmonization a particular moment within federal agencies relying on advanced printing solutions as and having the federal government rely more on video conferencing i should also make a couple of comments here about asset management and recycling i t m members offer comprehensive asset management and product recycling services to the federal government as well as to our commercial and institutional customers in fact our companies have provided for the proper recovery and management of well over two billion pounds of use electronics products functional equipment is typically refer bisht in return to commerce for environmentally beneficial reuse our members ensure that older broken units are first used for spare parts as appropriate and then recycled in an environmentally sound manner m members also use significant quantities of recycled materials including glass metals and plastics and new generations of our products thus creating demand that helps sustain markets for these materials i t n our members have been working in close coordination with  and other stakeholders to develop a set of responsible recycling or are two practices the are two practices which are in the process of becoming a recognized standard will allow government commercial institutional residential consumers alike to know that their obsolete products will be properly managed finally a couple of words on the overall energy climate and economic benefits of i c t systems and services our sector plays a critical role in helping address major strategic challenges including energy security economic competitiveness and the transition to a clean energy economy the smart twenty twenty report issued by the climate group recently concluded that i c t strategies for energy efficiency could reduce up to fifteen percent of global emissions by two thousand and twenty the u s agendum to that report indicates that i c t strategies could reduce annual u s carbon emissions by up to twenty two percent by two thousand and twenty which translates into energy and fuel savings of one hundred forty to two hundred forty billion dollars we have two very specific recommendations in this regard implementation strategy for the purchase and use of energy efficient information communications technologies and practices and second we support the provision to direct the department of energy to create metrics to determine the annual energy rating of enterprise level i c t systems i c t energy efficiency programs assist utilities and sharing information and best practices this will drive more meaningful demand mitigation programs that will yield dramatic energy efficiency savings more quickly thank you for the your new dot com a company that is focused on helping people businesses cities and other organizations find the best outlet for their old electronics whether that be our specialty of remarking the devices through retail channels or sending those devices to our partner recyclers to be broken down and reuse today i plan on briefly discussing three things first i'll give a brief overview of our company second i i will discuss what we believe are the three main market needs to increase free marketing and recycling rights and third i will talk about how our company is trying to meet these market needs and provide our service to individuals companies and governments my co founder and i started the company in may of two thousand and eight at the end of my junior year at yale university after noticing the low national recycling and reuse rates for electronics after much research we believe that reuse is the highest form of recycling because these devices live lives can be extended in the hands of someone who might not be able to might not be able to afford brand new ones i took last year off from school to get the company start we've since raise capital grown from two to close to twenty people in the last seven months and recently hired an experienced c e o to continue to scale the company i'm now splitting my time between working a year in and finishing my senior year at yale after over of years speaking with some of the best minds in the country on reusing recycling and working nonstop to attract and serve customers i believe we've arrived at three critical needs for a successful recycling in marketing service the first is incentive traditionally organizations and people are charged to have their electronics recycled responsibly you renew we actually pay these organizations and people for their old devices that we can put back into use this helps offset the cost of equipment that needs to be recycled this is both a win for the organization and for electronics recycler partner by partnering with our electronics by partnering with partner recyclers we can move more quickly on helping more people in organizations meant managers or end of life solutions the second need is transparency there's concern over where the electronics go and if they're being recycled properly our goal is to continue to be the most transparent company on the market and only work with  standing credibility the third is convenience we compete against the trash can much of our innovation is making it easier for the consumer to send in their old electronics what we've achieved great success so far our company's journey has just begun and it's obvious to us that a great market need still exists for example as you can see on the screen we recently worked with the city of new haven to help them recycle and re market their old electronics these electronics were literally in a box in the cause of the i t manager's office who did not know what to do with them we helped explain the proper channels for use in recycling and since create a great relationship our vision for a year a new is to provide full life cycle management for individuals and large organizations that means first helping them make the best decisions about which electronics to buy through standards like epeat and second using our