EPA RCRA-registered electronics-recycling drop-off points per 100,000 residents, for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, joined to whether the state has a producer-responsibility e-waste recycling law.
Nobody else publishes a per-state drop-off density figure alongside the state's legal position, so this repository exists to make that derivation open, checkable and reusable.
| File | Contents |
|---|---|
data/us-ewaste-dropoff-access-index.json |
National totals, an aggregate split by law status, and one record per state |
Each state record carries drop_off_points, population_2024, per_100k,
residents_per_drop_off, rank_per_capita, has_state_ewaste_law, law_name,
year_enacted, model and agency.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Drop-off points | 3,219 |
| States and territories covered | 51 |
| Population base (Census 2024) | 334,895,000 |
| National density | 0.96 per 100,000 residents |
| Residents per drop-off point | 104,037 |
Highest density: Vermont, 5.87 per 100,000. Lowest: Texas, 0.44 per 100,000.
Per-capita density and state population have a Spearman rank correlation of -0.76. The ranking is dominated by the denominator, not by policy or provision. Vermont ranks first on 38 drop-off points; Texas ranks last on 134.
That has a direct consequence for anyone tempted to read the law column as an effect:
| Group | States | Population | Drop-off points | Per 100k |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Has a producer-responsibility law | 25 | 219,159,000 | 1,898 | 0.87 |
| No such law | 26 | 115,736,000 | 1,321 | 1.14 |
States without a law show the higher per-capita density. This is a confound, not a result. The no-law group has a median population of 3.0m against 6.2m for the law group, and small states score high on any per-capita measure. Restricting to states of 5m people or more narrows the gap but does not reverse it (0.86 with a law against 1.01 without, n=16 and n=8), and at that point the sample is too small to carry an inference.
Do not cite this dataset as evidence that e-waste laws do or do not increase drop-off provision. It is not designed to answer that question and it does not control for the variables that would.
per_100k = drop_off_points / population_2024 * 100000.
Terminology. These are facilities carrying an EPA RCRAInfo hazardous-waste handler registration. A registration is not a certification: R2 and e-Stewards are the certification schemes for electronics recyclers, and this dataset does not record whether a facility holds either. Earlier versions of this file used the word "certified", which was wrong.
Drop-off points are verified recycler locations reconciled against EPA RCRAInfo registrations, from a 14,411-URL archive of historical recycler listings. Facilities that could not be reconciled to a registration were dropped. Population is the US Census Bureau Vintage 2024 state estimate.
has_state_ewaste_law records whether the state appears in a compiled list of 25 state electronics
recycling programme laws, drawn from the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Electronics
Recycling Coordination Clearinghouse. The field means "has a producer-responsibility or advance-fee
recycling programme in statute". A state whose only measure is a landfill disposal ban, with no
producer programme, is recorded as having no law here. That is a narrower definition than "has any
e-waste legislation" and the two will not agree.
- Drop-off points are not weighted by what they accept. A site taking 30 device categories counts the same as one taking CRT televisions only.
- The index measures count, not capacity. It says nothing about drop-off events per year, opening hours, or distance from where people actually live.
- Registration is not the same as operation. A registered facility that has stopped accepting public drop-offs still counts.
- Coverage is per state. Within-state distribution, which is what determines whether an individual household has access, is not captured at all.
eCycling Central (2026). US e-waste drop-off access by state, with producer-responsibility law status. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22165790
The DOI above is the concept DOI: it always resolves to the latest version. Cite a specific version by its own DOI from the Zenodo record.
See LICENSE.md. Source data is US federal public domain (EPA, Census); the derived dataset is CC BY 4.0, attributed to eCycling Central.
- EPA RCRAInfo: https://www.epa.gov/enviro/rcrainfo-overview
- EPA ECHO: https://echo.epa.gov/
- US Census Bureau state population estimates: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/popest.html
- NCSL electronic waste recycling laws: https://www.ncsl.org/environment-and-natural-resources/electronic-waste-recycling
- Interactive ranking and full state table: https://ecyclingcentral.com/guides/us-e-waste-drop-off-access-index-2026
- Interactive ranking and full state table: https://ecyclingcentral.com/guides/us-e-waste-drop-off-access-index-2026
- National context and the underlying report: https://ecyclingcentral.com/research/state-of-us-e-waste-2026
- Find a drop-off point by ZIP or postcode: https://ecyclingcentral.com/tools/recycling-locator
- The reconciled facility records behind
drop_off_points: https://ecyclingcentral.com/recyclers - Drop-off points grouped by metro area: https://ecyclingcentral.com/areas
The column is a single boolean, and a boolean is a poor summary of a statute. Each state programme
differs in who pays, which devices are covered and what a manufacturer must fund. Plain-English
summaries of the statutes that set the field to true, and of the federal rule that produces the
RCRAInfo registration the facility counts are drawn from:
- Federal hazardous-waste rule the registrations sit under (RCRA): https://ecyclingcentral.com/regulations/resource-conservation-and-recovery-act-rcra
- US federal e-waste position: https://ecyclingcentral.com/regulations/epa-e-waste-regulations-us-federal
- California SB 20, Electronic Waste Recycling Act (advance recovery fee model): https://ecyclingcentral.com/regulations/california-sb-20-electronic-waste-recycling-act
- Minnesota Electronics Recycling Act (producer-responsibility model): https://ecyclingcentral.com/regulations/minnesota-electronics-recycling-act
- New York State Electronic Equipment Recycling and Reuse Act: https://ecyclingcentral.com/regulations/new-york-state-electronic-equipment-recycling-act
These summaries are secondary sources written by eCycling Central. For the statutory text, follow the citations on each page to the state legislature. The authoritative list used to build the column itself is the NCSL page linked under Source above.
- figshare: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.33393469
- Zenodo (concept DOI): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22165790