Last week the New York City Council overrode a prior veto of Mayor Bloomberg and enacted an ordinance (New York, N.Y., Local Law No. 21 (2008)) that will require certain manufacturers, importers and sellers to implement collection and recycling plans which will result in the recycling of at least 25% of each entity's annual sales of specific electronic products by July 1, 2012. The collection and recycling plans subsequently must meet more stringent 45% and 65% annual recycling performance standards by July 1 of 2015 and 2018, respectively. Although these performance measures will not begin to be in effect until 2012, a related ordinance passed in April of this year (New York, N.Y., Local Law No. 13 (2008)) requires the collection and recycling plans to be submitted for governmental approval by September 1 of this year and to be implemented as soon as July 1, 2009.

The electronic products regulated by the new ordinances include monitors with display screens greater than four inches in diagonal diameter, desktop computers, laptop and portable computers, cathode ray tubes, cathode ray tube devices, keyboards, electronic mice and similar pointing devices, televisions, printers, and portable digital music players. Generally, any person or entity that assembles, manufactures, sells under its brand name, or imports one or more of these electronic products for sale in New York City must meet the requirements of the new ordinances or be subject to a civil penalty of up to $2,000 per violation per day. Certain non-compliance can, however, result in more significant penalties ranging as high as $50,000 for each percentage point below the performance standards that will become effective in 2012, 2015 and 2018.

These new ordinances follow an emerging domestic and international trend of restrictions aimed at reducing the volume of "e-waste," or discarded electronic products, being sent to landfills with ordinary wastes. Beginning with California in 2003, 11 states have now enacted e-waste statutes applicable to various types of electronic products. Legislation has been pending this year in another nine states. Several foreign jurisdictions, including the European Union, also require the recycling of certain e-waste.

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