R2v3 Certified Facilities in New Jersey

The Electronic Waste Management Act — P.L. 2007 c. 347, amended by P.L. 2008 c. 130, P.L. 2012 c. 79 and P.L. 2016 c. 87 — is implemented through N.J.A.C. 7:26J, readopted effective 3 March 2025. All three amendments matter, and the 2007 chapter read alone is misleading: it gives a disposal ban date the 2008 chapter moved, and omits four subsections the 2012 chapter added. But the Act is only half of what governs a business here, and it is the smaller half.

Sources: Electronic Waste Management Act, P.L. 2007 c. 347 · P.L. 2008 c. 130, amending the Electronic Waste Management Act · P.L. 2012 c. 79, amending the Electronic Waste Management Act · P.L. 2016 c. 87, amending the Electronic Waste Management Act

The ban is categorical, and whether it reaches you turns on a definition three steps down

N.J.A.C. 7:26J-5.1(h) states it without qualification: no person shall knowingly dispose of a used covered electronic device, any of its components or subassemblies as solid waste. The statute behind it sets the date at N.J.S.A. 13:1E-99.109(a) — on and after January 1, 2011. What narrows it is the definition. A covered electronic device is a desktop or personal computer, computer monitor, portable computer, desktop printer, desktop fax machine, or television sold to a consumer. And a consumer, as amended in 2016, means a person, State entity, school district, or local government unit who purchases a covered electronic device in a transaction that is a retail sale — followed immediately by: consumer shall not include any business concern purchasing covered electronic devices.

Read only that far and the chain appears to close: a laptop your company bought was not sold to a consumer, so it is not a covered electronic device, so 5.1(h) does not prohibit its disposal. But the definition of business concern carries its own carve-out, and it reopens the chain. Business concern means any corporation, association, firm, partnership, sole proprietorship, trust or other form of commercial organization — and then: business concern shall not include a small business enterprise.

Sources: N.J.A.C. 7:26J-5.1, prohibited acts · P.L. 2008 c. 130, amending the Electronic Waste Management Act · P.L. 2016 c. 87, amending the Electronic Waste Management Act

Which means a small New Jersey business is a consumer, and is covered

A small business enterprise is defined by three conditions, all of which must hold: any business which has its principal place of business in this State, is independently owned and operated, and employs the equivalent of fewer than 50 full-time employees. A business meeting all three is not a business concern. Not being a business concern, it is not excluded from the definition of consumer. Its retail purchases are therefore covered electronic devices, and 5.1(h) prohibits disposing of them.

An earlier version of this page said the disposal ban does not reach equipment a company bought, without qualification. That is wrong for this class of buyer, and the class is large. Note also that the threshold is stated as the equivalent of fewer than 50 full-time employees — 49, not 50, and measured as full-time equivalents rather than headcount. A firm sitting near the line, or carrying part-time staff, should compute it rather than assume it.

Sources: P.L. 2016 c. 87, amending the Electronic Waste Management Act

Four things are carved out of the device definition regardless of who bought them

A covered electronic device shall not include: an electronic device that is part of a motor vehicle or a component part assembled by or for a vehicle manufacturer or franchised dealer; an electronic device that is functionally or physically part of a larger piece of equipment designed and intended for use in an industrial, commercial, or medical setting, including diagnostic, monitoring, or control equipment; an electronic device contained within a clothes washer, clothes dryer, refrigerator, refrigerator and freezer, microwave oven, conventional oven or range, dishwasher, room air conditioner, dehumidifier, or air purifier; or any handheld device used to access commercial mobile data service or commercial mobile radio service as those services are defined pursuant to 47 C.F.R. 20.3.

The last of those is the one a buyer is most likely to trip over. Phones and cellular tablets are outside the disposal ban entirely — not because of who bought them, but because the definition excludes them. That says nothing about the universal waste chapter, which reaches them by a different route, and nothing about the data on them.

Sources: P.L. 2016 c. 87, amending the Electronic Waste Management Act

And the ban has a second half, aimed at the receiving facility

Section 16 was restructured in 2012 into five subsections, and only the first is the one usually quoted. Subsection (b) binds the other end of the transaction: no solid waste facility in this State shall knowingly accept for disposal any truckload or roll-off container of solid waste containing a visible quantity of covered electronic devices, or any of the components or subassemblies thereof, as solid waste at any time. Subsection (c) gives the owner or operator the matching right to refuse such a load. Subsection (d) is a safe harbour with three conjunctive conditions — the operator is not in violation if it has made a good faith effort to comply, posted a sign in a conspicuous location at the facility stating that covered electronic devices shall not be accepted, and notified in writing all persons authorized to deposit solid waste there. Subsection (e) takes solid waste facility from section 3 of P.L. 1970 c. 39.