service to help them find the right alex for the reuse or recycling of those devices and the next year we a new are aiming to work with electronics manufacturers recyclers individuals in the u s government set up a more efficient transparent framework for the second life of electronics we will work hard with these partners to continue to craft the best incentives transparency and convenience in conclusion we are ready and willing to help provide the best service and excited for the what the future holds thank you for thank you again for the opportunity to testify  one c three nonprofit organization based in portland oregon with the mission of reinventing society's relationship with electronics even to testify today said the committee was interested in the government's pick you're meant to disposal of electronics products i'm going to focus more on the purchasing end but i want to clearly make the point that the two are related if you buy green or electronics you will be disposing of a green or electronics the imitation also said that the committee was interested in learning more about epeat electronics products environmental assessment tool and about the government's use of b p to buy greener i t products all focused my comments on those subjects epeat is a comprehensive green purchasing system for electronics that covers the environmental impacts of products complete lifecycle including reduce toxics in the product design for extended life and more efficient recycling energy efficiency greener packaging and he'd also requires that the manufacturer provide certain services including end of life take back of batteries packaging and the product itself makes it is easy to specify and buy a full scope green products as energy star makes it to buy energy efficient products for their e p a registered products cost no more than conventional products and costs purchasers nothing to use it was developed and lost with the support of e p a and hundreds of volunteers stakeholders from all facets of society including environmental n g o s industry researchers large purchasers and public officials i think you've heard a lot of support in this hearing so far for the parties that have participated epeat is now marginally financially self supporting it represents a unique and successful public private partnership that is changing an industry using market forces rather than regulation the us federal government uses epeat to specify green electronics for its own purposes the federal acquisition regulation the far into executive orders require all agencies of the u s federal government to satisfy ninety five percent of their need for electronics with products that are e p a registered many other organizations around the world also use e p to specify and buy green electronics including federal agencies state cities education systems hospitals and corporations from brazil to thailand these purchasers combine contracts repeat registered products has created a sixty billion dollars market incentives for manufacturers to make greener products this market for green electronics attracted the participation of leading american manufacturers including h p dell apple most european and asian industry leaders leaders and many small innovative manufacturers globally introduced you to epeat i'd like to urge this committee to do a few things that i think could make a huge difference first and mr goss alluded to this despite the fact that two executive orders and the far require all agencies of federal government by registered products many government contracts present catalogs of products to federal purchasers that include many non epeat registered products and they do not identify which products are e p a registered making it very difficult for purchasers to comply with federal regulation i urge congress to require that government contracts and contractors clearly identify the registered electronics so that federal purchasers can more easily comply with federal purchase regulations second us government has for many years done a good job of using their own purchasing power to create demand for greener products but this doesn't go far enough promoting green purchasing to the public based on sound lifecycle based programs educates consumers on what they can do and drink things demand for environmentally preferable products is the program vetted by the us government and used for its own purchasing of electronics e p a should support and promote epeat and other sound green purchasing systems to the public third congress justifiably has interest in developing a national waste recycling program we fully support that it's a critical environmental need that can only be accomplished by regulation probably however recycling is fundamentally an end of the pipe activity that recovers perhaps a few percent of the environmental investment in electronic products to fully address the lifecycle impact of electronics we must address them earlier in the product life cycle by specifying epeat purchasers apply market pressure to change the design manufacturing and service practices electronics makers globally and reduce impacts throughout the lifecycle including making products more easily and efficiently recycled again if you buy green or electronics we'll you will be disposing of greener electronics so buying green electronics is defined by epeat should be recognized and supported as a necessary part of any long term solution finally e p a epeat was made possible th support and involvement of the department of energy and other federal agencies is a working example of an innovative and powerful new model of public private partnership that market forces rather than regulation to drive better materials management practices throughout a complex supply chain we urge congress to increase support for and similar programs thank you for this opportunity to testify before this body i look forward to your continue increased support i'd be happy to