Members of the Recycled Materials Association’s electronics division were on-site for the group’s recent Capitol Hill visit, where they told lawmakers how tariffs will affect electronics recovery and emphasized the importance of priority legislation.
More than 150 ReMA members across several recycling industry sectors visited the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 26. The contingent included the association’s electronics recycling and IT asset disposition membership.
E-Scrap News spoke with Adam Shine, president of Sunnking Sustainable Solutions and a longtime member of ReMA’s electronics division, about which issues industry members highlighted during the visit. It marked Shine’s fourth fly-in with ReMA.
The annual event is typically held during the summer, but it was scheduled for earlier this time because of the change in administration. Numerous industry groups did the same thing, and “Washington was mobbed,” Shine said.
It was also the group’s first fly-in since rebranding from the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries to the Recycled Materials Association, so it served as an opportunity to re-introduce the association to lawmakers and staff. Shine believes the rebrand, which was marked by a shift from focusing on the scrap material input to the recycled materials output, was helpful for communicating the group’s message.
“I think the legislators can really get behind ‘recycled materials’ more so than they could ‘scrap,'” he said.
Fly-in participants occasionally met with the lawmakers themselves, including Sunnking’s district representative, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-New York). Other times they met with lawmakers’ staff rather than the lawmakers themselves, but Shine said those meetings were meaningful as well. They were typically meeting with a lawmaker’s chief of staff, who is an integral part of the office.
Shine noted that, although he’s not a policy or lobbying expert, having e-scrap business operators in the room can help to introduce and illustrate a problem, paving the way for ReMA’s policy experts to work with lawmakers on the specific policy requests.
Tariffs and Superfund exemption are key concerns
The top priority for the group was communicating the effects of tariffs on the recycling industry.
“It’s critical to be able to trade with Canada and Mexico,” Shine said. That’s particularly true in the e-scrap world, where a major downstream outlet for the U.S. e-scrap industry is Glencore’s Horne smelter in Quebec.
Blanket tariffs on all imports from Canada were briefly enacted and then suspended this month, but tariffs on aluminum and steel imports took effect March 12, and President Donald Trump’s administration has floated the prospect of further “reciprocal tariffs” against a wide list of countries in April.
Amid the evolving tariff situation, the e-scrap industry endeavored to communicate how such measures could disrupt an interconnected market.
“If you think about the layers and costs associated with the tariffs, taking a product, moving it to Canada? Taxed. Refining it in Canada, moving it back into the U.S.? Taxed. It’s a major concern for our industry,” Shine said.
As for Sunnking, Shine says tariffs will “100%” affect his business: “We move material into Canada. We move material from Canada.”
Another top priority for the electronics division was emerging concern about liability recycling facilities could face based on the “forever chemicals” known as PFAS. These long-lasting chemicals are found in consumer, commercial and industrial products and present human toxicity and environmental contamination concerns.
The growing concern is that recycling facilities could end up financially liable for PFAS contamination under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, CERCLA, commonly known as the Superfund law.
Last year, the EPA designated PFAS as a hazardous material under CERCLA, opening the door to the Superfund law’s cost recovery and enforcement mechanisms for contaminated sites.
Recycling facilities frequently handle products that contain PFAS, and ReMA’s goal is to ensure those facilities would not be financially liable for PFAS contamination, since they are simply receiving and processing the products at end of life rather than producing them.
That was a priority even before the EPA designation and was the subject of a stalled 2023 legislative proposal.
