2023 South Carolina Code of Laws › Title 48 - Environmental Protection and Conservation › Chapter 60 - South Carolina Manufacturer Responsibility And Consumer Convenience Information Technology Equipment Collection And Recovery Act › Section 48-60-142. Registration of recoverers; denial of registration; requirements of recoverers; regulations; violations; penalties.

Section effective until December 31, 2029.
(A) All recoverers that store, consolidate, or process covered devices in the State must register with the department the locations of all storage and processing activities by submitting a $3,000 registration fee and completing and submitting a form as prescribed by the department by November 1, 2022, and by November first of each year thereafter for that program year.
(B) The department may deny a registration under this section if the recoverer or any employee or officer of the recoverer has a history of:
(1) repeated violations of federal, state, or local laws, regulations, standards, or ordinances related to the collection, recycling, or other management of covered devices;
(2) conviction in this State or another state of any crime which is a felony under the laws of this State, or conviction of a felony in a federal court; or conviction in this State or another state or federal court of any of the following crimes: forgery, official misconduct, bribery, perjury, or knowingly submitting false information under any environmental law, regulation, or permit term or condition; or
(3) gross carelessness or incompetence in handling, storing, processing, transporting, disposing, or otherwise managing covered devices.
(C) The department shall post on the department's website a list of all registered recoverers.
(D) Beginning in program year 2023, no person may act as a recoverer of consumer covered devices for a manufacturer's electronic waste program unless the recoverer is registered with the department as required under this section.
(E) Beginning in program year 2023, recoverers must, as a part of their annual registration, certify compliance with all of the following requirements:
(1) Recoverers must comply with federal, state, and local laws and regulations, including federal and state minimum wage laws, specifically relevant to the handling, processing, and recycling of consumer covered devices and must have proper authorization by all appropriate governing authorities to perform the handling, processing, and recycling.
(2) Recoverers must implement the appropriate measures to safeguard occupational and environmental health and safety, through the following:
(a) environmental health and safety training of personnel, including training with regard to material and equipment handling, worker exposure, controlling releases, and safety and emergency procedures;
(b) an up-to-date, written plan for the identification and management of hazardous materials; and
(c) an up-to-date, written plan for reporting and responding to exceptional pollutant releases, including emergencies such as accidents, spills, fires, and explosions.
(3) Recoverers must maintain:
(a) commercial general liability insurance or the equivalent corporate guarantee for accidents and other emergencies with limits of not less than $1,000,000 per occurrence and $1,000,000 aggregate; and
(b) pollution legal liability insurance with limits not less than $1,000,000 per occurrence for companies engaged solely in the dismantling activities and $5,000,000 per occurrence for companies engaged in recycling.
(4) Recoverers must maintain on file documentation that demonstrates the completion of an environmental health and safety audit completed and certified by a competent internal and external auditor annually. A competent auditor is an individual who, through professional training or work experience, is appropriately qualified to evaluate the environmental health and safety conditions, practices, and procedures of the facility. Documentation of auditors' qualifications must be available for inspection by department officials and third-party auditors.
(5) Recoverers must maintain on file proof of workers' compensation and employers' liability insurance.
(6) Recoverers must provide adequate assurance, such as bonds or corporate guarantees, to cover environmental and other costs of the closure of the recoverer's facility, including cleanup of stockpiled equipment and materials. A recoverer must provide, for each storage, consolidation, or processing location, adequate financial assurance to cover third-party removal of all covered devices or waste material from the facility. The financial assurance must be issued in favor of the department and an approved financial assurance mechanism must be submitted prior to beginning storage or processing operations. The registrant must provide continuous coverage for closure until released from financial assurance requirements by the department.
(7) Recoverers must apply due diligence principles to the selection of facilities to which components and materials, such as plastics, metals, and circuit boards, from consumer covered devices are sent for reuse and recycling.
(8) Recoverers must establish a documented environmental management system that is appropriate in level of detail and documentation to the scale and function of the facility, including documented regular self-audits or inspections of the recoverer's environmental compliance at the facility.