answer any questions i'd like to thank all the witnesses for your testimony and we are now going to move to the question period and we will proceed operations we have heard about in the news some people say it's actually better for the environment if we just warehouse the products are even send them  that's actually a good question because i've heard similar sentiment before i think from my oral testimony you probably surmise that i believe there's a lot of value to be recovered if it's done appropriately and i think that's the key is that it be done appropriately and ha union enacted what's called double triple evil legislation waste electrical electronic legislation a number of years ago and it was primarily initially done to protect the environment both their local environment and the environment of countries where there was also being exported what they have found sense and they figured that this was going to be a costly enterprise to do this what they found sense is that it didn't cost as much as they thought and in fact sometimes it pays for itself as we've heard some of these products can pay for themselves from the recycling or the reuse and secondly what they found is that more importantly or just as important as protecting the environment they're now recovering valuable resources that their manufacturers in europe are using to make new products more competitively more sustainably so recycled domestically are exported abroad there's a number of different figures out that of that have been compiled by different organizations in my oral testimony alluded to some and in my written testimony there's a little bit more data america a good portion of that of course is in the united states i don't have a particular figure for what percentage of that is the united states of that e p a did a study that i also alluded to that about seventeen or eighteen percent waste is collected for recycling in the u s but the waste that they looked at was just what i call the high value the most prominent way so those were computers in peripherals and cell phones that stuff does have a much higher recycling rate for the reason for the reuse reasons we heard about and the inherent value in some of the mature in that particular type of equipment so that over estimates i think the recycling rate for all of the electronics and the majority of that eighteen percent is shipped overseas not recycled here in the say thank you your first question here i think our companies have demonstrated through their their actual achievements here what they're able to do based on customer demand based on competition market competition and as i noted in my testimony our member companies make ninety percent of the four hundred plus gold rated products here so our companies are competing against one another in the marketplace here and frankly the federal government support through the far through the executive order for repeat an energy star assessment going all the way through the design through the active use of the equipment through which it's beneficial reuse and appropriate recycling here in terms of the federal government i think i'll go back to a couple of the key points that i made in my testimony here the federal government has a major role to play in terms of helping to drive that march it's a man in terms of making sure that an energy star rated products are purchased at the levels as prescribed in the executive order and in the far and continuing to provide that market incentive to our companies to make these improvements thank you will go now to portions of these products that are not going to be economically viable to recycle but i think anyone who's worked with the way strange that understand that that doesn't mean in the future that material may not be very profitable to recycle wouldn't you agree that one of the things that we need to look at while we're talking about recycling is the concept of stockpiling or disposing or storing those other material that may not be today in isolation because that's one of the things you get you've got in isolation you've got it separated once you've got a separate part being able to make it recyclable for the future again another good question i agree with your general statement that some things are more expensive to recycle than others and i would allude again to my comment about the european union where they found that a surprisingly amount of stuff is now paying for itself to be recycled go down that path because i think there's so much inherent value in the materials if the infrastructure were developed it's a bit of a chicken and egg and that's what the european union found out there's economies of scale associated with doing recycling doing it economically as well as doing it environmentally here first of all the and a lot of it may be on our political process just the entire environmental political process of saying no no no the fact is that if you are confronted with there's more of a motivation to recycle because you can't just go down the cheap or throw it into a landfill option i think you're absolutely on the right track but let me let me just say three things would make it easier for us to recycle these things economically in the u s the first is getting the stuff back clearly we have more of the stuff in the u s than any other country in the world so i think that's a huge opportunity as much as it is a problem and  just like in technology getting fiber to your home or cable to your home the last mile is the most expensive perhaps you're familiar with that concept in recycling is just the opposite it's the first mile is the most expensive getting recyclables out of the hands of consumers is always been the most expensive part of the recycling equation if that infrastructure develops for collecting this material in an affective way most of the other process pays for itself so the first issue to solve is how can we collect it effectively and efficiently and this