Electronic Scrap Action Program
Steering Committee Meeting
Wednesday, December 3, 2003, 3:30 – 5:30 p.m.
IDEM-OPPTA Conference Room

Those present:  Terry Duffy, John Crooks, Eric Goldsmith, Kristen Brier, Amanda Hennessey, Tiffany Sorge, Julie L. Rhodes, and Michelle Cohen, Mark Mehall and Rob Howe joined by phone.

I.   ESAP Subcommittees
There are three identified Subcommittees:  Reuse, Best Management Practices and Education.  There is a need to add members to the subcommittees to spread the work around and to attract leadership and administrative assistance to each subcommittee.  

·         Reuse Subcommittee:  John Crooks will chair, have four additional participants, need administrative coordinator.  JC has already sent out an introductory note to his committee to begin setting their goals and planning their work.

·         Best Management Practices:  Eric Goldsmith and Rob Howe agreed to co-chair, JLR will provide administrative coordination for FIRST MEETING and then group needs to recruit someone else.  This subcommittee will need to first help coordinate the Purdue conference in March.  ER, RH and JLR will discuss setting first meeting and other details on a Friday, December 5, 9 a.m conference call.    There is a need for at least an initial in-person meeting of the subcommittee, then much of the work can be accomplished by e-mail and conference calls.

·         Education:  Three people signed up.  Need to attract additional people to this committee and find leadership and administrative coordinator.  

MC will draft an e-mail to go out to the IRC membership to help attract additional participation and leadership in the subcommittees.  JLR also submitted a request for the next IRC newsletter.  

II.    Purdue Conference in March 2004
This conference will be planned by the Best Practices subcommittee.  It will include about two hours of presentations by the Purdue Industrial Engineering Department regarding electronics value determination and plastics identification.  There is a desire to broaden the workshop to include some other training, such as basic hazardous waste training and OSHA training for facilities.  The goal would be that this could be beneficial for a reuse or recycling organization’s employees and management.  As a result, the goal is also to have a low registration fee (like $25) so that the cost does not prohibit participation.  It would likely be a 1/2 day workshop.  

This workshop does not meet our requirement by IDEM to do trainings with the Toolkit.  As a result, it is an “add on”, but it also means that the workshop does not have to be free of charge as outlined in the grant required workshops.

There was discussion that the other half of the day could be a morning Stakeholder meeting that focused on Best Management Practices also, such as liability and export issues, followed by a networking lunch, and leading into the workshop.  Details to be worked out later, but this is the direction the steering committee would like to go.
 
III.    January 27 Stakeholder Meeting  
A.  FACILITY:   The next Stakeholder Meeting will be held at Thomson Consumer Electronics conference room, located at 465 and North Meridian Street on Indianapolis’ north side.  JLR reported that the room is nice and large, should accommodate breakouts, can meet our audio visual needs, plenty of parking, and Thomson will provide the snack and coffee in the morning.  Thomson has asked to give a tour of their Technology Gallery to show off their latest products.  JLR agreed for a 10  minute tour at the 15 minute break.  Also, Thomson representative will be providing opening comments regarding Thomson’s perspective of e-scrap management issues.
B.  TIME:  The meeting will be scheduled from 9:30 – noon, and the committee can get into the room and set up anytime after 8:00 a.m.   
C.  LUNCH:   Lunch cannot be brought in from an outside source.  Therefore, we must order the networking lunch items from Sodexho, that has a cafeteria within the facility.  It might be more expensive, so we may need to get a lunch sponsor to help lower the cost of individual lunches.  JLR has not received the menus yet, but working on it.
D. AGENDA/PRESENTATIONS:  The Steering Committee revised the topic from that currently posted.  Since the Best Practices Workshop will cover the intended topics, the 5th Stakeholder Meeting will instead focus on the four areas briefly addressed during discussions at the last meeting:  Education, Prison Labor, Landfill Bans, and Funding Mechanisms.  JLR will do a short presentation about each topical area and provide a brief fact sheet on each.  After the presenation, the groups will break out to explore issues more deeply (pro/cons, etc), and come back to the full group with their ideas of possible recommendations.  We will need to ensure that each break out group has representation from each stakeholder group, and also has a facilitator that can help them through the topics towards some resolutions.  The agenda will also include a presentation on the IRC’s Cell Phone Recycling Program.  We are looking for a catchy title for this Stakeholder meeting – Ideas welcome!
E.  INVITATIONS:  Indiana Department of Commerce and US Environmental Protection Agency will once again print and mail the invitations for the meeting.  JLR needs to complete the invitation and forward to these organizations by the end of December with the intent for invitations to go out first of January.  It was agreed that in order to reduce problems with significant percentage of newcomers at the meetings, we will begin paring down the lists.  IDEM noted that we have satisfied the intent of the grant to reach out to a broad audience for stakeholder participation.  JLR will review lists and begin eliminating some groups from the broader mailings.  However, the larger group will be contacted later for workshops.   
F.  MEDIA OUTREACH:  IRC has purchased the Indiana Media Guide in an electronic format, so that we can begin doing our own electronic press releases since IDEM can no longer do so.

