re·use
To use again, especially after salvaging or special treatment or processing.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

To use something again, often for a different purpose and usually as an alternative to throwing it out. Encarta® World English Dictionary [North American Edition] © & (P)2007 Microsoft Corporation.

re·fur·bish
To make clean, bright, or fresh again; renovate.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Madam Chair, members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to speak. My name is Lorraine Kerwood, I am the founder and Executive Director of NextStep Recycling, an Oregon nonprofit electronics refurbishing and recycling facility. 

I offer these definitions to you for the proposed legislation. Throughout the document the word “reuse” is referenced, but not defined. As this proposed legislation moves forward, I ask that the focus on reuse is emphasized and not ignored or forgotten as has occurred in Washington, California, and Maine e-waste recycling legislation.

I attended almost all of the Electronic Stewardship Task Force meetings. The importance of reusing technology for the greater good of our state was discussed often and with great passion.

Our nonprofit exists to address the digital divide in our communities. The term 'digital divide' describes the fact that the world can be divided into people who do and people who do not have access to - and the capability to use - modern information technology, such as computers and the Internet. The digital divide exists between those in cities and those in rural areas, between the educated and the uneducated, between economic classes, and, globally, between the more and less industrially developed nations.

I started NextStep out of my own need. I was a special ed kid who grew up believing I was too stupid to understand computers and how useful a computer could be to my life. After a car accident in 1999, I found myself unemployed and unemployable.

I decided to go to college and see about a new career. I was terrified to learn that the university expects all students know how to use a computer and have one available to them. I decided to go to Lane Community College and see if I could learn how to use a computer. I took an adult education class that taught me how to turn on the computer, what a word processor is and how to access the Internet. I was shocked and extremely surprised that computers are actually very friendly to folks like me who have diagnosis of autism, mentally challenged, and developmentally delayed. After I got my first computer the hard drive died and I tried to fix it myself. This led me to tearing computers apart, and rebuilding them. By the time I was proficient at refurbishing, I was a working as a child welfare worker.

I met more and more folks who were like me-scared of computers, didn’t have access to the technology, but understood that having access to a computer could connect them to the wide world. Driven by the obvious need in our community to connect disenfranchised Oregonians with technology, I moved out of my mother in law’s garage and started NextStep.

Since 2000, NextStep volunteers and staff have refurbished 10,000 computers and connected thousands of community members to technology. We are dedicated to the incorporation of information technologies into the community in order to promote education and improve the quality of life. We gift computers to persons who experience disabilities, children and adults living in foster care, family members leaving domestically violent relationship, migrant worker families, persons living in poverty, underfunded schools and nonprofits.

We are one of 400 Microsoft Authorized Refurbishers in the US. I have been hearing from other refurbishers that the e-waste laws in their states have had a harmful impact on their programs. Some CA refurbishers are paying others to ship them monitors because the available monitors are going straight to recyclers. I have heard reports of small nonprofit refurbishing programs closing their doors because they no longer have access to working technology.

At NextStep, our mission is two fold: connect technology with those who do not have access and to keep electronics out of our landfills. We believe reuse and recycling can co-exist and met the same objective of keeping electronics out of our landfills. We encourage you to consider the following facts:

Manufacturing computers is materials intensive; the total fossil fuels used to make one desktop computer weigh over 240 kilograms, some 10 times the weight of the computer itself. This is very high compared to many other goods: For an automobile or refrigerator, for example, the weight of fossil fuels used for production is roughly equal to their weights.

The Governor’s Executive Order 03-03 directed the Oregon Sustainability Board and certain state agencies to develop policies and practices to make Oregon a more sustainable state, consistent with and in furtherance of the goals regarding sustainability adopted by the Legislative Assembly in 2001.

Results indicate that refurbishing one in ten computers reduces total energy use by 8.6 percent and 5.2 percent, respectively (by reducing demand for new machines).  In contrast, recycling the materials in one in ten computers only saves 0.43 percent (by replacing demand for virgin materials).  The difference is dramatic and suggests that extension of lifespan should receive real attention on the policy agenda addressing end-of-life computers.

NextStep Recycling wants to support a healthy economy that conserves the environment and ensures equitable access to living wage jobs. The connections between economy, community, and environment are evident.

Respectfully,
Lorraine Kerwood