is again something we can learn from people from countries in europe and asia the second is i think you've already alluded to it make it easier for recyclers to develop their plants and to stop throwing up so many various again i'll give you an example you're an example where you've developed at your company in california and california but you don't have one site in the united states raised over one hundred million dollars from investors right here in the u s funding from the u s government agencies to develop the technology more than ten years ago and where we explain the technology now most people in washington say that you're one of those corporations that just so mean spirited that you are creating jobs overseas and don't care about the american i'm creating jobs overseas because that's where i get my hands on the raw material i can tell you there's no person in this country more frustrated than myself that i can't build plants here in the united states and what are what can we do to make it well i'm possible thing to do well the first one was getting the raw material on the electronics side and on the second point which you are again al alluded to make it easier for recyclers to make the investment because there's a risk investors demand of me that i show them a return on their money and that that has to do with risk based if i can get my hands on material in europe and in asia that lowers the risk investors are happy but isn't a major  portion of that risk is that when you go in there it's a whole lot different than saying i plan on going and building a facility here the difference between go to an investor and saying i'm building a facility as opposed to i have a sighted facility that is permitted and that's a huge difference isn't it absolutely and that that is my point to let's make it easier for recyclers to grow the infrastructure here in the u s in the first one is getting a raw material but secondly making the permitting process easier the permitting process was much easier for us in asia and europe and we're building our second plant right now in the u k which will be the largest such plan in the world we would like to duplicate that plant here in the u s and we're ready to do it tomorrow i can employ the funds tomorrow if we can get over some regulatory hurdles so this happens to do with automotive shredder residue not the topic for this panel right here but that material the point i can make with that that materials already available in the united states billion pounds of it we put in landfill every year already collected already concentrated and i can't build a plant to mine it like the plant we're building in the u k right now because of regulatory barriers so i need some help on that and finally on the p and pull of government regulation we always look at pushing but no pull and one of the things that the california coastal commission did that really has worked is where you had communities did not want to build hotels visitor receiving because the local pressure was we don't want those tourists in our town you know we don't want this hotel in our neighborhood but what finally happened was without the hotels people were running out homes and neighborhoods and people were so outraged about women i don't want people running next to my house that are just going to be here for two weeks i bought into a single family residential area and the coastal commission finally said ok you can outlaw those short term rentals but if you build an alternative the hotel now you've got communities and historically  blocked hotels being motivated to do the responsible thing and i'd like to see us try to see how as a policy our environmental regulations can create that carrot and stick approach that push and pull thank you very much thank you mr co chairman and just picking up on the last point i think it would be a mistake to indicate that there's no recycling going on in the united states there is metal recycling from electronic waste i'm aware of one plant in pots dumped as of am aware of another plant in arizona where we in fact are recycling and there is a market here though the gentleman's point is correct that site location for such plants always a challenge but it would be a misimpression i think to to suggest that none of that goes on in the united states that all of that goes on the overseas that's not true i completely agree and i'm sorry i didn't want to live leave that completed no and i said there are eighty five thousand jobs here in the u s congress and you know before you came there was that point that there is this activity it's just that proportionately it's way off what we produce of course and some of it is as you suggest mr bilbray is permitting its licensing sometimes with the best of intentions for environmental rationales we actually are pre betting the ability to do this kind of recycling and to get that market by brant here in the united states let me let me begin madam chairwoman by congratulating dell and particular for their leadership i mean it really is impressive that a company such as yours would step up to this issue not ignore it and take it on to the wing as an important part of their corporate responsibility and i just say that as somebody coming from twenty years in the industry i'm impressed and i thank you for your leadership thank you let me ask this of our two dell reps could you support and how might it work from your point of view legislation that would support th  let me start by saying that about four and a half years ago or early two thousand and five our industry came to congress and ask congress to consider national comprehensive electronics recycling legislation at that time only two states california the books and our industry had a strong preference for a consistent federal approach as opposed to a hodgepodge or a patchwork of state approach as well in the absence of federal action over the last four plus years now have twenty states