R2v3 Certified Facilities in Pennsylvania

The Covered Device Recycling Act — Act 108 of 2010 — was enacted 23 November 2010.

Sources: Covered Device Recycling Act, Act 108 of 2010

The ban binds businesses on identical terms to households

CDRA § 506(a) provides that no person may place in municipal solid waste a covered device or any of its components. DEP dates the ban to 24 January 2013 and applies it to businesses expressly: beginning January 24, 2013, no business may dispose of a covered device or any of its components with its municipal waste, and from that point forward all covered devices and their components must be properly recycled.

Sources: Covered Device Recycling Act, Act 108 of 2010 · PA DEP, Managing Electronic Waste Generated by a Business

But the ban covers five device types and no more

The covered devices are desktop and notebook computers, computer monitors, computer peripherals, and televisions — all marketed and intended for use by consumers. DEP states it flatly: the disposal ban does not apply to other electronic devices. Section 102 excludes equipment functionally or physically a part of or connected to or integrated within equipment or a system designed and intended for use in an industrial, governmental, commercial, research and development or medical setting, plus equipment designed and intended primarily for use by professional users, telephones of any type, PDAs and GPS units.

Rack servers, SAN arrays and network gear sit outside the CDRA entirely.

Sources: Covered Device Recycling Act, Act 108 of 2010 · PA DEP, CDRA frequently asked questions

The 50-employee cliff

This is Pennsylvania's signature trap. The CDRA defines a consumer as an occupant of a dwelling who has used a covered device primarily for personal or small business use — where a small business employs 50 or fewer people. DEP is blunt about the consequence: businesses employing 50+ employees, or public entities such as schools, local government offices and religious organizations, are not covered under the CDRA and must make their own recycling arrangements, and waste generated by these entities is no different than any other type of waste and must be handled accordingly. The funding asymmetry is stated as plainly: manufacturers are required to make collection and recycling programs available to home-based businesses, but do not have to make them available to other businesses, and the Act does not prohibit any fees for devices from businesses that are not home-based.

A 60-person company is fully bound by the § 506 disposal ban and fully excluded from the free programme that makes compliance cheap.

Sources: Covered Device Recycling Act, Act 108 of 2010 · PA DEP, CDRA frequently asked questions · PA DEP, Managing Electronic Waste Generated by a Business

Penalties, and the gap between them is 25x

CDRA § 507(b)(2) sets up to $1,000 for a first violation and up to $2,000 for each subsequent one. The larger figures in the Act — $10,000 and $25,000 — are reserved for manufacturers that fail to label or register. The real exposure is the Solid Waste Management Act. SWMA § 605 caps civil penalties at $25,000 per offence, with each day a separate offence. Section 606(b) makes a violation a third-degree misdemeanour — $1,000 to $25,000 per day or up to a year's imprisonment — escalating under § 606(c) to a second-degree misdemeanour and $2,500 to $50,000 on a repeat within two years. Where hazardous waste is involved, § 606(f) reaches a second-degree felony, $2,500 to $100,000 per day, and two to ten years.

Dumping monitors in a dumpster draws a $1,000 CDRA penalty. The same act characterised as unlawful solid or hazardous waste disposal under the SWMA carries $25,000 a day and criminal exposure.

Sources: Covered Device Recycling Act, Act 108 of 2010 · Solid Waste Management Act, Act 97 of 1980

Certification: the statute and the agency disagree

We are flagging this rather than resolving it. CDRA § 505(b)(1) provides that all entities shall, at a minimum, demonstrate to the satisfaction of the department that the facility to be used to recycle covered devices has achieved and maintained third-party accredited certification from the Responsible Recycling (R2) Practices Standard, the e-Stewards standard, or an internationally accredited third-party environmental management standard. DEP says the opposite for ordinary businesses: businesses are not required to choose an electronics recycler that has obtained an R2, e-Steward or other third-party certification — though they are strongly encouraged to.

The likely reconciliation is that § 505's all-entities language operates on entities participating in the manufacturer plans the Act creates, rather than on every generator choosing a vendor. But the statutory text does not say so on its face, and a business relying on DEP's guidance should keep a record of that guidance.

Sources: Covered Device Recycling Act, Act 108 of 2010 · PA DEP, Managing Electronic Waste Generated by a Business

What is genuinely mandatory is a permit, and it is jurisdictional

A recycler processing covered devices inside Pennsylvania must hold DEP general permit WMGR081, which covers processing and beneficial use of electronic equipment by sorting, disassembling or mechanical processing. An out-of-state R2-certified vendor satisfies the CDRA without it.

The one truly mandatory vendor requirement in Pennsylvania is geographic.

Sources: PA DEP, Electronics Recycling

On the data

Breach notification: yes. A separate records-disposal statute for private businesses: none. The Breach of Personal Information Notification Act — Act 94 of 2005, as amended by Act 151 of 2022 — requires notice without unreasonable delay to any Pennsylvania resident whose unencrypted, unredacted personal information was accessed and acquired by an unauthorised person. More than 500 affected individuals in Pennsylvania means concurrent notice to the Office of Attorney General. The fixed clocks in the Act — seven business days, three business days — apply only to State agencies, counties, public schools and municipalities, not to private businesses. Enforcement is exclusive to the Attorney General through the Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law: no private right of action, and no dollar figure in the Act itself.

Act 94 contains no destruction or sanitisation mandate. Its only nearby provisions are a definition of business that includes an entity that destroys records, and a policy requirement applying solely to contractors handling Commonwealth data. The duty to render a retired drive unreadable is a contractual and sectoral duty in Pennsylvania, not a statutory one.

Sources: Breach of Personal Information Notification Act, Act 94 of 2005

Pennsylvania DEP. It maintains a list of electronics recyclers permitted under WMGR081, alongside a list of certified electronics recyclers and the registered manufacturer list.

The permitted list is the one that matters for in-state processing, because the permit is mandatory where the certification is not. This directory does not cross-reference it — a vendor's presence here is a statement about its R2v3 certification and nothing about whether it holds WMGR081.

Sources: PA DEP, Electronics Recycling