Two consequences for a buyer. The test at the gate is visible quantity in a load, not whether the devices were yours or whether you were a consumer — so a commingled skip can be turned away on sight. And the facility has an incentive to refuse rather than inspect, because refusing costs it nothing and accepting is the violation. An earlier version of this page stated that no such receiving-facility prohibition existed. It does, and it has since 2012.

Sources: P.L. 2012 c. 79, amending the Electronic Waste Management Act

Whether the ban stops at a larger business is genuinely unsettled, and we are not resolving it

Everything above assumed that sold to a consumer scopes the ban transaction by transaction — that a unit your company bought at retail is not a covered electronic device because the buyer was a business concern. That reading is available, and NJDEP's own guidance encourages it by presenting the ban under a heading addressed to consumers. But it does not survive close reading, for three reasons. The definitions are mutually circular: a consumer is one who purchases a covered electronic device in a retail sale, and a covered electronic device is one sold to a consumer. Neither can be resolved first, so a strictly transactional reading never terminates. The ban itself binds no person, not any consumer, and its second subsection binds a facility on a visible quantity in a load — a test applied at a gate, which cannot turn on who originally bought the unit. And the Act elsewhere contemplates the category outright: every manufacturer collection plan must describe the processes and methods that will be used to recycle recovered covered electronic devices which originated from transactions between business concerns. If a device bought by a business could never be a covered electronic device, that requirement would describe an empty set.

The competing reading turns on one emphatic sentence — consumer does not include any business concern that purchases a covered electronic device — and that sentence does real work regardless, because it governs who may use the free manufacturer-funded collection sites and which recyclers must register. It need not also scope the ban. We are flagging this rather than resolving it, and we are not telling a larger New Jersey business that the landfill ban does not apply to it. An earlier version of this page did say that. On the evidence above it should not have, and a buyer planning a refresh should treat the retail-class equipment in it as covered.

Sources: N.J.A.C. 7:26J-1.3, definitions · P.L. 2016 c. 87, amending the Electronic Waste Management Act · P.L. 2012 c. 79, amending the Electronic Waste Management Act

Either way the universal waste chapter reaches it

N.J.A.C. 7:26A-1.3 defines the term that actually reaches you, and it is deliberately wider: consumer electronics means any appliance used in the home or business that includes circuitry. The definition goes on to name computers, printers, copiers, telefacsimiles, VCRs, stereos, televisions and telecommunication devices as examples, and to note that individually broken down they include batteries, mercury switches, capacitors containing PCBs, cadmium plated parts and lead or cadmium containing plastics. New Jersey has listed consumer electronics as a State universal waste additional to the federal programme — but only where the item is a hazardous waste. A consumer electronic that does not exhibit a characteristic under 40 C.F.R. Part 261 subpart C is outside the universal waste rules, and a consumer electronic that has not yet been discarded or designated for disposal is outside them too.

This is why the question above can be left open without leaving a buyer stranded. Whatever the disposal ban turns out to reach, the rule next to it captures the same equipment by the words or business, and asks nothing about who bought it. The universal waste chapter is where an enterprise refresh in New Jersey actually lands, and it lands there either way.

Sources: N.J.A.C. 7:26A-1.3, recycling rules definitions · N.J.A.C. 7:26A-7.2, State-listed universal wastes

A label the Department asks for and the rule does not

NJDEP's consumer electronics guidance sets out the large quantity handler standards and, at item 6, states that universal waste consumer electronics devices shall be clearly labeled or marked clearly, individually or by closed container, with the following phrase: "Universal Waste – Consumer Electronics". That phrase does not appear in N.J.A.C. 7:26A-7.5, which sets the codified large quantity handler standards for consumer electronics and requires only containment of leaking items and abstention from demanufacturing. Nor is there a federal analogue, because consumer electronics is a New Jersey addition to the universal waste programme rather than a federal universal waste with a prescribed 40 C.F.R. 273.34 label.

