On The Transition Of The U.S. E-Waste Regulation

It is not very long lasting for E-waste as an environmental issues entering public dissusion. After 2000, California and other local governments in the U.S. have made their new electronic waste regulations, thus changing the traditional system of federal regulation, adding more market-based and flexible mechanism, which is viewed as the next generation environmental law for the e-waste. By terms of necessity, this conversion is derived from two aspects as following:Firstly, the traditional mode of governmental command-control regulation of e-waste is facing so many problems that it just can not deal with it. Secondly, the new models, such as the California's consumer-to-pay electronic waste recycling fee system, can do lots of job in the place where the traditional system fails, as well as be more consistent with democratic, rationalization and other values. In its reality, such a shift of regulation pattern is based on U.S.'s basic political structure and the status of political power in reality. In short, it can be said that the failure of the traditional government command and control regulation system is the source of the shift, however, the current dualistic-structure of today's U.S. e-waste regulation system can only be true on the basis of federal-state disparities.