2023 Laws of Puerto Rico › TITLE TWELVE - Conservation (§§ 1-16 — 8162) › Subtitle 8 - Environment II (§§ 8001 — 8162) › Chapter 507 - Puerto Rico Electronics Recycling and Disposal Promotion Act (§§ 8151 — 8162) › § 8151 - Definitions and exceptions

The following words or terms, wherever they are used or referred to in this chapter, shall have the meaning stated hereinbelow, except where the context clearly states otherwise:
(a) Authority.— Means the Puerto Rico Solid Waste Authority.
(b) Consumer.— Means the purchaser, lessee or owner of equipment; in the case of cellular telephone or cable television equipment, it means the user subscribed to such service. Consumer shall be any natural person, business, corporation, partnership, nonprofit organization or government agency. The term consumer shall not include those entities involved in wholesale transactions with distributors, communications carriers, and retailers.
(c) Retailer.— Means a natural or juridical person that sells or leases equipment to consumers. It includes:
(1) Any manufacturer, importer or distributor that sells or leases new or refurbished equipment directly to the consumer.
(2) Any cellular telephone or cable or satellite television provider that sells or leases equipment through its own offices or franchise holders.
(3) Any reseller of cellular telephone, cable or satellite television equipment and services.
(d) Proper disposal.— Means that the electronic waste which is not subject to recycling or reuse is processed so as to minimize its impact on the environment and public health.
(e) Final disposal.— The removal of disposed, discarded, obsolete or useless electronic equipment waste stream, whether in whole or in part. It includes both the export and sale of recycled or refurbished electronic equipment or of products manufactured with recovered materials. With regard to export, this shall be carried out in compliance with the laws and regulations in effect, including the provisions of this chapter regarding the ban on the disposal of cathode-ray tubes, electronic and cellular telephone equipment by transporting them to a jurisdiction with less stringent environmental, health, and occupational safety laws and regulations for their final disposal and destruction.
(f) Distributor.— Means any natural or juridical person that sells or supplies electronic equipment to retailers.
(g) Communications carrier.— Means any entity that operates a communications infrastructure or resells access thereto or operates or resells communications service or location and with which the consumer enters into a contract to subscribe to or purchase pre-paid services in order to activate and use electronic equipment. This term also includes telephone or cable television companies, as defined in the Puerto Rico Telecommunications Act of 1996, information service providers, and cellular communication carriers.
(h) Cellular telephone equipment.— Means a wireless communication mobile device designed to send or receive telephone transmissions and/or data through a radio communication service by means of a subscription to a cellular communication carrier. It includes:
(1) Cellular telephones, including their removable component parts necessary for their operation, such as batteries and SIM chips.
(2) Devices such as hand-held electronic organizers or computers designed for or with built-in cellular telephone capacity, such as Blackberry or iPhone brands, among others, and which are activated through a service subscription or pre-payment to a cellular telephone carrier.
(3) Beepers operating within a cellular network.
(4) Electronic accessories included in the communication device by the manufacturer or offered by the cellular telephone carrier as part of the sale or lease of such equipment, such as chargers, wireless headsets, additional batteries or synchronizers.
(5) Any personal communication device the activation of which requires pre-payment or subscription to a cellular telephone carrier, and that is developed and introduced into the market by such carriers as of the effective date of this act.
For the purpose of this chapter, the definition of this subsection shall not be applied to built-in wireless communication or tracking devices installed in any vehicle or vessel (OnStar, LoJack, etc.), or to cards or peripheral add-ons used to provide desktops and laptops with access to wireless non-telephone networks (WiFi, 3G, etc.)
(i) Electronic equipment.— For the purpose of this chapter, any electricity-powered equipment or device, controlled by electronic components, such as transistors and elements associated to this technological family, including integrated circuits, resistors, and capacitors as described below, be it understood that when reference is made to “equipment” it shall mean any of the following:
(1) Cellular telephone equipment as defined in subsection (h) of this section.
(2) Television sets and video monitors, without it being limited to those that use cathode-ray tubes, as well as liquid crystal display (LCD) or plasma flat screens, projection systems or light emitting diode (LED).
(3) Desktop or laptop computers and their peripheral equipment such as keyboards, mice, speakers, docking stations, cables, and similar artifacts.
(4) Modems, expansion cards, disc units, routers, etc., whether wireless or wired.
(5) Information systems such as servers, including their data storage components, terminals, switches, racks, battery backups, cables, and related artifacts.
(6) Surveillance camera systems, including their components: monitors, video recording systems, cables, and related artifacts.
(7) Analogue or digital telephone switchboard, including any terminals, cables, and related artifacts.
(8) Telecommunications systems, including their antennas, servers, cables, and related artifacts.
(9) Copiers, printers, fax machines and ink cartridges or toners thereof, and scanners.