(9) Recoverers must use the appropriate equipment for the proper processing of incoming materials as well as controlling environmental releases to the environment. The dismantling operations and storage of consumer covered devices components that contain hazardous substances must be conducted indoors and over impervious floors. Storage areas must be adequate to hold all processed and unprocessed inventory. When heat is used to soften solder and when covered devices components are shredded, operations must be designed to control indoor and outdoor hazardous air emissions.
(10) Recoverers must establish a system for identifying and properly managing components, such as circuit boards, batteries, cathode-ray tubes, and mercury phosphor lamps, that are removed from consumer covered devices during disassembly. Recoverers must properly manage all hazardous and other components requiring special handling from consumer covered devices consistent with federal, state, and local laws and regulations. Recoverers must provide visible tracking, such as hazardous waste manifests or bills of lading, of hazardous components and materials from the facility to the destination facilities and documentation, such as contracts, stating how the destination facility processes the materials received. No recoverer may send, either directly or through intermediaries, hazardous wastes to solid nonhazardous waste landfills or to nonhazardous waste incinerators for disposal or energy recovery. For the purpose of these guidelines, smelting of hazardous wastes to recover metals for reuse in conformance with all applicable laws and regulations is not considered disposal or energy recovery.
(11) Recoverers must use a regularly implemented and documented monitoring and record-keeping program that tracks total inbound covered devices material weights and total subsequent outbound weights to each destination, injury and illness rates, and compliance with applicable permit parameters including monitoring of effluents and emissions. Recoverers must maintain contracts or other documents, such as sales receipts, suitable to demonstrate: (i) the reasonable expectation that there is a downstream market or uses for designated electronics, which may include recycling or reclamation processes such as smelting to recover metals for reuse; and (ii) that any residuals from recycling or reclamation processes, or both, are properly handled and managed to maximize reuse and recycling of materials to the extent practical.
(12) Recoverers must employ industry-accepted procedures for the destruction or sanitization of data on hard drives and other data storage devices. Acceptable guidelines for the destruction or sanitization of data are contained in the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Guidelines for Media Sanitation or those guidelines certified by the National Association for Information Destruction.
(F) Each recoverer shall, during each calendar year, transport from each site that the recoverer uses to manage consumer covered devices not less than 75% of the total weight of consumer covered devices present at the site during the preceding calendar year. Each recoverer shall maintain on-site records that demonstrate compliance with this requirement and shall make those records available to the department for inspection and copying.
(G) Nothing in this chapter shall prevent a person from acting as a recoverer independently of a manufacturer electronic waste program.
(H) Whenever the department determines that a person is in violation of a regulation promulgated pursuant to this section, the department may:
(1) issue an order requiring the person to comply with the regulation;
(2) bring a civil action for injunctive relief in the appropriate court; or
(3) request the Attorney General bring civil or criminal enforcement action pursuant to this section.
The department also may impose reasonable civil penalties not to exceed ten thousand dollars, for each day of violation. After exhaustion of administrative remedies, a person against whom a civil penalty is invoked by the department may appeal the decision of the department or board to the court of common pleas, pursuant to the Administrative Procedures Act.
(I) A person who wilfully violates a regulation promulgated pursuant to this section is guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, must be fined not more than ten thousand dollars for each day of violation or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both. If the conviction is for a second or subsequent offense, the punishment must be a fine not to exceed twenty-five thousand dollars for each day of violation or imprisonment not to exceed two years, or both. The provisions of the subsection do not apply to officials and employees of a local government owning or operating, or both, a municipal solid waste management facility or to officials and employees of a region, comprised of local governments, owning or operating, or both, a regional municipal solid waste management facility.
(J) Each day of noncompliance with an order issued pursuant to this section or noncompliance with a permit, regulation, standard, order, or requirement established pursuant to this section constitutes a separate offense.
HISTORY: 2022 Act No. 234 (H.4775), Section 1.A, eff June 17, 2022.
Editor's Note
2022 Act No. 234, Section 1.B, provides as follows:
"[SECTION 1.]B. Section 14 of Act 129 of 2014, as amended by Act 82 of 2021, is repealed. Section 48-60-55 of the 1976 Code is repealed December 31, 2022. The remaining provisions of this chapter, except Section 48-60-90, are repealed December 31, 2029."