An earlier version of this page recorded the label phrase as unsupported and declined to state it. That was wrong: it is published verbatim by the Department, on the page this directory cites. It is the third place in New Jersey where the agency's stated expectation runs ahead of the codified rule, and a buyer auditing a vendor's storage area should expect the Department to look for the phrase whatever the rule text says.

Sources: NJDEP, management of consumer electronics as universal waste · N.J.A.C. 7:26A-7.5, management standards for large quantity handlers

The handler thresholds, and the inversion inside them

Universal waste handler status turns on accumulation. A large quantity handler is one accumulating 5,000 kilograms or more of universal waste, calculated collectively, at any time — and must have sent written notification and received an EPA identification number before meeting or exceeding that limit. The designation is then retained through the end of the calendar year in which the limit was met or exceeded, so falling back below the line does not restore the status you had. Either size of handler may accumulate for no longer than one year from the date the waste is generated or received, unless the accumulation is solely to build the quantity necessary to facilitate proper recovery, treatment or disposal — an exception the handler bears the burden of proving. A large quantity handler must also report to the Department by letter each 1 March, stating the types and amounts of universal waste received, stored and shipped in the preceding year, and the municipality of origin of anything shipped out of State for recycling.

Then the rules invert. A small quantity handler may disassemble — demanufacture — consumer electronics into marketable components, excluding any processing or treatment. A large quantity handler may not conduct disassembling or processing activities on consumer electronics at all, and must apply for a Class D Approval under N.J.A.C. 7:26A-3 before doing so. Crossing 5,000 kilograms does not merely add paperwork in New Jersey. It removes a permission you had below the line, and the calendar-year rule means it stays removed for the rest of the year.

Sources: 40 C.F.R. Part 273, standards for universal waste management · N.J.A.C. 7:26A-7.4, management standards for small quantity handlers · N.J.A.C. 7:26A-7.5, management standards for large quantity handlers

Penalties, and a statute and a rule that do not line up

We are flagging this rather than resolving it. N.J.A.C. 7:26J-9.1(b) sets a baseline civil administrative penalty of not less than $500 nor more than $1,000, and 9.1(d) makes each day an additional, separate and distinct violation. Subsection (c) then raises the ceiling to not more than $25,000 for each violation of an enumerated set of rules — and the disposal ban at 5.1(h) is in that set. The statute the rule was adopted under does not authorise that. N.J.S.A. 13:1E-99.110(g)(1) sets the same $500 to $1,000 daily baseline, and (g)(2) lists by number the provisions carrying the enhanced $25,000 per day administrative penalty: sections 7, 8, 10 and 11, subsections a. and b. of section 6, subsection b. of section 9, and subsection a. of section 15. Section 16 — the disposal ban — is not among them.

Both are cited and neither is resolved here. What is not in doubt is the separate judicial route: under 99.110(h) a person who violates any provision of the Act, or any rule or regulation adopted pursuant thereto, faces a civil penalty of up to $25,000 per day — and the court may additionally assess the amount of economic benefit accruing to the violator from the violation. That reaches the ban whatever the administrative tier turns out to be, and it removes the saving from having saved money.

Sources: N.J.A.C. 7:26J-9.1, civil administrative penalties · P.L. 2016 c. 87, amending the Electronic Waste Management Act

And the order arrives before the argument does

The mechanics at N.J.S.A. 13:1E-99.110(e) matter more than they look. The commissioner may issue an administrative enforcement order specifying the provision violated, citing the action that constituted the violation, requiring compliance, and giving notice of the right to a hearing. The ordered party has 35 days from receipt to deliver a written request for a hearing. But the order shall be effective upon receipt and any person to whom such order is directed shall comply with the order immediately — and a request for hearing shall not automatically stay the effect of the order.

So the sequence is compliance first, argument second. Disputing an order does not suspend it, and the 35 days is the window to ask for a hearing, not a grace period before the order bites. The 2016 amendment is what made this route available for this Act at all; before it, the Department had to go to Superior Court.

Sources: P.L. 2016 c. 87, amending the Electronic Waste Management Act

And one prohibition most states do not write down

N.J.A.C. 7:26J-5.1(g) bars sending a collected covered electronic device to a jail, prison, or other institution for the detention of persons charged with or convicted of an offence, for the purpose of recycling — including manual or mechanical separation to recover components and commodities, either directly or through intermediaries. The rule adds that nothing in the chapter shall be construed to allow for the recycling of covered electronic devices by prisoners.

