R2v3 Certified Facilities in Texas

Texas has an electronics recycling law that almost certainly does not apply to you. The Texas Computer Equipment Recycling Program, House Bill 2714 of 2007, requires manufacturers selling into Texas to offer free consumer recycling, and Texas Recycles TVs does the same for televisions under 30 TAC Chapter 328, Subchapter J. Both are manufacturer takeback programs written for households.

Sources: TCEQ, Computer Equipment Recycling Program · TCEQ, Texas Recycles TVs

Your servers are not covered equipment

Manufacturers are required to accept only equipment purchased primarily for personal or home-business use. The rules define computer equipment as a monitor, a desktop or laptop, and an accompanying keyboard and mouse from the same manufacturer. TCEQ says it directly: commercial, government, and nonprofit customers should check with manufacturers, local retailers, and local charities.

A company retiring racks of servers, SAN arrays and switches gets no takeback, no covered-device status, and no program guidance — while carrying the full generator burden anyway.

Sources: TCEQ, Computer Equipment Recycling Program · TCEQ, Electronics Recycling

And there is no landfill ban

Texas has none, for businesses or for households. TCEQ's pages say electronics should be kept out of landfills, which is aspirational language rather than a prohibition. The constraint is indirect: if your equipment fails a hazardous waste determination it cannot go to a municipal landfill — because it is then hazardous waste, not because it is electronics.

Sources: TCEQ, Electronics Recycling · TCEQ, e-recycling regulations and guidance

The threshold nobody watches

A Solid Waste Registration number is required if a site generates more than 220 lb/month of hazardous waste, or 2.2 lb/month of acutely hazardous waste — or 220 lb/month of industrial Class 1 nonhazardous waste. Roughly seven or eight decommissioned servers clear 220 pounds. Exceeding that nonhazardous threshold independently triggers an SWR number via TCEQ Form 00002 plus Core Data Form 10400, a Notice of Registration, and an Annual Waste Summary on Form 00436 — due 1 March through STEERS, or 25 January on paper.

Most businesses assume that passing the hazardous determination means they are clear. It does not. A single rack refresh can put a company into a registration regime it did not know existed.

Sources: TCEQ, Industrial and Hazardous Waste Compliance Resources · TCEQ, e-recycling regulations and guidance

What else falls on you

The waste determination, always: prior to disposing of electronics a business must conduct a waste determination demonstrating the electronics were not hazardous, and retain documentation of how that determination was made. Manifests are required for hazardous waste and for Class 1 nonhazardous shipments, while bills of lading suffice for Class 2 and Class 3. Where the waste is hazardous, the business must dispose at an authorized disposal facility and retain documentation proving it did.

Sources: TCEQ, e-recycling regulations and guidance · TCEQ, Industrial and Hazardous Waste Compliance Resources

A contradiction in TCEQ's own guidance

We are flagging this rather than resolving it, because TCEQ has not. TCEQ's e-recycling guidance says CRTs may also be managed as universal waste. TCEQ's own compliance-resources page lists the Texas universal waste categories — batteries, certain pesticides, mercury-containing equipment, mercury lamps, paint, aerosol cans — and does not list electronics or CRTs.

This matters materially. Universal wastes do not count toward generator status, do not appear on a Notice of Registration, and are not included on an Annual Waste Summary. Whether your CRTs count toward the 220-pound threshold depends on which TCEQ page is right. Confirm the treatment of a specific device stream with TCEQ before relying on universal waste status.

Sources: TCEQ, e-recycling regulations and guidance · TCEQ, Industrial and Hazardous Waste Compliance Resources

Penalties

The e-waste statute's penalties do not reach you — they apply to manufacturers, up to $25,000 per violation, and to retailers, up to $2,000. A business that mismanages retired equipment is exposed under general TCEQ authority instead. Texas Water Code §7.102 sets a civil penalty of not less than $50 nor greater than $25,000 for each day of each violation, and each day of a continuing violation is a separate violation.

Sources: Texas Water Code §7.102 · TCEQ, Computer Equipment Recycling Program

On the data

Texas puts both duties in one chapter, Business and Commerce Code Chapter 521. §521.052(b) is the destruction duty: a business shall destroy or arrange for the destruction of customer records containing sensitive personal information within its custody or control that are not to be retained — by shredding, erasing, or otherwise modifying the information to make it unreadable. Financial institutions as defined at 15 U.S.C. §6809 are exempt. §521.053 requires breach notice without unreasonable delay and no later than the 60th day after determining a breach occurred, the Attorney General within 30 days where at least 250 Texas residents are involved, and nationwide consumer reporting agencies where more than 10,000 are affected.

§521.151 makes a violation of Chapter 521 — including the destruction duty, not only the notification duty — carry $2,000 to $50,000 per violation, plus up to $100 per individual per day for notification failures, capped at $250,000 per breach. Texas is one of the states where failing to destroy is penalised in its own right, without any breach having occurred.

Sources: Bus. & Com. Code §521.052 · Bus. & Com. Code §521.053 · Bus. & Com. Code §521.151

One more thing, and it is easy to get wrong

Processed scrap metal and shredded circuit boards sent for recycling are excluded from solid waste regulation under 40 CFR 261.4(a)(13) and (14) — but only if stored in containers and free of mercury switches, mercury relays, nickel-cadmium batteries and lithium batteries.

A single lithium coin cell left on a RAID controller defeats the exclusion for that entire container.

Sources: TCEQ, e-recycling regulations and guidance

TCEQ, and it wears two hats. It runs the manufacturer takeback programs, which do not cover your equipment, and it administers the industrial and hazardous waste rules that actually govern business disposal.

Sources: TCEQ, Electronics Recycling

Texas maintains no approved-recycler registry for enterprise ITAD. The only list TCEQ publishes is a registered computer-equipment manufacturer roster, not a vetted recycler directory. Recyclers under the takeback programs must follow Sound Environmental Management at 30 TAC §328.149, but that imposes no certification requirement, and the compliance risk of contracting with a noncompliant recycler sits with the manufacturer rather than with you.

Which means third-party certification is the only verification available in Texas. There is no state list to check.

Sources: TCEQ, registered computer equipment manufacturers · TCEQ, e-recycling regulations and guidance