Apr 25, 2009 12:01 am US/Pacific
Arizona Glass Recycler Defends Calif. E-Waste Pile
(CBS 5)
On Thursday, CBS 5 Investigates showed you where millions of pounds of California's toxic electronic waste is showing up - in a huge pile out in the Arizona desert. It would never be allowed in California, and federal regulators say they're concerned. But the owner of the facility said there's nothing to worry about.
"We've never really had an issue. We don't know that we have an issue now," said Dave Dlubak, owner of Dlubak Glass Company. But when CBS 5 Investigates went to his facility just over the border in Arizona, there was a mountain of millions of pounds of toxic glass from TVs and monitors, much of it from California.
It's something that would never be allowed in California, and after watching video of the facility, the Environmental Protection Agency's Jim Polek told CBS 5: "Yuma has some violations that they need to correct."
"We have some housekeeping issues, we had some breakdowns there," said Dlubak.
Dlubak told CBS 5 Investigates any violations there are minor. "I mean there are boxes that break, there's trucks that come in they may drop glass here and there," he said.
Dlubak also said he doesn't believe that pile of leaded glass poses any risk. But not so, according to Jim Puckett of the Basel Action Network. "Basically what you showed me there was a veritable mountain of electronic waste," Puckett said.
Puckett heads the electronics recycling watchdog group that put international dumping of electronic waste on the public's radar. "I was a bit horrified to tell you the truth," he said after watching video from CBS 5 Investigates.
"What a lot of people don't realize and the industry is in denial about is that this very same material has a phosphor coating. These contain metals like cadmium, one of the most toxic heavy metals known," Puckett said.
Puckett also said the EPA should be testing for environmental contamination. "They've got to go in and sample that material and the groundwater and the ground and the soil," he said.
"I would have to say to Jim Puckett, you're wrong, the phosphors that are on there are aluminized coatings, there's basically no heavy metals," said Dlubak in response.
And Dlubak said of Puckett: "Basically from the industry, does he have any knowledge of the industry or worked in the industry?"
Puckett has never worked in Dlubak's industry, glass recycling. But he is an environmental activist with 22 years experience who directed the international toxics program for Greenpeace.
Dlubak said his company's practices don't pose any risk. "We are not there to harm the environment or harm the people or anything else," he said.
But Puckett said that big pile in Arizona shows an even bigger problem, for government, and watchdog groups like his. "The regulatory agencies have been asleep at the switch and indeed so have many of the activists like our own group, ban. We have been looking so hard at what the horrors are in foreign shores, that even in our own territory we have been amiss at looking at the problems," he said.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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