Colorado electronics disposal rules, and which one applies to you

If you are disposing of retired IT equipment in Colorado, three separate bodies of rule can touch it and they do not agree with each other about what an "electronic device" is. This page sets out which is which.

The short version: the landfill ban is probably not the rule that binds your organization. The generator requirements are. And the definitions diverge precisely on phones.

What Colorado requires of your organization

Colorado banned disposal of electronic devices in state landfills effective July 1, 2013, under CRS 25-17-303. The scope sits at CRS 25-17-302(3), not in the ban itself, and it repays reading, because it isn't what most vendor pages say it is.

The definition has two limbs. One covers a computer, peripheral, printer, fax machine, DVD player or VCR. The other covers a video display device or computer monitor, and it names the devices directly: "a laptop, notebook, ultrabook, or netbook computer, television, tablet or slate computer, electronic book" with a screen greater than four inches measured diagonally. Both limbs end with "or other electronic device specified by rule promulgated by the commission," so the list is open, not closed.

Then there are five exclusions, and one of them should stop you. Motor-vehicle devices. Devices that are part of systems in industrial, commercial, library, traffic-control, security, border-control, medical or governmental settings. Devices inside appliances, down to exercise equipment. A device capable of commercial mobile radio service without a video display area greater than four inches. And, flatly and without qualification, at 25-17-302(3)(b)(V): "A telephone."

We handle phones. So we'll say plainly what that does and doesn't settle. A laptop or a tablet is named in the statute and is inside the ban. A phone sits between an unqualified exclusion for "a telephone" and a definition of video display devices that a modern handset's screen would otherwise meet, and the statute doesn't resolve which one governs. We're not going to tell you it's settled. If that question decides something for you, it's one for CDPHE or your counsel, not for a vendor's website.

It matters less than it looks like it should, and here's why: the landfill ban is not the rule that actually binds a business. The generator requirements below are, and they don't turn on this definition at all.

One more qualifier on the ban itself: a board of county commissioners in a county without at least two annual e-waste recycling events or an ongoing program may, after a good-faith effort to find a vendor, exempt its residents for two-year terms.

The rule that binds a business, a district or a county department is different, and it's more conditional than most vendor pages admit.

CDPHE states that disposal of most waste electronics from non-residential sources is regulated as hazardous waste, because analytical data show they consistently exceed regulatory limits for lead, cadmium and mercury, and that Colorado regulations prohibit non-residential entities from disposing of any hazardous waste in solid waste landfills. That waste may go to a legitimate electronics recycler or to a permitted hazardous waste disposal facility.

That's the state's general finding about the category. It is not a determination about your waste, and it doesn't discharge your duty to make one. Under Colorado's generator rule at 6 CCR 1007-3, Part 262, § 262.11, you make your own hazardous waste determination for each waste stream at the point of generation, using process knowledge or testing. Small and large quantity generators keep records supporting it; a very small quantity generator isn't caught by that recordkeeping paragraph. The underlying condition is the same throughout: an electronic device is hazardous waste if it exhibits one or more of the characteristics in 6 CCR 1007-3, Part 261, Subpart C. That's the state adoption, not 40 CFR 261, and on this page the difference is the whole point.

⚠ Colorado uses two different definitions of "electronic device," and they split on phones

Before the next part, something no vendor page will tell you, and it matters most to exactly the equipment we handle.

The landfill ban's definition, above, is the narrow one: consumer-marketed, enumerated, and carrying that flat exclusion for "a telephone."

The universal waste rule three paragraphs below uses a different and much broader definition. 6 CCR 1007-3 § 273.9 defines an electronic device as "electronic equipment that contains one or more electronic circuit boards or other complex circuitry, including but not limited to computer monitors, televisions, central processing units (CPUs), laptops, printers, terminals, mainframes and stereo equipment." Open-ended, no consumer-marketing test, and no telephone carve-out anywhere in Part 273.

So a phone can sit outside one Colorado definition and inside the other, in the same state, on the same page of the same rulebook. If you've read that a phone is exempt in Colorado, check which definition the person telling you was reading. We're not going to resolve it for you, and anyone who does resolve it casually hasn't noticed there are two.

Two things follow that a blanket statement misses.

Colorado has adopted a state universal waste rule covering electronic devices and components (6 CCR 1007-3, Part 273, § 273.1(a)(6)). The federal rule has not: 40 CFR 273.1(a) lists five categories and electronics is not among them. Universal waste is an optional, reduced set of management standards a handler can elect instead of the full generator requirements. Colorado's rule states its own purpose at § 273.1(b): to reduce the regulatory burden on facilities generating these wastes while reducing the amount of hazardous waste illegally sent to municipal solid waste landfills.

And a used device sent for recycling doesn't become a waste until the recycler determines it can't be resold, donated, repaired or refurbished, or determines it can't directly reuse or sell useable parts from it (§ 273.2(f)(3)(ii)). Read the "or" as the rule writes it: either determination starts the clock, not both. So a device you've written off for resale becomes a waste at that moment even if nobody has yet looked at whether its parts are worth harvesting.

