Members of the Interagency Task Force on Electronics Stewardship, the US Postal Service, and electronics industry stakeholders will hold a meeting today to discuss progress on the National Strategy on Electronics Stewardship as well as participation in the US Postal Service’s BlueEarth Federal Recycling Program.
The Interagency Task Force on Electronics Stewardship was formed in 2010 and is co-chaired by the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the EPA and the GSA.
In the summer of 2011 the group released its National Strategy for Electronics Stewardship, which described a number of activities the federal government would take to ensure the proper handling of its used electronics and spur the growth of the US electronics recycling industry.
Since its release, involved federal agencies have achieved many of the goals in the 2011 National Strategy. These goals are outlined in the document Moving Sustainable Electronics Forward: An Update to the National Strategy for Electronics Stewardship.
The US Postal Service BlueEarth Federal Recycling Program is available to participating federal agencies and their employees to send used electronics through the mail to a certified electronics recycler at no cost to the agencies.
In 2013, approximately 973,000 federal employees and contractors were eligible to participate in the BlueEarth program. With the recent participation of additional agencies, the program may now reach a potential of more than 1.7 million eligible federal employees and contractors.
In addition to recycling for federal employees, last year the US Postal Service released a consumer video, as a tie-in with Earth Day, demonstrating how consumers could recycle cell phones, MP3 players and tablets through the MaxBack electronics buyback program.
