Consumer Technology Association

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Consumer Technology Association

Basic information
Founded	1924
Legal structure	Trade Organization
Industry	Electronics
Official website	https://www.cta.tech/

The Consumer Technology Association (or CTA) is both a standards and trade organization. Their mission statement is "to help innovators of all sizes grow their business." They are active lobbyists for a wide variety of issues, but often do this by representing large tech companies in legal battles against the right to repair. While the American consumer may have various feelings about their trade policy, immigration, or patent reform stances, all of us are harmed by their consistent defense of restrictive licensing and built-in blocks for independent repair.

Testimonies

Right-to-repair in Maine

In regards to Bill LD1977 SP679 ("An Act To Ensure a Consumer's Right To Repair Certain Electronic Products"), the CTA's VP of Environmental Affairs and Industry Sustainability^[who?]

testified that "[the] issue that's been raised about e-waste and concern about how not passing legislation like this might increase e-waste, I would remind the committee that Maine has a robust e-waste law and program in place... ...we are not looking at a situation where e-waste in Maine [is] going into landfills."[citation needed]

While these laws are on the books in Maine, e-waste recycling faces serious issues perpetuated by many of the same industry practices which make repair difficult, and is less complete of a solution than the legislation would suggest. "Smartphones are becoming lighter and slimmer, and their batteries are no longer removable, making recycling much more difficult and labour-intensive. Manual sorting requires workers to be constantly exposed to toxic substances, albeit at a low level, over a long period, while these difficult-to-recycle electronic devices require facilities to constantly upgrade their machines to keep up with the changing technology, lowering the incentive for businesses to recycle e-waste that is already difficult to disassemble" (emphasis added). Additionally, outsourcing of e-waste recycling represents an environmental health disaster to less developed countries, leading to China banning the import of many categories of waste. Right-to-repair stands to greatly reduce the generation of e-waste and make its recycling much more cost effective, at the expense of reducing the number of new devices purchased as replacements. Reduce, then reuse (repair or salvage parts) and then recycle.

More than a year after this testimony and the allegation that investments and lobbying for e-waste recycling more than makes up for anti-repair practices^{[citation needed]} (and the death of the bill in committee), the Maine Monitor reported in that "Mainers are generating more electronic waste than ever. And no one knows what percentage of that waste is sent for recycling." He^[who?]

also includes statistics for sold phones, trade-ins, and phones given to friends or relatives to give a false view that only 2% of phones are thrown into the trash when looking at phones at end of life.[citation needed]