(10) Electronic organizers, portable video games, and tracking or satellite navigation GPS units.
(11) Radio, television, or wireless information transmitters of any band or frequency.
(12) Amplifiers, equalizers, and digital audio and/or video editing or control consoles.
(13) Digital or satellite television boxes or receivers and tuners.
(14) Tape or optical-digital players or recorders.
(15) Domestic or commercial video game consoles.
(16) Any of the above equipment that may be installed on vehicles or vessels as an optional accessory, but that it is not.
(17) Electric power supply inverters and rectifiers.
(18) Clocks, chronometers, and any other portable digital instrument used to measure the distance traveled, monitor the heart rate of a runner, and other variables when performing physical exercise.
Furthermore, even if they lack built-in integrated circuits or transistors, this definition shall include all rechargeable batteries made of mercury, nickel, or lithium or compounds thereof used in the listed equipments.
Provided, That, in order to construe this subsection, there shall be considered any given equipment as a whole, together with its main purpose and function, as designed and used, and the combination of components thereof. As defined in this subsection, this chapter shall not apply to motor vehicles, ships, aircraft, agricultural or manufacture machinery, kitchen, laundry, and refrigeration appliances, whether commercial or domestic due to the fact that they contain one or more components which by themselves may be included within this list insofar as such components are built-in and permanently installed. Moreover, it shall neither apply to antennas that do not have processing circuits or communication or electric power supply cables or wires.
(j) Used electronic equipment.— Means equipment previously used and that is available for reuse, recycling, or proper disposal by the consumer.
(k) Orphan electronic equipment.— Means any electronic equipment, as defined in this chapter, the manufacturer, importer, or distributor of which has ceased operations or is no longer in business in Puerto Rico and has no successor business that assumes the responsibility to provide service for such equipments [sic]. Furthermore, electronic equipment acquired over the Internet or through foreign catalogues that are introduced into the territory through the Postal Service or private merchandise carrier services, the supplier of which has no branches in Puerto Rico.
(l) Hard-to-handle electronic waste.— Means equipment which processing or recycling is rendered difficult whether due to the lack of market or because its content materials have hazardous material characteristics such as televisions, whether or not these equipment have cathode-ray tubes (CDT), batteries, artifacts containing mercury, polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) or any other polluting materials with hazardous material characteristics.
(m) Exporter.— Means a natural or juridical person engaged in the business of shipping outside of Puerto Rico disposed, discarded, obsolete or useless electronic equipment, whether in whole or in parts or the materials resulting from the processing or recycling thereof.
(n) Manufacturer.— Means the equipment manufacturing business or its authorized representative in Puerto Rico. It includes business engaged in the refurbishing or restoration of equipment the main parts of which have been previously manufactured and used. It also includes, in the case of equipment to which this chapter applies, the removal of integral components to be installed in another unit of the same kind of equipment.
(o) Importer.— Means any business or individual that introduces electronic equipment to Puerto Rico to be sold or used; including such distributors and retailers that purchase an inventory of these equipments directly from a manufacturer or supplier outside of Puerto Rico.
(p) Board.— Means the Puerto Rico Environmental Quality Board.
(q) Processor.— Means a natural or juridical person engaged in electronic equipment processing.
(r) Processing.— Means disassembling of disposed, discarded, obsolete or useless electronic equipment with the purpose of exporting its parts or materials or delivering them to Recyclers. It includes shredding of plastic from electronic equipment.
(s) Recycler.— Means a natural or juridical person that recycles disposed, discarded, obsolete, or useless electronic equipment as defined in this Act.
(t) Recycling.— Means a process whereby obsolete, disposed or discarded, or useless or out of service electronic equipment is separated, segregated, processed, refurbished, and reused in their original form, as raw material, or by-product. It includes, in the case of equipment to which this chapter applies, the disassembling and removal of basic parts or components to be incorporated to any other kind of equipment, as well as the recovery of material from which they were manufactured for their subsequent use.
(u) Collector.— Means Collection Center Operator. Any person required under this Act or authorized by the Board to receive electronic equipment directly disposed of by consumers. An electronic equipment retailer is usually a collector.
(v) Reuse.— Means the use of goods, more than once, for the purpose for which they were originally created or for any other purpose that do not require processing of such goods beyond maintenance. It includes, in the case of equipment to which this chapter applies, the removal of integral components to be installed in another unit of the same type of equipment.
(w) Cathode-ray tubes.— Means a phosphor-coated vacuum crystal tube used to general visual images in televisions, monitors, oscilloscopes, similar scientific equipment.
(x) Sale.— Means the transfer of title or right of ownership or to use, through a sales contract, through sales centers, catalogues, or electronic media.
History —Jan. 17, 2012, No. 18, § 2.01, eff. 120 days after Jan. 17, 2012.