IV.  Cell Phone Recycling
The IRC is now providing a cell phone recycling program, available to any entity, government agencies, private businesses, non-profits.  This program allows us to capture the cell phones being generated as waste as a result of the new portability laws (allowing people to switch services and keep their phone numbers).  Millions of cell phones are expected to be disposed of nationally in the coming months.  The IRC Board Executive Committee will be making a determination on a service provider on December 4, and making collection boxes available to interested parties.  This program will not only help us meet our goal of keeping potentially hazardous electronics out of the waste stream, but it will also serve as a fundraiser for the ESAP and future projects of interest by the group, such as a statewide public education program, workshops and others.  Several steering committee members expressed interest in hosting collection boxes or distributing them to their clients or facilities, and MC will forward to those individuals in the near future.  In addition, boxes will be distributed at the next Stakeholder meeting for others interested in participating.

V.  IRC Conference Track on Electronics
The 2004 IRC Conference will be held in Bloomington on May 10 - 12.  The conference committee is planning for the Steering Committee to plan an entire track of E-scrap related session (three sessions) on Tuesday, May 11.  Session ideas developed by the steering committee included:  University and school electronics programs (RH and MM had possible contacts for speakers); National efforts (NEPSI and NRC’s Plug Into E-Cycling), Details on what are the materials of concern found in e-scrap and why do we need to manage them properly, Electronics 101 (an introduction on e-scrap for newcomers), Electronics reuse (need to be different from last year’s presentation by VSP), a panel/debate of e-scrap topics.  Both AH and KB have offered to moderate a session.  Conference committee needs session names and brief description in January 2004.  

In addition to the track of sessions, there is a Stakeholder meeting planned for Monday, May 10, and a possible tour of a Bloomington E-Scrap Recycler.  

VI.  AWMA session at ‘04 Conference
JLR and KB have reviewed the requirements for the manuscript and KB has agreed to, as a volunteer, work on the first draft of the manuscript.  She intends to have the first draft completed for review by December 17.  It will be important that the Steering Committee provide comments back to that draft.  The document is due to the AWMA by January 23.  Once reviewed by the AWMA, they may come back and require additional information.  However, once they accept the manuscript, any changes must be again approved by them.  Therefore, the goal is to submit all the comments to be incorporated in the first draft.  Please review and respond when you receive the draft from KB.  JLR and KB will have a three-way conference call with Emma Lou George in the next week to clarify her goal in the session and manuscript.

VII.   Fundraising Update
Hoover Family Foundation:  JLR reported that she has talked with Hoover Family Foundation about possible funding of the Purdue workshop.  David Hoover  was encouraging that he could probably fund the project up to $1,000 (does not require his board approval) if the meeting were held in Indianapolis and had significant participation from Indianapolis-based organizations, especially non-profits.
Lake County Challenge:   Secured MOU from Lake County for $5,000 challenge grant, have also received $500 commitment from East Central.  Other districts are considering and taking requests to their board, including Allen, Johnson, LaPorte and St. Joe counties.  Also, HHW Task Force interested in providing some funding to the ESAP and wondered if that could be matched since it is primarily district money.  JLR is checking with Lake Co. to see.
Nina Mason Pulliam:  Proposals due in January, and JLR will pursue.

JLR clarified that if we fully match the Lake County challenge, that she has exceeded the fundraising requirement for the IDEM grant match.  However, many items, such as the Purdue workshop and subcommittees are not included in the original project or under the grant.  Therefore,  JLR is attempting to find other monies so that we can continue to support all of these activities.  
  
VIII.  Next Steering Committee Meeting:  The group decided that additional communications can happen through e-mail and conference calls if necessary. Therefore, another Steering Committee Meeting was not scheduled at this time prior to the January 27 meeting.

Meeting Minutes submitted by:
Julie L. Rhodes, contractor to the Indiana Recycling Coalition E-Scrap Action Program, home office 317/631-2220, e-mail (NOTE NEW ADDRESS) [email protected], 317/631-2220