R2v3 Certified Facilities in Washington

Chapter 70A.500 RCW sets up E-Cycle Washington — a manufacturer-funded collection programme for a named list of household-scale devices. It does not prohibit anyone from throwing electronics away. The prohibition a business actually runs into comes from somewhere else: Washington operates its own dangerous waste designation system under chapter 173-303 WAC, and equipment that designates as dangerous waste is regulated as dangerous waste whether or not anyone has called it electronics.

Ecology puts the consequence directly: any electronics that designate as dangerous waste that are not recycled remain subject to full regulation and Ecology enforcement under the Dangerous Waste Regulations. And electronic wastes that are intended to be disposed (rather than recycled) at any point in the process — and residues from those activities — must be properly designated and managed under the dangerous waste and solid waste requirements.

Sources: Ecology, Interim Enforcement Policy for Electronic Wastes, Pub. 02-04-017 · Ecology, electronic waste guidance · WAC 173-303-070, designation of dangerous waste

The relief is enforcement discretion, and it is not a regulation

This is the part worth reading twice. For electronic waste other than CRTs, the route out of full regulation is not an exclusion in the WAC. It is a published agency policy — the Interim Enforcement Policy, Publication 02-04-017, revised October 2007 — which states that within its enforcement discretion, Ecology will refrain from enforcing portions of the Dangerous Waste Regulations when electronic waste is managed in accordance with the requirements set forth in this policy.

Two of those requirements catch people. Accumulation is allowed for up to 180 days, and electronic wastes must be moved off-site to a facility for recycling within 180 days — an extension is available from Ecology, but only by asking. And speculative accumulation is not allowed. A room of decommissioned servers held while a disposition decision is made is precisely what both conditions are written against, and failing them does not produce a penalty under the policy. It returns the equipment to the Dangerous Waste Regulations.

Sources: Ecology, Interim Enforcement Policy for Electronic Wastes, Pub. 02-04-017

The weight trap, and a disagreement about what makes you small

Generator category in Washington turns on how much you generate. The policy warns in terms: a business that generates less than 220 pounds per month has fewer requirements to follow than a business that generates more, and since some types of electronic wastes are heavy, it does not take much to shift someone from being a small quantity generator to a fully regulated generator. A single rack refresh clears 220 pounds without difficulty. Read the policy's two-step framing against the current rule, though, which has three steps: crossing 220 pounds in a calendar month makes a firm a medium quantity generator, a category the 2007 policy does not use, and one that has its own conditional exemption at WAC 173-303-172 rather than full regulation. Full regulation arrives at 2,200 pounds.

We are flagging a conflict here rather than resolving it. Ecology's e-waste guidance page states that small quantity generators, or businesses with fewer than 50 employees, can use E-Cycle Washington to recycle e-waste for free — presenting the two as the same test. They are not. The fifty-employee line is the E-Cycle statute's definition of a small business at RCW 70A.500.020(30), and it reads less than fifty people, so a firm of exactly fifty is already outside it. Generator category is set by a quantity test with no employee element anywhere in it: WAC 173-303-040 defines a small quantity generator as one generating, in a calendar month, no more than 220 lb of dangerous waste that is not acute hazardous waste or WT01 EHW, and no more than 2.2 lb of acute hazardous waste or WT01 EHW. A forty-person firm can qualify for E-Cycle on headcount and still not be a small quantity generator on tonnage. Where the two are read together, the rule governs the regulatory category and the statute governs programme eligibility — Ecology's page merges them, and both are cited here.

Sources: Ecology, Interim Enforcement Policy for Electronic Wastes, Pub. 02-04-017 · Ecology, electronic waste guidance · RCW 70A.500.020, electronic product recycling definitions · WAC 173-303-040, dangerous waste definitions and generator categories · WAC 173-303-172, conditions for exemption for a medium quantity generator

And the covered-product list never reaches a server

RCW 70A.500.020(6) enumerates what a covered electronic product is, and the list is four items long: a cathode ray tube or flat panel computer monitor larger than four inches measured diagonally, a desktop computer, a laptop or portable computer, and a cathode ray tube or flat panel television larger than four inches. The item must also have been used in the state by any covered entity. Servers, storage arrays and networking equipment are simply not on the list.