That cuts both ways, and the useful half is this. Equipment genuinely moving through reuse hasn't reached either determination, so the clock hasn't started. It's the strongest regulatory argument for reuse-first handling there is, and it's not a loophole, it's the rule. It also assumes the device would exhibit a Part 261 Subpart C characteristic in the first place (§ 273.2(f)(2)(ii)), which is the conditional the section is built on.

The state's equally direct about the data: "You are ultimately responsible for protecting information stored on the hard drive of your computers, printers and other devices. Simply deleting files and reformatting the hard drive does not guarantee that all of your data will be destroyed."

That's the state, not a vendor, telling you a reformat isn't erasure.

Three terms that mean less than they sound like

"EPA certified." The federal environmental agency doesn't certify electronics recyclers. Its own regional guidance says exactly that, and adds that such claims "are not accurate." It also notes that a permit isn't a certification and doesn't guarantee anyone's recycling methods, and that an EPA identification number isn't a certification either. It's a tracking number.

"Electronics are universal waste." Available in Colorado, unavailable federally, and even in Colorado it's a choice rather than a status. The federal list names five categories and electronics aren't among them: batteries, pesticides, mercury-containing equipment, lamps and aerosol cans are. Colorado has added electronic devices and components to its state universal waste rule. But only wastes that are already hazardous fall under it, and the reduced standards are an option a handler may elect instead of the full generator requirements, not something that happens to the waste automatically. So a vendor saying this to a Colorado generator is close enough to right, the same vendor saying it about federal requirements is wrong, and a vendor describing it as a status rather than an election hasn't read the rule. Ask which they mean.

"E-waste is federally hazardous waste." Whether a stream is federally hazardous depends on the stream, and there are exclusions that matter in practice. Colorado regulates most non-residential waste electronics as hazardous waste at the state level, which is the point made above. That's a state determination, not a blanket federal one, and the two get conflated constantly.

The Colorado duty that sits on you, and the sentence in it about us

Separately from anything about waste, Colorado requires each covered entity that keeps paper or electronic documents containing personal identifying information to develop a written policy for destroying or properly disposing of them (CRS 6-1-713). Governmental entities, which includes school districts, carry the same duty under CRS 24-73-101.

Two things about that are worth having straight.

It says develop, not publish. One verb, once. There is no requirement to post it, no review cadence, no named officer, no audit. The whole of what the policy must say is that when the documents are no longer needed you destroy them by shredding, erasing or otherwise modifying the information to make it unreadable or indecipherable. If a vendor tells you Colorado requires a published disposal policy, they haven't read the section. And if a state or federal regulator already sets disposal procedures for you, following those counts as compliance with this one.

Then there's the sentence about firms like us, and we'd rather you heard it from us than found it later. Unless you specifically contract with a recycler or disposal firm for the destruction of documents containing personal identifying information, nothing in that statute requires the recycler to verify that what it receives has been properly destroyed. The same carve-out appears word for word in the governmental version at CRS 24-73-101(3).

Read that as what it is: the obligation is yours, and the way to move it is to put destruction in the contract in terms, rather than to assume a recycler picked it up by handling the equipment. That is a reason to be specific with us about what you need destroyed, what evidence you need back, and when.

And the other half of that sentence, which is the half about us. CRS 6-1-713(2)(a) excludes from "covered entity" a person acting as a third-party service provider as defined at CRS 6-1-713.5, and CRS 24-73-101(4)(a) does the same on the governmental side. So when we hold your information on your behalf, the neighbouring section is the one that applies to us, not the one that applies to you. It works by flow-down: CRS 6-1-713.5 and CRS 24-73-102 require the disclosing entity to require reasonable security procedures of its provider by contract. Which means the protection you get from us is the protection you write into the agreement. We'd rather you knew that than assumed the statute did it for you.

One more, for public bodies. If you're a Colorado governmental entity and you use a third-party service provider to hold computerized personal information, that provider has a direct statutory duty to notify you and cooperate with you if there's a security breach (CRS 24-73-103(2)(g)). That one is direct, not a flow-down. Not to notify the public. To notify you. The private-sector equivalent is at CRS 6-1-716(2)(b).

The registration to check on any recycler

Colorado requires that any site separating, sorting, processing, dismantling or baling waste electronic materials registers with the state as a recycler, and that registered recyclers file a report each year by March 1 (6 CCR 1007-2, Part 1, §§ 8.3.3 and 8.3.5(A)).

The state publishes a public list. Checking takes a minute and it's a reasonable thing to do before hiring anyone.

Worth knowing how to read it, though: registration is an administrative requirement and a reporting obligation. It isn't a quality endorsement and it doesn't mean the state assessed how anyone recycles. A provider presenting registration as a certification has the categories wrong.

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