wisconsin being the latest this past week plus the city of new york with their own distinct electronics recycling laws on the books this is created quite a bit of confusion additional costs for our member companies consumer confusion in addition because no two states are alike some are similar in terms of their approaches but they have different products scopes different financing requirements registration reporting exciter i think everybody understands the picture here we would still be very interested in having a discussion with this committee and with congress about where we can go as a group of stakeholders including the recent recyclers the retailers the n g o s e p a and other government players here about how to try to bring a solution to this i would also add that we've been working with congressman green and congressm thompson for well over a year on the specific bill that they mentioned in the first panel here which has to do with controls on electronics exports two quick points i'd like to make on that is we strongly support controls on the export of obsolete equipment going countries that is a very legitimate issue and it's something that as manufacturers we would like to see resolved here i would also add as a cabbie out there we want to make sure that we are allowed to continue with our beneficial product refurbishment programs some of our members export large amounts of used late model equipment for appropriate repair refurbishment and subsequent resale in a global commerce that's a very environmentally beneficial outcome and we want to make sure we get the most resources and the most use out of those products here so we want to make  obsolete material for recycling i will point out that a an absolute prohibition on the export of use recycles excuse me use products for recycling would actually create a regime a u s regime where you can't for instance export a laptop at all but you'd still under record be allowed to export a drum of hazardous waste to the same developing country under notice and consent i think there needs to be some reasonable authority given the e p a to come up with some rules on when and where certain shipments could be made but we do support controls on the export of obsolete equipment to countries that don't have the capacity to manage it right ok great and my final question madam chairwoman mr bill in your testimony you note that metal recyclers capture ninety percent of the metals collected in recycled we and then life are all bills and you contrast that with sort of the sorry state of five to ten percent of the plastics i wonder if you could expand on that a little bit because one of things that struck me having done a little bit work on the mental side is that a market a niche market was created for the m extraction and and recycling of those medals on the metal market and frankly so long as the price of metals was relatively good it makes for a viable recycling industry and market  i don't know that we have a similar analogous situation for plastics what do we need to do to try to help spur the creation of such a secondary market first i'd like to thank you for the question because that's that  question is near and dear to my heart as you might imagine first let me say on the metal side and we work with the largest metal recyclers in the world we know them very well and i've worked with them for fifteen years if you look back the history of metal recycling ste was the first metal recycled because it's easy to recycle all it takes is a magnet to separate steel from everything else there was no such thing as a magnet for copper aluminum magnesium and some of the other non ferrous metals the non steel metals so that material up until about two decades or three decades ago was not recovered in high volumes it was hand picked and much of it actually ended up in the waste stream thirty years ago technology came along to now separate those materials using color density differences electrical differences property differences and so forth and now that materials has an incredibly high recycling rate because the technology came along and as you pointed out the value the inherent value of materials is there plastics on average particularly from computer electronic equipment is on par on a price per basis or cost per weight basis with aluminum so it is a valuable material we know the recycle rates for aluminum are quite high because it is a valuable material plastics are roughly in the same ballpark as far as value and much more valuable than steel on a price for weight basis so the material has inherent value it's that the technology to sort all these materials from each other was not available just like it was not for non ferrous that technology is now available has been developed over the last decade not just by our company but by other companies and is now starting to be employed so the technology barrier was probably the first barrier the second has been the collection on the again if i just focus on electrical electronic equipment we're quite we're building plants overseas quite a lot these days simply because we get our hands on the by products from the electronics recyclers which is predominantly mixed plastics so our technology is being employed to do that if that material is being collected here in the u s i would be happy to build plants here in the u actually picking apart where redesign it so there's a potential how do you address that issue we take a variety of steps which start with giving the customer the instructions on how to data clear his or her device with the standards of the manufacturer which usually are the recommended version once we take the device into our facility what we do is we have security in particular that you know i think that if manufacturers developed an easier way to data clear these devices would be more reusable and that's something that would make the electronics greener in that sense because they would be easier to