Nor is your company likely to be a covered entity. RCW 70A.500.020(7) defines one as any household, charity, school district, small business, or small government located in Washington state — and a small business is a business employing less than fifty people. A sixty-person firm in Seattle is not a covered entity, so an E-Cycle collection site may decline its equipment, and its servers would not have been covered products even if it were. Both routes lead back to the dangerous waste system and the enforcement policy.

Sources: RCW 70A.500.020, electronic product recycling definitions · Ecology, electronic waste guidance

CRTs are the one genuine exclusion, and it is conditional

WAC 173-303-071(3)(oo)(i) conditionally excludes used cathode ray tubes — but only where they are destined for recycling, and only where handled to the letter. The rule prescribes the words on the container: either Used cathode ray tube(s) - contains leaded glass or leaded glass from televisions or computers, together with Do not mix with other glass materials. Ecology states the other half plainly: if you don't recycle your CRTs, you must manage them as dangerous waste.

The companion exclusion has the trap Texas has. WAC 173-303-071(3)(gg) excludes shredded circuit boards from regulation only where they are free of mercury switches, mercury relays and nickel-cadmium batteries and lithium batteries. One lithium coin cell left in place defeats the exclusion for what it is packed with.

Sources: WAC 173-303-071, excluded categories of waste · Ecology, electronic waste guidance

Penalties, and they reach the vendor as well as you

The operative figure is in the hazardous waste statute, not the e-waste act. RCW 70A.300.090(1) subjects every person who fails to comply with any provision of the chapter or the rules adopted thereunder to a penalty in an amount of not more than ten thousand dollars per day for every such violation, and adds that each and every such violation shall be a separate and distinct offense.

The same subsection extends past the generator: every person who, through an act of commission or omission, procures, aids, or abets in the violation shall be considered to have violated the provisions of this section. A vendor that mishandles your material is exposed under the same provision you are — and so, on the face of it, is a generator whose omission made the mishandling possible.

Sources: RCW 70A.300.090, hazardous waste penalties

A local rule that goes further, and still stops at the same four devices

Seattle Public Utilities' Director's Rule SW-404, approved 10 December 2023 and effective 1 January 2024, prohibits three categories of material from disposal in municipal solid waste, including any commercial or residential garbage can, container or receptacle, or at any transfer station. The prohibition does not apply to facilities or containers where these materials are collected for recycling. That it reaches commercial containers at all is the point — the state rules do not — so a statewide answer is not a local answer in Washington.

Read the three categories rather than the summary. Only the second is the E-Cycle covered-product list, and a chassis is not on it. But the first is cathode ray tubes, listed on their own and not qualified by the four-inch screen test or by who used them. And the third is batteries as defined under WAC 173-303-040 — a device consisting of one or more electrically connected electrochemical cells, which is a definition, not a consumer-product list. A UPS string, a RAID cache cell and a board-mounted coin cell all satisfy it. So the ban does not reach the server, and does reach several things inside it.

Sources: Seattle Public Utilities Director's Rule SW-404, ban on disposal of electronics and batteries · Seattle Public Utilities, ban on batteries and electronics in garbage · RCW 70A.500.020, electronic product recycling definitions · WAC 173-303-040, dangerous waste definitions and generator categories

On the data, and Washington lets the individual sue

Chapter 19.215 RCW carries the destruction duty: an entity must take all reasonable steps to destroy, or arrange for the destruction of, personal financial and health information and personal identification numbers issued by government entities in an individual's records within its custody or control when the entity is disposing of records that it will no longer retain. It reaches drives rather than only paper — destroying the information means shredding, erasing, or otherwise modifying it to make it unreadable or undecipherable through any reasonable means, and a record is any material regardless of the physical form.

The enforcement is what makes this chapter unusual. An injured individual may recover $200 or actual damages, whichever is greater, plus costs and reasonable attorneys' fees for a negligent failure; $600 or treble actual damages, whichever is greater, for a willful one, with treble damages capped at $10,000. An individual with reason to believe they may be injured may also apply to a court to enjoin the act or failure to act, before any loss. The Attorney General may sue in the name of the state as well.

