As Goes Maine,
So Goes the Nation?

Partnership for Mercury Free Vehicles Campaign Building Momentum

By Ted Sylvester
March/April Issue, 2004

The campaign to rid cars of components containing persistent bioaccumulative toxins (PBTs) – among the most hazardous substances in existence – took a significant step forward in February when a federal judge upheld Maine’s first-in-the-nation law to require automakers to pay to recover toxic mercury from cars. Ecology Center efforts, as part of the Clean Car Campaign and Partnership for Mercury-Free Vehicles, helped pass the landmark 2002 law that forced automakers to create a system for removing and safely recycling mercury-added components such as switches in hood and trunk lights.

Jeff Gearhart, Ecology Center Auto Campaign Director, says the campaign is building on the precedent set in Maine and gaining momentum going into other state battlegrounds, in particular Minnesota, where similar legislation is currently pending.

The idea in Maine, as in Minnesota and the numerous other states where similar campaigns are being waged, is for auto manufacturers to become more responsible for the materials they use to build cars – a concept called extended producer responsibility. “If you put a toxic material like mercury in a car, you should be responsible for its safe recovery,” said Gearhart.

While automakers claim that all mercury switches were eliminated from new vehicles as of Jan. 1, 2003, Gearhart points out it doesn’t resolve the problem caused by the millions of switches currently in vehicles on the road.

U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock apparently agrees. Heupheld the Maine law, challenged by the auto industry, that creates a manufacturer- funded system in the state to recover mercury switches from cars at their end-of-life stage, before they get scrapped, shredded, or smelted, all processes that release mercury contained in the switches into the environment. The law also requires automakers to pay a one-dollar bounty to junkyards and scrap dealers for each mercury switch brought to a consolidation center for proper disposal or recycling.

The proposed legislation in Minnesota would set up a mercury switch recovery program modeled on Maine’s statute. Representatives from the Ecology Center, Environmental Defense, and the auto recyclers and steel scrap industry that together make up the Partnership for Mercury-Free Vehicles, testified in late February before a Minnesota Senate committee.

The benefits to Minnesota, they claimed, would include a cost effective way to control mercury released into the environment; a reduction to the danger to human health and wildlife due to toxic mercury contamination of fish; the prevention of mercury contamination from negatively affecting the state’s tourism and recreational fishing industries; and the removal of a financial burden from local businesses involved in salvage of cars and in recycling cars for steel.

One final over-arching benefit, which is the point of the whole campaign according to Gearhart, is that by making automakers pay to recover mercury from cars before they are junked, the program encourages more responsible design of cars in the future. For more information, press statements, news article links, as well as the Maine court decision and statute, visit the Clean Car Campaign’s website at www.cleancarcampaign.org

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