CBS 5 Investigates With Anna Werner

(CBS 5) It's California's dirty little secret. The state boasts it has the most advanced program for recycling toxic television and computer monitors. But if that's true, then why did CBS 5 Investigates find a mountain of glass from those TVs and monitors in the desert of a neighboring state?

When you take your old TV or computer to the neighborhood drop-off event, you might assume it's all being recycled in a safe, clean fashion. What funds that recycling? A law was passed to charge consumers a fee when they buy TVs or computers.

"That money is put into an account and is used by the state to pay authorized collectors and recyclers," said Jeff Hunts with the California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB), the agency that set up the program.

Hunts said it has been so successful, that in three years Californians have turned in nearly 600 million pounds of old televisions and computer monitors. Yet some recyclers say the program has actually helped turn California into the largest exporter of waste in the world.

What's going wrong? One problem is that when the state set up the program in 2005, the chief goal was to recycle TVs and monitors. Why? Because each one contains a glass tube called a cathode ray tube, or CRT. Each CRT holds 7 to 8 pounds of toxic lead.

But they're considered so toxic, the state told recyclers they can only break them down so far.

At recycler Jim Taggart's facility, ECS Refining in Santa Clara, cathode ray tubes go up a conveyor belt, are dropped down a chute to break up the tube and the remaining broken glass is deposited into a large box. "As far as the glass goes this is the end of the line for us," said Taggart.

To do anything further, recyclers would need a hazardous waste permit, according to Carol Northrup of the California State Department of Toxic Substance Control, or DTSC. But, said Northrup, "It's not easy to get a permit in California at all." In fact, CIWMB's Hunts admits getting a permit isn't "prohibited, it's just prohibitively expensive".

The result, Taggart said, is that CRT glass, a big part of California's e-waste, isn't really being recycled here at all and is being sent out of state. "We have not created a full complete system for the recycling of it, so we are exporting it", said Taggart. ECS Refining sends most of its glass to a lead smelter to be melted down.

But CBS 5 Investigates found other recyclers sending the glass to places like Yuma, Arizona. In a location that looks like a mountain, is actually a giant heap of CRT glass. The facility is run by a glass recycling company called Dlubak Glass, and on the day CBS 5 Investigates visited, plant manager Hector Castillo readily admitted most of the glass is coming from California.

And California state data shows California recyclers sent 41 million pounds of CRT glass to Dlubak's facility in Yuma in 2007.

Both Castillo and company owner Dave Dlubak told CBS 5 Investigates the plant meets Arizona state and federal regulations.

"We're complying with the federal regulations", Castillo said.

But when CBS 5 showed videotape of the facility and the pile of CRT glass to Jim Polek of the US Environmental Protection Agency, he said the pictures did not reflect what he had expected to see.

"My understanding was that things had changed", Polek said. He says the facility has "violations they need to correct."

"They need to inspect and…make sure the facility is cleaned up", he said.

Would a mountain of broken glass full of toxic lead ever be okay with California regulators?

"This would be completely inappropriate in California," said DTSC scientist Rita Hypnarowski, who is in charge of inspecting recycling facilities in California.

"Not only would we respond with administrative and civil actions, but we would coordinate with the proper authorities to open a criminal case most likely," Hypnarowski added.

Why are California recyclers, paid with consumers' recycling fees, even allowed to send glass there? CBS 5 Investigates put that question to DTSC's Carol Northrup.

"We can't control where they ship their things, that's their business decision," she said.

Investigative Reporter Anna Werner asked Northrup, "I think the criticism is, yeah but California created that waste stream, but now (you're) saying yes, we created it, but hey, we don't control where it goes."

Northrup's response? "That's the way to say it."

Dlubak's Hector Castillo was more philosophical.

"Yeah, they don't let the process happen in their own yard, right? Well, that's California," he said.

Recycler Jim Taggart believes California can do a better job of taking care of its own e-waste.

"The end result of that is we're just picking up all our waste and shipping it someplace else", Taggart said. "It's green in my back yard but not green in your back yard."

Owner Dave Dlubak's interview with CBS 5 Investigates will be featured in a follow-up report Friday night at 10pm on the CW and at 11pm on CBS 5.

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