use and so we will use the highest standards that are available currently and are constantly looking to improve and now do you feel once you go through that that there is a security  security is up to the level you would prefer or do we need to continue to improve the ability to data clear i mean i think that it's up to the level that you know the manufacturers it's the best thank you for that and i did that on all fairness when we talk about this we also got to remember that there is going to be consultation with law enforcement i'm sure that our law enforcement agencies have seen this as being a great tool being able to get get quote unquote information that obviously will be something that is dialogue into the formula thank you very much for having this hearing and i want to the last two questions will go to mr el much and this ticket and i knew that and why they so limited and let me just go down my list and you can answer in response and what is being done to add more products what kind of federal support was involved in the development and implementation of a p and does monitors those are the products that stakeholders chose to begin with because their products purchased in volume by large institutional purchasers like the u s federal government is an important stakeholder in the process within that product cover today we have at this point thirteen hundred products from forty plus manufacturers that are registered the key thing is i would say manufacturers that have at least one product registered in e p which is all the recognized multinationals cost i'm not one penny additional to register additional products so there's really only one reason why they don't register the products that they haven't add more products let me touch on what would it take to add more product types first stakeholders have begun the process to develop the green standards for printer type products as printers fax machines copiers that kind of you know product and for televisions that process is underway we develop standards are developed by a broad range of stakeholders working in and public standards about one process so it's a it's a long process it's not a five of us getting in a closet and dreaming up the criteria it takes hundreds of people working through hundreds of meetings over a period of years to come to agreement consensus across n g o s and environ and manufacturers and others what the criteria  are so those are started we have a product roadmap that includes servers and handheld cell phone products after that so those products are kind of on the way what would it take to add more products within the products we cover today i think the key would be increased consumer awareness and consumer demand for green electronics it is true that the majority of products registered peter those sold to institutions and that's because that's the market that request them and as i said in my testimony one of the things that e p a can do to increase the a range of products is to promote to the public today we're in a bit of a chicken and egg situation where manufacturers say they don't want to promote to the public and they don't register their public products because the public doesn't recognize and of course until they do the public can't recognize that there's nothing to recognize and so we're in a bit of a chicken egg situation the market in and the federal government can provide a real good break us out of that i'll be brief fundamentally this is about good business these from dell's perspective and being a green business for us mean we're going to be a successful business so as we think about green technology we think about it strategically and if we can get ahead of the curve we will be successful in the long term and that's why all of the efforts when our when our chairman declare we will be the greenest technology company on the planet it was sort of like president kennedy saying we're going to get to the moon by a certain period of time now we've got to work all of those partnerships a lot of hard work to try to make it happen and among the things you asked about were disposal and we have some very high standards around disposal we we audit are recyclers for example i mentioned in my testimony about banning the ex of non working equipment the idea is to set the highest standards and and push towards them and you know it's kind of like physical fitness you know you should reach a level and you don't stop you gotta push to the next level one because it's the right thing to do and it's good for you and secondly because you know your competition is going to drive you to the next level and in any event in terms of the state level question you asked i would say that we been working with congressman green as well on some of the recycling laws at the state level i i think what we need is some incentives to make a recycling more efficient and i think the federal government in particular could help by creating further and generous incentives for recycling i want to think all of you you know these are our emergency emerging feels and you know i liken it to developing the h one n one virus people are complaining that there's not enough available well they don't know the process that has to be done in the laboratory to grow what is necessary to put it in the inoculation and all and as i was listening to you this morning and now afternoon we are trying to support you in the private sector as well as the public sector as you start to discover and develop and compete with each other we're trying to do that health care should never have gone there but in any way we understand all the pieces and the parts that it takes to come up with that policy so that's the reason why we started off with the two members that were here with their bills and we will then be amending their bills with some of the input we have today i just want to say to all of you thank you for what you're doing we hope that we can consult with you