Sources: N.J.A.C. 7:26J-5.1, prohibited acts

On the data, and the notification order is unusual

The Identity Theft Prevention Act carries both duties, and the operative text of the breach provisions is now P.L. 2019 c. 95 rather than the 2005 original. N.J.S.A. 56:8-162 states the destruction duty plainly: a business or public entity shall destroy, or arrange for the destruction of, a customer's records within its custody or control containing personal information, which is no longer to be retained, by shredding, erasing, or otherwise modifying the personal information in those records to make it unreadable, undecipherable or nonreconstructable through generally available means. The 2019 amendment widened personal information to include a user name, email address, or other account holder identifying information in combination with a password or security question and answer — so a retired machine holding cached credentials is in scope even if it holds no financial data at all.

The order of notification is where New Jersey differs from most states. Under 56:8-163(c)(1), a business required to disclose a breach shall, in advance of the disclosure to the customer, report the breach and any information pertaining to it to the Division of State Police in the Department of Law and Public Safety. Law enforcement comes before the affected individual, not after — and the notification shall then be delayed if a law enforcement agency determines it would impede a criminal or civil investigation and requests the delay.

Sources: Identity Theft Prevention Act, P.L. 2005 c. 226 · P.L. 2019 c. 95, amending N.J.S.A. 56:8-161 and 56:8-163

One definition does more work than any procedure here. A breach of security is unauthorized access to electronic files, media or data containing personal information that compromises the security, confidentiality or integrity of personal information — but only when access to the personal information has not been secured by encryption or by any other method or technology that renders the personal information unreadable or unusable.

For equipment leaving a building that is the whole argument. A drive encrypted at rest, whose key was never released with it, is not obviously accessible personal information — and if it is not, the loss of that drive is not a breach of security under the definition. Full-disk encryption applied before the asset ever enters the disposal chain is therefore worth more than any certificate issued at the end of it, because it changes what the incident is rather than documenting it after the fact.

Sources: P.L. 2019 c. 95, amending N.J.S.A. 56:8-161 and 56:8-163

One further provision is worth building a file around, because it is the one that turns a disposal decision into a record. Section 56:8-163(a) excuses customer notification entirely if the business or public entity establishes that misuse of the information is not reasonably possible — and then adds: any determination shall be documented in writing and retained for five years.

Where a decommissioned drive is the asset in question, the written determination is what carries that exemption, and it has to survive five years. A sanitisation record tied to the specific serial numbers, with the method and the verification, is what supports the finding that misuse was not reasonably possible. A certificate that names no assets does not.

Sources: Identity Theft Prevention Act, P.L. 2005 c. 226

NJDEP, through its Division of Sustainable Waste Management. The Department runs both regimes — the manufacturer-funded collection programme under chapter 26J, and the universal waste and Class D recycling centre approvals under chapter 26A — and an enterprise buyer is served by the second rather than the first.

Sources: NJDEP, management of consumer electronics as universal waste

A $15,000 registration that is conditioned on certification

New Jersey requires an authorised recycler to register with the Department on or before 1 January each year and pay a registration fee of $15,000, and the registration package must include a copy of its R2 certification, eSteward certification, or equivalent. That is a rare thing: a state that makes third-party certification an express condition of a licence rather than a recommendation.

Two things narrow it. The rule binds each authorised recycler that accepts covered electronic devices from consumers — and a business concern is not a consumer, so a recycler serving only larger enterprise clients is outside the registration by its own terms. And the same sentence exempts a recycler that has been granted a general approval as a Class D recycling centre and is in compliance with it, including the payment of all required fees — so a Class D facility will not appear on the registered list either. Absence from that list is not a finding about a vendor. We are flagging this rather than resolving it: the registration is the strongest state-level certification requirement in any of these states, and it is not written to cover the channel an enterprise buyer uses.

Sources: N.J.A.C. 7:26J-2.2, registration requirements for authorized recyclers · P.L. 2016 c. 87, amending the Electronic Waste Management Act

This directory does not cross-reference NJDEP's registered authorised recyclers. A vendor's presence here is a statement about its R2v3 certification and nothing about whether it holds a New Jersey registration or a Class D Approval.

Sources: N.J.A.C. 7:26J-2.2, registration requirements for authorized recyclers