Sources: chapter 19.215 RCW, disposal of personal information

Three limits on that duty worth knowing before a handoff

The scope is narrower than a general data protection duty: the chapter reaches personal financial and health information and personal identification numbers issued by government entities, each a defined term, rather than personal information at large. And RCW 19.215.020(3) provides that it does not apply to the disposal of records by a transfer of the records, not otherwise prohibited by law, to another entity, including a transfer to archive or otherwise preserve public records as required by law. Subsection (2) removes liability for records relinquished to the individual they concern.

A transfer to a vendor is a transfer to another entity, so read literally, handing drives to an ITAD provider is outside the destruction duty rather than a way of discharging it. We flag two reasons not to rely on that reading. The illustrative clause the legislature attached points at archival and public-records transfers rather than at commercial disposal, and a court could read the carve-out no wider than its example. And the provision is textually defective: it opens This subsection does not apply, which is self-referential and would except nothing, with the code reviser supplying section in brackets. Either way the protection a buyer actually holds sits in the contract with the vendor and in the evidence that comes back, not in chapter 19.215.

Sources: chapter 19.215 RCW, disposal of personal information

And a whole class of buyers is already out

The third limit is the one most likely to answer the question outright. RCW 19.215.030 provides that any bank, financial institution, health care organization, or other entity subject to the federal interagency guidelines for safeguarding customer information, the credit union guidelines, or the HIPAA privacy standards at 45 C.F.R. 160 and 164 — and which is in compliance with those federal guidelines — is in compliance with the requirements of this chapter.

Note the reach of other entity: the safe harbour follows the federal obligation, not the industry label. For a regulated buyer, the Washington disposal duty is its federal duty, and the state chapter adds nothing on top of it. What the safe harbour does not touch is the dangerous waste side — a different statute with a different subject, the drive as hazardous material rather than as a record.

Sources: chapter 19.215 RCW, disposal of personal information

And the prohibition three of these states now share

RCW 70A.500.250(5) states that no plan or program required under the chapter may include the use of federal or state prison labor for processing. Washington is the third state in this directory to write that down — Illinois bars it of registered recyclers and their subcontractors, New Jersey bars sending collected devices to a detention institution for recycling, and Washington bars it of the plans themselves.

In Washington the prohibition attaches to the E-Cycle plans, so it does not reach a private ITAD contract on its own terms. It is worth writing into one.

Sources: RCW 70A.500.250, processor performance standards

The Department of Ecology. Collectors, transporters and processors register with it under RCW 70A.500.240 and RCW 70A.500.250, and Ecology publishes the resulting lists. Collectors must register annually and meet the performance standards at WAC 173-900-450.

Sources: RCW 70A.500.240, processor registration · RCW 70A.500.250, processor performance standards · WAC 173-900-450, collector performance standards

But the registration governs plan participation, not your contract

RCW 70A.500.240(2) requires registration of processors utilized by an independent or standard plan. Ecology says the same in its own words: to be a direct processor for the E-Cycle Washington program you need a contract with a recycling plan, annual registration, performance standards and compliance with annual audits. Nothing in the chapter requires a business retiring its own equipment to use a registered processor, and Ecology's guidance asks only that e-waste be legitimately recycled, including reclamation and reuse of parts.

Two details in WAC 173-900-450 show whose programme it is. Subsection (1)(c) lets a registered collector charge even a covered entity for collection of large quantities of covered electronic products from small businesses, small governments, charities, and school districts — so volume is chargeable inside the free programme. And subsection (2) bars a registered collector from processing covered electronic products unless it is also a registered direct processor. A buyer reading a registration as a quality mark is reading a programme roster.

Sources: RCW 70A.500.240, processor registration · WAC 173-900-450, collector performance standards · Ecology, E-Cycle Washington processors · Ecology, electronic waste guidance

This directory does not cross-reference Ecology's collector, transporter or processor registration lists. A vendor's presence here is a statement about its R2v3 certification and nothing about whether it holds a Washington registration.

Sources: Ecology, E-Cycle Washington processors